Say This: Two Novellas

(Paperback)

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Description

• For readers interested in trauma studies, narratives about power in interpersonal relationships, experimental/nonlinear narratives, especially those told from multiple POVs.
• Editorial comps and influences include Maggie Nelsons Jane: a Murder and The Red Parts; Susan Steinbergs Machine; Han Kangs The White Book and The Vegetarian; and Marguerite Duras The Lover. Say This is similarly constructed around missing or ambiguous images and foregrounds its formal approaches: white space and compression; elliptical plot and character development, and for some, hybridity of poetry/prose poetry and linear, narrative movement. One novella is a rising and descending abecedarian.
• This Wicked Tongue: An A.V. Club Book to Read for June 2019, blurbed by Dawn Raffel, Rion Amilcar Scott, Jeff Jackson, Barbara Gowdy
• Levine: Considered by many a Canadian Lorrie Moore, lives in Baltimore directs the MA in Writing Program at Johns Hopkins.

Reviews

Praise forSay This

"Say This is a breathtaking, daring exploration of that constancy, of the lingering power of trauma, and the roots and branches of violence and despair."
Toronto Star

"Levine addresses questions of identity and the impact of violence as well as addiction, consent, and societys exploitation of trauma, and does so in gorgeous, surprising, and utterly gripping prose."
Elizabeth Hazen, Baltimore Fishbowl

"Elise Levine is a taut and musical writer who experiments boldly and beautifully with form. The fragments of story here refract like a prism, bending and catching the complexity of her characters experiences. This is an arresting and powerful book."
Alix Ohlin, author of Dual Citizens and We Want What We Want

"Every page of Elise Levine's Say This is a meticulously crafted, crystalline work of high art. These two novellas, fragmented and fractured in a manner that perfectly captures our present reality, are sharp and poetic, suspenseful and engaging. Everything one requires of the best narrative fiction is here, all told in gorgeous prose that commands your attention at every turn."
Robert Lopez, author of All Back Full

"Elise Levine's brilliantSay This examines the damage inflicted by one man's life and another man's death, as experienced by the people they left behind. Intimate, provocative, and deeply unsettling in their power, these interconnected novellas showcase Levine's gift for telling stories that readers can't look away from, wrapped in prose so beautiful and precise."
Jung Yun, Author of Shelter andO Beautiful

Praise for Elise Levine

Levine offers a vision and a language so poetically visceral and fiercely poignantso uniquely intelligentthat story after story I was in awe of her courage and artistry.
Barbara Gowdy

Elise Levine writes with a new and exciting type of lyric rhythm. These are stories with the beating heart of poems.
Rion Amilcar Scott, winner of the 2017 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction

Elise Levines startling sentences alternate between serrated sentiment and lyrical reverie, offering readers that rarest commoditygenuine surprise.
Jeff Jackson, author of Destroy All Monsters

Elise Levine uses language like a scalpel to cut to the nervy core of our inner life. Theres a restless desolation in these stories, perfectly poised against a wily, wry wit. This Wicked Tongue is wicked smart.
Dawn Raffel, The Strange Case of Dr. Couney

Levine demonstrates a boisterous command of language and an ability to seize the readers attention her stories pry us open, revealing our secretly wounded places, finally acting as balm and salvation. Lucky us.
Toronto Star

Reading Elise Levine is akin to a wild ride down a dark road at night Bold and startling Precipitous and exhilarating.
Globe and Mail

Author Bio

Elise Levine is the author of the story collection This Wicked Tongue, the novels Blue Field and Requests and Dedications, and the story collection Driving Men Mad. Her work has also appeared in publications including Ploughshares, Blackbird, The Gettysburg Review, and Best Canadian Stories. She lives in Baltimore, MD, where she teaches in the MA in Writing program at Johns Hopkins University.