Description
Coming May 2019
Short stories by the writer considered by many to be a Canadian Lorrie Moore. Elise Levine’s work features highly compressed, propulsive narratives, with charged and layered language. Formally stylized, and yet predominantly character-driven, excavating often marginalized lives gripped by estrangement and imperiled by silence, urged toward the need to transcend and engage. The stories vary in terms of setting, voice, and point of view — from Florida to northern Ontario, from young damaged boys to peaceful old men and murderous old women — as well as form, ranging from flash to lengthier fictions.
PRAISE FOR ELISE LEVINE
“Reading Elise Levine is akin to a wild ride down a dark road at night.… Bold and startling.…Precipitous and exhilarating.” –Globe and Mail
“As immersive, hyper-vivid and true as fiction ever gets.” —Lisa Moore
“A dazzling wordsmith, a lexical tease, Levine is like a kid let loose in a leaf pile, kicking up words for the sheer joy of watching them spin.” –Toronto Star
“A cutting-edge literary sensation.” –NOW Magazine
“One of Canada’s finest fiction writers.… Levine demonstrates a kind of incandescent knowing about human affairs which she deploys in stunningly nuanced passages.… A sensitive, cagey dominatrix of literary form and human psychology.” –George Elliott Clarke, Mail Star
“Audacious.…There’s hardly a word in [these stories] that doesn’t weigh heavily, or doesn’t have a bristling edge to it.” –Toronto Star
“Levine’s vivid language and unflinching exploration of people living on the edge of society will stay with you long after each story is read … Levine is unafraid to experiment with language, voice, and form. Her explorations of humanity and the adventurous spirit of her work will keep the reader hooked, hesitating to turn the page but unable to resist the pull of her prose.” –St. John’s Evening Telegram
“Levine’s writing is adventurous and brave.… Tautly constructed and rigorously controlled.…” –Quill & Quire
“Levine is, undeniably, an outstanding wordsmith. Her writing style moves in multiple directions, making high stakes out of small movements while turning panic into poetry.” —Winnipeg Review
“Taut and direct, Elise Levine’s writing compresses the distance between art and audience, drawing a reader experientially through her fiction. Levine is a visceral imagist. Her fiction renders event indistinguishable from emotion, affecting the gut as fully as the mind.…The tension that Levine’s writing evokes remains unresolved, extending beyond the page of her fictions.” –Ottawa Citizen
“Levine uses raw, hallucinatory prose to tell this curious story of a woman becoming undone … The novel’s visceral wordplay, rough sexuality, and anguished depiction of survivor’s guilt are bound to captivate its audience. A transgressive, gut-wrenching portrayal of grief that asks what it’s like to drown.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Levine’s spare language works brilliantly to capture both the vastness of the open water and the claustrophobic chaos of underwater caverns [as well as] a heightened, stylized canvas for Marilyn’s addictive nature… The result is a tale of self-destruction and hubris…absolutely gripping.” —Numero Cinq
“A vibrant mixture of intimate moments … Blue Field is an exploration of two selves coming together with the sea. Levine’s aquatic language is gorgeous, displaying her literary prowess.” —THIS Magazine
“No reader can make his or her way through these stories and retain any kind of complacency.” –Calgary Herald
“Reading the novel is a sensation akin to drifting weightlessly beneath the surface of the text…dazzling, textured, tightly woven.” —Music and Literature
“Levine exposes the roughness and the crude pain of life. It’s a rare writer who can write bluntly about the raw side of life while subtly leaving room for her readers to make their own, often disturbing connections.” –Books in Canada
