Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2013
256 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Daniel is pursued by stories. His father, in thrall to a myth, has disappeared; his mother and sister, too; and Lydia, his lover, leaves him and the novel he cannot finish for quantum mechanics, the place where theory tells tales about the real. And then there is Pearl, the girl beneath the floorboards, whose adventures hum alongside Daniel's own.
In this contemporary, contemplative fairy tale, the autobiographical novel takes on the cast of legend, and the uncertainty of memory leaves reality on shaky ground. Can parallel universes exist? Can a preoccupation with Moby Dick overwhelm the story unfolding before you? Where do you stand in relation to the metaphysics of your own life?
"Daniel often rambles, and the outcome is a strange, yet rewarding, experience." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. A marvelous novel, by turns lyrical, realistic, dreamlike, and philosophical but always intelligent and gorgeously written...Accomplished, self-assured and engaging." - Kirkus Reviews
"Dan Beachy-Quick's first novel is a book of psalms in which we watch the narrator improvise hymns of himself from the fleeting stuff of each passing moment—from experience and memory, from the art where he glimpses himself darkly, from holy, personal words which adhere and disperse and arrange again into fragile self-portraits that give way even as they are realized, each mysterious, each miraculous, and each in which we always catch a glimmer of our own fraught human careers." - Paul Harding
"I am not sure if I read this novel or if it bloomed for me, like a night flower. I cherish the exquisite story and style of Dan Beachy-Quick's fairy-tale fiction." - Kate Bernheimer, author of Horse, Flower, Bird
This information about An Impenetrable Screen of Purest Sky was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Dan Beachy-Quick is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Circle's Apprentice; two books of prose, A Whaler's Dictionary and Wonderful Investigations; as well as a number of chapbooks and two collaborations, Conversities (with Srikanth Reddy) and Work from Memory (with Matthew Goulish). He teaches in the MFA program at Colorado State University, and lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with his wife and two daughters.
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