LoveReading Says
Rich in exquisite observations, and written in a beguilingly taut style, Ia Genberg’s The Details presents addictively shrewd portraits of personal relationships and lingering memories. With four chapters named after four individuals who’ve had a profound effect on the narrator, it’s a short but long-lingering, big impact literary feast that’ll satisfy readers who appreciate the power of slow-burn studies of human experience.
In the throes of a fever, the narrator drifts into recalling four figures from their past. With loss, longing, and liminality often at the fore, The Details perfectly captures the ways people move in and out of our lives, often imprinting themselves, patchwork-like, onto our present selves. For example, consider the language used to describe how the narrator continues to be haunted by one of their former lovers: “Johanna became a person of my past, one of many, and had she not turned into a public figure I’d probably have been more successful in forgetting her…it would have withered and waned until, like a badly restored painting, only a few incoherent fragments remained.”
Perfectly paced, and uniquely poignant, after reading this, you’ll most likely be drawn to ponder memories of people from your own past, and their persistent impact.
Joanne Owen
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The Details Synopsis
Featured in The New Yorker's "Best Books of 2023" *Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize
"The literal fever that begins the book mirrors the feverish beginnings and endings of these relationships, as well as the fever of reading -- how it forces the reader inward, then leaves an invisible imprint in its wake. Genberg's marvelous prose is also a kind of fever, mesmerizing and hot to the touch." -The New York Times Book Review
An intoxicating novel in the vein of Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti, about a woman in the throes of a fever remembering the important people in her past, her memories laid bare in vivid detail as her body temperature rises.
A woman lies bedridden from a high fever. Suddenly she is struck with an urge to revisit a novel from her past. Inside the book is an inscription: a get-well-soon message from Johanna, an ex-girlfriend who is now a famous television host. As she flips through the book, pages from the woman's own past begin to come alive, scenes of events and people she cannot forget.
There are moments with Johanna, and Niki, the friend who disappeared years ago without a phone number or an address and with no online footprint. There is Alejandro, who appears like a storm in precisely the right moment. And Brigitte, whose elusive qualities mask a painful secret.
The Details is a novel built around four portraits; the small details that, pieced together, comprise a life. Can a loved one really disappear? Who is the real subject of the portrait, the person being painted or the one holding the brush? Do we fully become ourselves through our connections to others? This exhilarating, provocative tale raises profound questions about the nature of relationships, and how we tell our stories. The result is an intimate and illuminating study of what it means to be human.
About This Edition
ISBN: |
9780063309722 |
Publication date: |
6th August 2024 |
Author: |
Ia Genberg |
Publisher: |
Harpervia an imprint of HarperCollins |
Format: |
Paperback |
Pagination: |
144 pages |
Primary Genre |
General Fiction
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Other Genres: |
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