LoveReading Says
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
A famous broadcaster writes a forgotten love letter; a friend abruptly disappears; a lover leaves something unexpected behind; a traumatised woman is consumed by her own anxiety.
In the throes of a high fever, a woman lies bedridden. Suddenly, she is struck with an urge to revisit a particular novel from her past. Inside the book is an inscription: a message from an ex-girlfriend.
Pages from her past begin to flip, full of things she cannot forget and people who cannot be forgotten. Johanna, that same ex-girlfriend, now a famous TV host. Niki, the friend who disappeared all those years ago. Alejandro, who appears like a storm in precisely the right moment. And Birgitte, whose elusive qualities shield a painful secret.
Who is the real subject of a portrait, the person being painted or the one holding the brush? The Details is a novel built around four such portraits, unveiling the fragments of memory and experience that make up a life. In exhilarating, provocative prose, Ia Genberg reveals an intimate and powerful celebration of what it means to be human.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781035400577 |
| Publication date: |
8th August 2023 |
| Author: |
Ia Genberg |
| Publisher: |
Wildfire an imprint of Headline Publishing Group |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| Pagination: |
176 pages |
| Primary Genre |
General Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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Press Reviews
Ia Genberg Press Reviews
The Details is about relationships, about love, about parents and children...about all of it. The little observations about being young, and about growing up, and about getting lost by accident, and getting lost on purpose, searching for yourself in everyone else...damn it, I've underlined half of the book. I wish I could write like this. -- Fredrik Backman, New York Times bestselling author of A MAN CALLED OVE
It's difficult to describe the experience of reading Ia Genberg's English language debut beyond saying that it resembles a fever dream . . . Genberg's prose is a feat of characterization, a triumph of lending language and profundity to observations of daily life. At a tight 150 pages, I didn't read it so much as subconsciously absorb it. -- Eliza Smith - Literary Hub
In four succinct and arresting portraits, the narrator of The Details remembers the people who have shaped her life. At once humorous and heartbreaking, this book is an ode to the different kinds of love that form us. It asks how we hold onto the people who touch us, how we remember them, and whether we should ever let them go. I won't forget this beautiful book. -- Jenna Clake, author of DISTURBANCE -
