Evgenia Citkowitz

A year has passed since Catherine and Michael Hall lost their teenage daughter in a car accident, leaving them and their sixteen-year-old son, Rowan, reeling in the aftermath of the tragedy. After Rowan escapes to boarding school, Catherine withdraws from her life as a successful London gallerist to Hamdean, an apartment in a Georgian country manor, where she and Michael had hoped to spend their retirement. When a beguiling young woman, Keira, appears at the house claiming to have once lived there, Catherine is reanimated by the promise of a meaningful connection. However, their relationship soon shifts to one of forbidding uncertainty as the mysteries of the past collide with the truth of the present. Emotionally complex and psychologically tense, The Shades raises questions about the inescapability of human nature and speaks to our deepest anxieties: the safety of those we love and the sanctuary of home.

The Shades

In “Leavers’ Events,” a teenage girl awaits exam results and has a sexual encounter with a teacher that she hopes will define her. In “Sunday’s Child,” a middle-aged actress evicts a homeless woman from her garden, which precipitates a crisis of conscience. In “The Bachelor’s Table,” a lawyer takes advantage of an accounting mistake and sets in motion a sequence of events that force him to evaluate his actions. In the title story, “Ether,” a blocked writer plagiarizes his own life with devastating consequences.

All the characters in Evgenia Citkowitz’s first collection of short fiction are connected by the quest for identity. Some are poised at a crossroads, while others teeter on the edge of a moral precipice. The stories are startlingly original, haunting, and often funny. From a hamster cage in Los Angeles to the bowels of the great houses of London and Long Island, Citkowitz depicts her characters’ frailties and humanity with a mordant humor and tenderness that never diminish their complexity.

Seven stories and a novella

Ether

A year has passed since Catherine and Michael Hall lost their teenage daughter in a car accident, leaving them and their sixteen- year-old son, Rowan, reeling in the aftermath of the tragedy. Catherine withdraws to Hamdean, the family's apartment in a Georgian country manner, where the mysteries of the past begin to collide with the truth of the present. "Elegantly unnerving. . . . Written in cool and crystalline prose, The Shades unspools in a rational and realistic world in which all is not as it seems." -- New York Times Book Review "An absorbing book by an author who knows how to create organic suspense without ever overplaying her hand. . . . Intricately plotted and perfectly paced. . . . An excellent debut novel that deals heavily with death, but still feels alive, compassionate and full of truths." -- NPR

Evgenia Citkowitz

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