Logic: A Novel

(Paperback, First Trade Paper Edition)

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After critics raved over Olympia Vernon's first novel, Eden, Vernon returns to the Deep South for the story of Logic, a young girl struggling to free herself from the unspeakable condition she refers to as "the butterflies floating inside" her.
As a child Logic Harris survived a fall from a tree-an accident that precipitated her transformation into a young girl lost in her own world. Logic's mother has secretly wished that Logic had not survived, and she now ignores the increasingly apparent evidence of the aberrant attention Logic's father bestows upon his daughter in her adolescence. As her mother retreats into her work as a neighborhood midwife and Logic's father collapses into paranoia, Logic is left to navigate alone what she scarcely understands. In inspired prose, stunning in its imaginative authority, Logic is a chilling allegory about the dangers of silence and a searing portrait of a girl lost in shame and fear, and a family and community too scarred by their own wounds to save her.

Reviews

Praise for Logic

Olympia Vernons 2003 novelEdenput the reading world on notice that a bright and original voice had arrived. Her second novel,Logic, only confirms that strong promise... Vernon draws on her considerable strengths as a writer here: She is unafraid of the graphic sexual image; indeed, she seems drawn to the dark places where humanity faces its greatest test. Susan Larson,New Orleans Times Picayune

"Vernons imagery is more dense and dreamlike than even [Toni] Morrisons most haunting spells... Distinctions dissolve, material associations give way to almost mystical connections, and a kind of divine oneness glows off the page. Like Logic herself, the reader is no longer earthbound but levitating in a higher reason. The effect is both bewildering and bewitching. Vernon may take her story into uncharted territories of the imagination, butLogicwill surely put her on the literary map. Rachel Howard,San Francisco Chronicle

"Vernon writes with astonishing, original poetry that finds the perpetrator and victim in everyone.Steeped in religious, surreal imagery and references to ordering principlesatoms, alphabets, lifes basic materialsVernons abstract language asks precise questions about the chances for survival in a lawless world where safety, love, and even joy are concepts, not realities. Gillian Engberg,Booklist

Yes, in the land ofAmerican IdolandThe Bachelor, there remains a segment of the public that relishes experimental fiction that challenges the heart and the mind. Vernons second novel explores the disjointed reality of a teenage black girl in rural Mississippi. After a fall from a tree, the girls perceptions are both sharpened and blunted. USA Today

[Tightly] written and... provocative in its language...Logicis the sort of literary book that readers will read and re-read, always finding new twists and meanings... Vernon takes readers out of their air-conditioned detachment and thrusts them into this troubling environment where they can learn something from her characters experience. Greg Langley,Baton Rouge Sunday Advocate

This intense and dramatic story is riddled with darkly rich characters, strange but unmistakably real. Crafter by a brilliant author, the characters come alive, stunning and shocking the reader with their desperate intensity. This is an emotionally driven prose winning comparisons to Toni Morrison. Blytheville Courier News

"Vernons follow-up to her acclaimed debut, 2003sEden...will undoubtedly remind readers of early Toni Morrison, particularlyThe Bluest Eye...Vernons alchemical imagination transforms passages... into a whole as startlingly original, disconcerting and haunting as a fever dream. Publishers Weekly

A literary MASTERPIECE! The story, the prose is off the chain.Edenwas just a hint at the depth of her talent and skill.Logicis only the second step in confirming the possibility that Vernon could be approaching literary genius. Morrison and Everett may have to make room. I hate to say it so early in the year, butLogicmay be the best book of 2004. Thumper, aalbc.com