Crudo (MP3 CD)

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Crudo By Olivia Laing, Olivia Laing (Read by) Cover Image
By Olivia Laing, Olivia Laing (Read by)
$14.99
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Staff Reviews


This brief but powerful experimental novel may or may not be about queer punk writer and feminist icon Kathy Acker (hint: it is). Protagonist Kathy is about to get married, but is lost in her own thoughts and self-doubt, while the turbulent political summer of 2017 unfolds around her. Olivia Laing’s first foray into fiction uses a stream-of-consciousness prose that tumbles along with an anxious momentum, perfectly encapsulating the uncertainties and distressing news cycle of that summer from a place of relative privilege and detachment. Here, the political is personal, and Laing uses Acker’s punkish spirit (and in some cases, her words) to resurrect and reimagine the iconic writer in the now, while simultaneously exploring what it means to love when everything seems doomed. This is a strangely compelling read, sure to elicit polarized reactions, but there is much to admire and love here

— Shane

Description


A brilliant, funny, and emphatically raw novel of love on the brink of the apocalypse, from the acclaimed author of The Lonely City.

"She had no idea what to do with love, she experienced it as invasion, as the prelude to loss and pain, she really didn't have a clue."

Kathy is a writer. Kathy is getting married. It's the summer of 2017 and the whole world is falling apart. Fast-paced and frantic, Crudo unfolds in real time from the full-throttle perspective of a commitment-phobic artist who may or may not be Kathy Acker.

From a Tuscan hotel for the super-rich to a Brexit-paralyzed United Kingdom, Kathy spends the first summer of her 40s adjusting to the idea of a lifelong commitment. But it's not only Kathy who's changing. Fascism is on the rise, truth is dead, the planet is heating up, and Trump is tweeting the world ever-closer to nuclear war. How do you make art, let alone a life, when one rogue tweet could end it all?

In Crudo, her first work of fiction, Olivia Laing radically rewires the novel with a fierce, compassionate account of learning to love when the end of the world seems near.



Product Details
ISBN: 9781721372881
ISBN-10: 1721372881
Publisher: Audible Studios on Brilliance
Publication Date: December 18th, 2018
Language: English