Catherine Lacey

One of Vogue's Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2020, one of BuzzFeed's Most Anticipated Books of 2020, one of Vulture's Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2020, and one of The Millions Most Anticipated Books of the First Half of 2020 A figure with no discernible identity appears in a small, religious town, throwing its inhabitants into a frenzy In a small unnamed town in the American South, a church congregation arrives to a service and finds a figure asleep on a pew. The person is genderless, racially ambiguous, and refuses to speak. One family takes the strange visitor in and nicknames them Pew. As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. Pew listens and observes while experiencing brief flashes of past lives or clues about their origins. As days pass, the void around Pew’s presence begins to unnerve the community, whose generosity erodes into menace and suspicion. Yet by the time Pew’s story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of their true nature—as a devil or an angel or something else entirely—is dwarfed by even larger truths. Pew, Catherine Lacey’s third novel, is a foreboding, provocative, and amorphous fable about the world today: its contradictions, its flimsy morality, and the limits of judging others based on their appearance. With precision and restraint, one of our most beloved and boundary-pushing writers holds up a mirror to her characters’ true selves, revealing something about forgiveness, perception, and the faulty tools society uses to categorize human complexity.

A Novel

Biography of X

Huffington Post's 33 Titles To Add To Your Shelf in 2017 Elle's 25 Most Anticipated Books by Women for 2017 Buzzfeed's 32 Most Exciting Books Coming Out in 2017 Los Angeles Times “Faces to Watch” in 2017 Chicago Reader's Books We Can't Wait To Read In 2017 An urgent, propulsive novel about a woman learning to negotiate her ailment and its various aftereffects via the simulacrum of a perfect romantic relationship In Catherine Lacey’s ambitious second novel we are introduced to Mary, a young woman living in New York City and struggling to cope with a body that has betrayed her. All but paralyzed with pain, Mary seeks relief from a New Agey treatment called Pneuma Adaptive Kinesthesia, PAKing for short. And, remarkably, it works. But PAKing is prohibitively expensive and Mary is dead broke. So she scours Craigslist for fast-cash jobs and finds herself applying for the “Girlfriend Experiment,” the brainchild of an eccentric actor, Kurt Sky, who is determined to find the perfect relationship—even if that means paying different women to fulfill distinctive roles. Mary is hired as the “Emotional Girlfriend”—certainly better than the “Anger Girlfriend” or the “Maternal Girlfriend”—and is pulled into Kurt’s ego-driven and messy attempt at human connection. Told in her signature spiraling prose, The Answers is full of the singular yet universal insights readers have come to expect from Lacey. It is a gorgeous hybrid of the plot- and the idea-driven novel that will leave you reeling.

The Answers

Abruptly abandoning her unfulfilling life, an increasingly unstable woman flees to New Zealand and tests fate by hitchhiking, sleeping in public areas and involving herself with strangers while obsessing about her sister's death and hiding a growing rage. Original. 15,000 first printing.

Nobody Is Ever Missing

One of Granta’s Best Young American novelists, Catherine Lacey, the Whiting Award-winning author of The Answers, showcases her literary style in short fiction with Certain American States, a collection of stories about ordinary people seeking—and failing to find—the extraordinary in their lives. Catherine Lacey brings her narrative mastery to Certain American States, her first collection of short stories. As with her acclaimed novels Nobody Is Ever Missing and The Answers, she gives life to a group of subtly complex, instantly memorable characters whose searches for love, struggles with grief, and tentative journeys into the minutiae of the human condition are simultaneously gripping and devastating. The characters in Certain American States are continually coming to terms with their place in the world, and how to adapt to that place, before change inevitably returns. A woman leaves her dead husband’s clothing on the street, only for it to reappear on the body of a stranger; a man reads his ex-wife’s short story and neurotically contemplates whether it is about him; a young woman whose Texan mother insists on moving to New York City with her has her daily attempts to get over a family tragedy interrupted by a mute stranger showing her incoherent messages on his phone. These are stories of breakups, abandonment, and strained family ties; dead brothers and distant surrogate fathers; loneliness, happenstance, starting over, and learning to let go. Lacey’s elegiac and inspired prose is at its full power in this collection, further establishing her as one of the singular literary voices of her generation.

Stories

Certain American States

A genre-bending story about breaking―both of the heart and form itself―from the author of Biography of X.            Note to the listener: This book was written in two parts, either of which can be listened to first, neither of which is the true start of the story. You have the option to skip ahead to the fiction half or start at the beginning with the nonfiction.            Adrift in the winter of 2021 after a sudden breakup and the ensuing depression, the novelist Catherine Lacey began cataloguing the wreckage of her life and the beauty of her friendships, a practice that eventually propagated fiction both entirely imagined and strangely true. Betrayed by the mercurial partner she had trusted with a shared mortgage and suddenly catapulted into the unknown, Lacey’s appetite vanished completely, a visceral reminder of the teenage emaciation that came when she stopped believing in God. Through relationships, travel, reading, and memories of her religious fanaticism, Lacey charts the contours of faith’s absence and reemergence. Bending form, she and her characters recall gnostic experiences with animals, close encounters with male anger, griefdriven lust, and the redemptive power of platonic love and narrative itself.            A hybrid work across fiction and nonfiction with no beginning or ending, The Möbius Book troubles the line between memory and fiction with an openhearted defense of faith’s inherent danger.           

The Mobius Book

Nessuno scompare davvero

A me puoi dirlo

An "illustrated chain of entanglements (romantic and otherwise) between some of our best-loved writers and artists of the twentieth century ... from Frida Kahlo to Colette to Hemingway to Dali; from Coco Chanel to Stravinsky to Miles Davis to Orson Welles"--Back cover.

An Illustrated History of Love, Sex, and Artistic Influence

The Art of the Affair

Mary is out of options. Estranged from her Evangelist family, plagued by debt collectors and beset by chronic pain, Mary signs up for a mysterious job advertised as 'The Girlfriend Experiment' (or, The GX). Masterminded by a successful Hollywood actor with a string of failed relationships behind him, The GX seeks to pin down and capture the essence of love before it fades, and to answer the question of why two people, drawn together by forces beyond their control, can wake up one day as strangers to one another. Mary is hired to play the part of the Emotional Girlfriend, alongside a Maternal Girlfriend, a Mundane Girlfriend, an Angry Girlfriend and, of course, an Intimacy Team. Each woman has her debts and her difficulties, her past loves and her secrets. As Mary and the actor are drawn ever closer together, the nature of the experiment changes, and the Girlfriends find themselves exposed to new perils, foremost among them, love. From a writer whose debut was hailed as one of the literary events of 2014 comes a novel of die-hard faith and fleeting love; of questions which probe the depths of our society, and answers that will leave you reeling.

Niemand is ooit verloren / druk 1

Un soir, à la volée, conversation mondaine, un inconnu vous propose de profiter de sa chambre d’amis, si un jour vos pas vous entraînent vers chez lui. Et vous voilà dans un avion pour le bout du monde, toutes amarres larguées.

Pour Elyria, qui plaque tout sans prévenir personne, c’est une tentative d’évasion très directement dirigée contre la réalité. Même si elle sait que, d’après les critères en vigueur, elle peut cocher toutes les lignes de la check-list – mari, travail, appartement, mère indigne – et s’estimer heureuse, fermer les yeux sur la banale, insipide, parfois tragique médiocrité des choses est au-dessus de ses forces. Ainsi, regard écarquillé et logique extrêmement personnelle en bandoulière, la jeune New-Yorkaise atterrit à Wellington, Nouvelle- Zélande, pour rejoindre la ferme isolée où se trouve ladite chambre d’amis, à l’autre bout de l’île du Sud.

Expérience de vertige introspectif en autostop,« Personne ne disparaît» prend la tangente au pied de la lettre : trajectoire intérieure vouée à se mordre la queue (car partout l’on s’emmène avec soi), c’est aussi un envol, jalonné de rencontres improbables et de rendez-vous manqués, entre paysages grandioses et bords de route anonymes.

Sur la douloureuse déception d’être soi, le souffle court des promesses et la séduction du précipice, le premier roman de Catherine Lacey fait retentir une voix inoubliable, d’une originalité radicale et d’une drôlerie inespérée.

Personne ne disparaît 

»Da ist ein wildes Biest im Herzen dieses Romans, und Sie werden es treffen.« The New Yorker International gefeiert als eines der eindrücklichsten Debüts der letzten Jahre: Niemand verschwindet einfach so beschreibt den gewagten Versuch einer Frau, ihr bisheriges Leben hinter sich zu lassen. Elyria begibt sich in die Ferne, nur um festzustellen, dass man vor sich selbst niemals flüchten kann. Ein intimes Abenteuer – und die Geschichte einer Selbstfindung. »Als wir an jenem Abend nach Hause gingen, beide nach dem Bourbon riechend, der uns auf die Knie getröpfelt war, wusste ich, dass mein Mann ein Song war, dessen Text ich vergessen hatte, und ich ein verwackeltes Foto von jemandem, den er mal geliebt hatte.« Elyria löst ein One-Way-Ticket nach Neuseeland und verlässt ihren Mann, ohne eine Nachricht zu hinterlassen. In Neuseeland angekommen, setzt sie sich immer riskanteren und surrealer werdenden Begegnungen mit den Einwohnern und der Tierwelt aus. Doch ihre eigentliche Reise ist die Reise in ihr eigenes Herz der Finsternis. Verfolgt vom Tod der Schwester, ausgestoßen von der Mutter, zermürbt von der Eintönigkeit ihrer Ehe, droht Elyria an ihren eigenen Gedanken verlorenzugehen. Auf fast hypnotische Weise beschreibt Catherine Lacey eine Frau, die verrückt wird, allein durch sich selbst. Doch niemand verschwindet einfach so, egal wie sehr er es versucht. »Eine neue, beeindruckend sichere und originelle Erzählstimme aus den USA – in ihrem Roman »Niemand verschwindet einfach so« findet Catherine Lacey eine ganz eigene, überzeugende Sprache für die Irrungen und Wirrungen ihrer jungen Protagonistin.« Bettina Abarbanell

Roman

Niemand verschwindet einfach so

Das Girlfriend-Experiment

Een vrouw doet mee aan een psychologisch experiment waarbij verschillende vrouwen de diverse rollen van een vrouw in een relatie op zich nemen.

De antwoorden

GANADORA DEL PREMIO BROOKLYN LIBRARY, FINALISTA DEL DYLAN THOMAS Y EL PEN/FAULKNER, MEJOR LIBRO DEL AÑO SEGÚN LA REVISTATIME Y UNO DE LOS MEJORES DEL AÑO SEGÚN THE NEW YORK TIMES, NEW YORKER O VANITY FAIR. «Brillante, asombrosa». -Chris Kraus «Aunque puede que no cambie el mundo, cambiará al lector». -The Guardian «Una novela fundamental y enormemente audaz». -The New York Times Cuando X --artista iconoclasta, escritora y hechicera de las apariencias-- cae muerta en su oficina, su mujer, CM, enloquecida por el dolor y rechazando los consejos de su entorno, se lanza a escribir una biografía de la mujer a la que endiosó, pero de la que ignora incluso dónde nació. Reconocida como una fuerza creativa crucial de su época, X mantuvo un férreo control sobre la historia de su vida. En su afán por averiguar ese misterioso pasado, su viuda se sumergirá en la historia del Territorio del Sur, teocracia fascista que se separó del resto de Estados Unidos tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial y que en la actualidad se ve obligada a una difícil reunificación. A medida que CM va comprendiendo el alcance artístico de la mujer a la que amó, abrirá una caja de Pandora de secretos, traiciones y destrucción. Llena de suspense e inteligencia, Biografía de X se adentra en las profundidades del dolor, el arte y el amor. En su novela más ambiciosa, Lacey se consolida como «una de las novelistas más intrépidas del momento» (Los Angeles Times) y lleva su arte al más alto nivel con la creación de un personaje inolvidable que muestra en su absorbente misterio las grietas de las historias que fabricamos sobre nosotros mismos. «Es bastante raro que una novela sea enormemente inteligente, conmovedora y divertida a partes iguales, pero con Biografía de X, Catherine Lacey consigue de algún modo -como por arte de magia- que lo casi imposible parezca fácil». Lauren Groff

Biografía de X / Biography of X

"A singular, bewitching work about cycles of life and loss, the patterns of behavior that seem to lock us into who we are, and the quest for a faith that might break us free." —Hua Hsu, author of Stay True Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by Vulture and LitHub A genre-bending story about breaking―both of the heart and form itself―from the author of Biography of X. Adrift in the winter of 2021 after a sudden breakup and the ensuing depression, the novelist Catherine Lacey began cataloguing the wreckage of her life and the beauty of her friendships, a practice that eventually propagated fiction both entirely imagined and strangely true. Betrayed by the mercurial partner she had trusted with a shared mortgage and suddenly catapulted into the unknown, Lacey’s appetite vanished completely, a visceral reminder of the teenage emaciation that came when she stopped believing in God. Through relationships, travel, reading, and memories of her religious fanaticism, Lacey charts the contours of faith’s absence and reemergence. Bending form, she and her characters recall gnostic experiences with animals, close encounters with male anger, griefdriven lust, and the redemptive power of platonic love and narrative itself. A hybrid work across fiction and nonfiction with no beginning or ending, The Möbius Book troubles the line between memory and fiction with an openhearted defense of faith’s inherent danger.

Catherine Lacey

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