Her Here

(Paperback)

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An atmospheric debut novel about one lost young womans search for another

Spellbinding. . . . Wholly engrossing. Washington Post

Elena, struggling with memory loss due to a trauma that has unmoored her sense of self, deserts graduate school and a long-term relationship to accept a bizarre proposition from an estranged family friend in Paris: she will search for a young woman, Ella, who went missing six years earlier in Thailand, by rewriting her journals. As she delves deeper into Ellas story, Elena begins to lose sight of her own identity and drift dangerously toward self-annihilation.

Her Here is an existential detective story with a shocking denouement that plumbs the creative and destructive powers of narrative itself.

An Iowa Writers Workshop graduate and Cambridge Gates Scholar, Amanda Dennis teaches at the American University of Paris. Her Here is her first novel.

Reviews

Buzz Books by Publishers Lunch selection
Library Journal Best Debut Novels selection

Spellbinding. . . . Wholly engrossing. . . . This hypnotic and deeply cerebral exploration is a seductive escape. Through Ella and Elenas efforts to reconstruct a sense of selfoutside family, beyond academia and expectationthrough language, Dennis confronts the various ways we try to understand ourselves and others. Washington Post

A young woman has disappeared, and her mother asks a dead friends daughter to reconstruct the young womans life from her diaries, in the hopes of stumbling on clues to where she may be. Its a premise that would be a stretch for any novelist, but in her experimental debut Amanda Dennis wields that stretch the way a candymaker pulls and thickens ropes of sugar on hooks. Literary Hub

Denniss elegant yet propulsive debut becomes much more than a missing-persons search. . . . Elenas narrative-within-a-narrative nicely reveals the creative process, while Denniss larger story confirms the value of living boldly. Library Journal (starred review)

Wrenching and revelatory. Foreword Reviews (starred review)

Dennis sensory prose leads to a fascinating exploration of identity, grief, and time. Kirkus Reviews

Evocative and meditative, Her Here is a ghost story without a ghost, a marvel of incantatory wit. Dennis weaves a mesmerizing web around her subject, drawing the reader into an intricate, volatile mystery whose end is always and never within reach. Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine and Intimations

In Her Here, Dennis has written a metaphysical investigation that is also a wonderfully personal account of a daughter coming to terms with the loss of her mother, and a mother coming to terms with the loss of her daughter. As Elena conjures Ellas last days, the richly imagined narrative moves back and forth between Paris and Thailand, carrying both characters and readers to a vivid and suspenseful conclusion. Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy and The Boy in the Field

Dennis is in possession of hypnotic narrative gifts and a ferocious intellect. With Her Here, she has claimed her place in the literary world. Rebecca Makkai, author of Music for Wartime and The Great Believers

Dazzling. Dennis is a writer that awakens the senses. From the first page, this gorgeous, haunting story about two lost girls ensnares the reader with such expertise, such intelligence and heart, that before long youre lost inside the eerie sensuality of youthful dreams, witnessing obsession unravel identity. Dina Nayeri, author of Refuge and The Ungrateful Refugee

Author Bio

Born in Philadelphia, Amanda Dennis studied modern languages at Princeton and Cambridge Universities before earning her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and her MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, where she was awarded a Whited Fellowship in creative writing. An avid traveler, she has lived in six countries, including Thailand, where she spent a year as a Princeton in Asia fellow. She has written about literature for the Los Angeles Review of Books and Guernica, and teaches at the American University of Paris. Her Here is her first novel.