Archives de catégorie : Fiction

AUF DEM SEIL de Terézia Mora

Is life an eternal balancing act?

Auf dem Seil
by Terézia Mora
Luchterhand, September 2019

Darius Kopp threatened to break his misfortune. Three years have passed since his wife, Flora, his great love, died. The IT expert traveled through Europe with Flora’s ashes and finally landed in Sicily. One day his unexpected 17-year-old niece appears there. The girl is on her own and does not give way to him anymore. Lorelei needs Darius’ help – and he needs her. With her he goes back to Berlin. And learn to measure your (c)Peter Van Felbert happiness by what you can and can not change by your own will.

FAKE ACCOUNTS de Lauren Oyler

A whip smart, funny and biting literary debut about relationships in the age of social media and conspiracy trolls

FAKE ACCOUNTS
by Lauren Oyler
Catapult, early 2021

FAKE ACCOUNTS opens in January 2017 as our unnamed narrator, a young woman in a post-election tailspin, decides there’s never been a better time to break into her boyfriend’s cell phone. She discovers Felix (if that’s his real name…) is secretly a quite popular online conspiracy theorist. That’s the first in a series of Russian doll-like revelations that send her reeling and inspire a move from New York to Berlin, where she becomes a small-scale compulsive liar—though in her defense, mainly with OkCupid dates. As our narrator approaches her relationships with the wary hopefulness of someone whose beloved pet recently bit her, a series of jaw-dropping deceptions follow suit. Thrumming underneath it all is the age-old question that has gained new urgency as the internet has inundated us with the thoughts and opinions of unprecedented numbers of other people: am I going crazy?
Combining the “voice of a generation” quality of Adelle Waldman and Sally Rooney with bursts of exquisite observational humor reminiscent of Otessa Mosfegh and Maria Semple, the result is an energetic exploration of social media, sex, feminism, online dating, astrology, fiction, and the « connection » they’ve all promised but failed to deliver.

Lauren Oyler’s essays on books, pop culture, and feminism have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, the Cut and elsewhere. She is the co-author of two books with Alyssa Mastromonaco, the former deputy chief of staff for President Obama: Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?, a New York Times bestseller, and So Here’s the Thing…, published on March 5, 2019. She grew up in Hurricane, West Virginia, and lives in Brooklyn. She spends as much time in Berlin as possible.

WRITERS & LOVERS de Lily King

The last days of a long youth, a time when everything comes to a crisis

WRITERS & LOVERS
by Lily King
Atlantic Monthly Press March 2020

Casey Peabody has ended up back in Massachusetts after a devastating love affair. Her mother has just died and she is knocked sideways by grief and loneliness, moving between the restaurant where she waitresses for the Harvard elite and the rented shed she calls home. Her one constant is the novel she has been writing for six years, but at thirty-one she is in debt and directionless, and feels too old to be that way—it’s strange, not to be the youngest kind of adult anymore.

And then, one evening, she meets Silas. He is kind, handsome, interested. But only a few weeks later, Oscar walks into her restaurant, his two boys in tow. He is older, grieving the loss of his wife, and wrapped up in his own creativity. Suddenly Casey finds herself at one corner of a love triangle, stuck between two very different relationships that promise two very different futures.

LILY KING is the author of the novels The Pleasing Hour, The English Teacher, Father of the Rain, and Euphoria, one of the New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2014 and winner of the Kirkus Prize. She lives with her husband and children in Maine.

US de A.F. Carter

For readers of Gillian Flynn and Tana French comes a twisty, thrilling suspense novel about a woman with multi-personality disorder who is accused of murdering her father

US
by A.F. Carter
The Mysterious Press, Spring 2020

It’s not enough that Carolyn Grand endured a horrific childhood that sent her father to jail for thirty years. It’s not enough that she was given to a foster care family who pushed her over the edge. It’s not enough that five Carolyn Grands are forced to share a single body. It’s not enough that Carolyn Grand spent years in two psychiatric hospitals, or that she was fed psychotropic drugs that left her little more than a zombie. It’s not enough that her psychologist considers her a play toy, or that her current course of therapy has been forced on her by a medical review board with the power to re-commit her. It’s not enough that all five Carolyns struggle every day to remain independent, to pay the rent, to put dinner on the table, to put clothes on their backs. It’s not enough that the unreformed and unrepentant father who destroyed Carolyn’s childhood, newly released from prison, has once again thrust himself into her life.
Carolyn Grand now has to defend herself against a charge of murder.

A.F. Carter lives, works and writes in New York City.

JESOLO de Tanja Raich

A dissection of family and motherhood – biting and with piercing wit

JESOLO
by Tanja Raich
Blessing, March 2019

Children are not an issue for Andrea. She has a job that is OK. For many years she has been in a relationship with Georg which is OK. And every year they have a nice holiday in Jesolo. As far as the future is concerned, Andrea doesn’t want to commit herself, but Georg would like a foundation for a life together. There seems to be no way out of this dilemma. Upon returning from a holiday together everything changes – Andrea is pregnant. Torn either way, Andrea decides to keep the child – and in doing so makes one compromise after the other: she takes out a loan although she never wanted to borrow money from the bank; she moves into the house of her parents-in-law although she never wanted to live under one roof with them. Andrea is showered with advice and forced into a maternal role she never saw as hers and cannot identify with.

Tanja Raich has published in various literature magazines and anthologies and has been awarded a number of prizes and scholarships, including the Start-Stipendium of the Austrian Federal Chancellery for her « Jesolo » project, the Frontiere – Grenzen literature prize, the Rom-Stipendium of the Austrian Federal Chancellery and the Exil-Literaturpreis.