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Defenestrate

Renee Branum

$22.99

Paperback

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English
Vintage
09 February 2023
A wildly inventive, exhilarating debut narrated by a young woman meditating on her Czech ancestors' 'falling curse', her twin brother's fall from a window, and the malleable, breakable bonds keeping her family from falling apart.

The 'hypnotic...addictive' (New York Times) debut novel narrated by a young woman meditating on the malleable, breakable bonds keeping her family from falling apart.

There's a superstition in our family about falling...

Marta's great-great-grandfather Jiri was said to have given a gentle push to the back of a stonemason for having wronged him. The stonemason fell to his death and the family fled Prague for the American Midwest, where they set up a new life.

So begins the story of Marta and her brother Nick, deeply interwoven twins haunted by the mysterious curse that has plagued their family for centuries - one that has doomed them to suffer various types of falls. When Nick tumbles out of a window and ends up seriously injured, Marta must embark on a heartbreaking quest to discover whether or not his fall was intentional, and to stop her family from falling apart...

'Wonderful...with an idiosyncratic humour that reminded me of Ottessa Moshfegh' Daily Telegraph

'Original and engaging' Guardian

'Lights up the imagination' Dina Nayeri
By:  
Imprint:   Vintage
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 198mm,  Width: 129mm,  Spine: 15mm
Weight:   195g
ISBN:   9781529114485
ISBN 10:   1529114489
Pages:   240
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Renee Branum's stories and essays have appeared in several publications including The Georgia Review, Narrative Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Best American Nonrequired Reading. She has earned MFAs in Fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and Creative Nonfiction from the University of Montana. She was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Prose Fellowship in 2020. She currently lives in Cincinnati where she is pursuing a PhD in Fiction.

Reviews for Defenestrate

Defenestrate is an original and engaging novel from a fresh new voice, one deeply committed to understanding the beguiling experience of twinship, and to writing twins from the inside. -- Jude Cook * Guardian * Original...with an idiosyncratic humour that reminded me of Ottessa Moshfegh... there are some wonderful digressions about...comic genius that shouldn't really work, but do. -- Alasdair Lees * Daily Telegraph, *Books to Look Out For 2022* * Renee Branum writes with exceptional wisdom and tenderness about inheritance, obsession, and the power of storytelling... Defenestrate builds to a symphonic, exhilarating end that embraces uncertainty alongside the miracle of surviving the greatest of falls. -- Sanae Lemoine, author of THE MARGOT AFFAIR Branum's prose lights up the imagination, every line a discovery and a pleasure. Beyond simple elegance or precision, she weaves sense and simile so stunningly, you have to throw your hands up and say damn!... I was constantly thrilled by the beauty and insight of her words' -- Dina Nayeri, author of THE UNGRATEFUL REFUGEE and REFUGE The wonders of this beautiful novel come to you the way ghosts do, almost invisibly, and from the past. The voice is haunted too, by family secrets, the history of Prague, an addiction, and much else... This is a fine and wonderful book. -- Charles Baxter, author of THE SUN COLLECTIVE


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