Critics' Opinion:
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Published Jan 2017
240 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
A stunningly original debut collection about lives across history marked by violence and longing.
A brother and sister turn outlaw in a wild and brutal landscape. The daughter of a diplomat disappears and resurfaces across the world as a deadly woman of many names. A young Philadelphia boy struggles with the contradictions of privilege, violence, and the sway of an incarcerated father. A monk in sixteenth century England suffers the dissolution of his monastery and the loss of all that he held sacred.
The characters in The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead, Benz's wildly imaginative debut, are as varied as any in recent literature, but they share a thirst for adventure which sends them rushing full-tilt toward the moral crossroads, becoming victims and perpetrators along the way. Riveting, visceral, and heartbreaking, Benz's stories of identity, abandonment, and fierce love come together in a daring, arresting vision.
"At its best, the collection explores violence, identity, and otherness in sharply observed, fiercely eloquent prose. Benz's bold experiments with voice and genre sometimes fail to make an authentic emotional connection, but she nevertheless displays her daring and gift for language." - Publishers Weekly
"An ambitious book that marks Benz as a writer to watch." - Kirkus
"In every one of these dazzlingly varied stories, Chanelle Benz steps out on to a new stylistic tightrope... A riveting new voice in American fiction." - George Saunders, author of Tenth of December
"Yes to Chanelle Benz and the skill, fluency and panache with which her voices interrogate and elevate narrative. There's lots more I could say about these brilliant stories, but you'll find out all about it and get your own joy when you read them." - Helen Oyeyemi, author of Boy, Snow, Bird and What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours
"Chanelle Benz conjures startling, amazing worlds out of her fierce and wild imagination, out of her hard-cut sentences and through her strange and original characters. Her wicked intelligence and electric talent are evident in everything she writes." - Dana Spiotta, author of Eat the Document and Innocents and Others
This information about The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead 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.
Chanelle Benz has an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University and a BFA. in Acting from Boston University. Her writing has appeared in The American Reader, Fence, Staccato, and The Cupboard. Her short story, 'West of the Known', was named as one of the Top 10 Longreads of 2012. She lives in Mississippi.
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