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A lyric novel about the play of grief, empathy, new and old love, and the quest to overcome blindness in human relations. Caught in the cross-currents of a fraught divorce and a new love, the death of her mother, and a global pandemic, a writer plunges into an obsession with the work of 1960s French philosopher Roland Barthes. Her struggles to make sense of his work and life--and of what can happen to a woman's settled life in a single harrowing year--result in an engrossing, funny, earthy, and innovative lyric work. The quest for authenticity in motherhood, sexuality, and tenancy on the earth and in the home, as well as the unusual lyric form, make the novel unified in spirit yet transdisciplinary in approach.
About the author
Called an “American original,” Edie Meidav is the author of the prose collection
Kingdom of the Young, and novels including
Lola,
California, and
Crawl Space. Her previous work has been recognized by the Bard Fiction Prize and the Kafka Prize, as well as support from the Fulbright Program, the Howard Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the Whiting Foundation. A senior editor at the journal
Conjunctions, she teaches in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Summary
A lyric novel about the play of grief, empathy, new and old love, and the quest to overcome blindness in human relations.
Caught in the cross-currents of a fraught divorce and a new love, the death of her mother, and a global pandemic, a writer plunges into an obsession with the work of 1960s French philosopher Roland Barthes. Her struggles to make sense of his work and life—and of what can happen to a woman's settled life in a single harrowing year—result in an engrossing, funny, earthy, and innovative lyric work. The quest for authenticity in motherhood, sexuality, and tenancy on the earth and in the home, as well as the unusual lyric form, make the novel unified in spirit yet transdisciplinary in approach.
