by Jen Beagin
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2019
240 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
From the Whiting Award-winning author of Pretend I'm Dead and one of the most exhilarating new voices in fiction, a new hilarious, edgy, and brilliant one-of-a-kind novel about a cleaning lady named Mona and her struggles to move forward in life.
Mona is twenty-six and cleans houses for a living in Taos, New Mexico. She moved there mostly because of a bad boyfriend - a junkie named Mr. Disgusting, long story - and her efforts to restart her life since haven't exactly gone as planned. For one thing, she's got another bad boyfriend. This one she calls Dark, and he happens to be married to one of Mona's clients. He also might be a little unstable.
Dark and his wife aren't the only complicated clients on Mona's roster, either. There's also the Hungarian artist couple who - with her addiction to painkillers and his lingering stares - reminds Mona of troubling aspects of her childhood, and some of the underlying reasons her life had to be restarted in the first place. As she tries to get over the heartache of her affair and the older pains of her youth, Mona winds up on an eccentric, moving journey of self-discovery that takes her back to her beginnings where she attempts to unlock the key to having a sense of home in the future.
The only problems are Dark and her past. Neither is so easy to get rid of.
A constantly surprising, laugh-out-loud funny novel about an utterly unique woman dealing with some of the most universal issues in America today, Vacuum in the Dark is an unforgettable, astonishing read from one of the freshest voices in fiction today.
"Starred Review. A welcome sequel to one of last year's most exciting debuts ... Beagin secures her position as a new writer to watch." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. Inventing situations and conversations that are off-the -charts in both weirdness and relatability, Beagin fashions an enchantingly intriguing main character in unfiltered, warmhearted Mona. This story of a woman embracing life's what-ifs and her own darkness is a great read-alike for Melissa Broder's The Pisces (2018). - Booklist
"Starred Review. Beagin pulls no punches - this novel is viciously smart and morbidly funny." - Publishers Weekly
"This sad, startling, and disturbing novel is best appreciated by readers who like edgy stories with dark humor." - Library Journal
This information about Vacuum in the Dark 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.
Jen Beagin holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine, and is a recipient of a 2017 Whiting Award in fiction. She is the author of Pretend I'm Dead and Vacuum in the Dark. A former cleaning lady, she lives in Hudson, New York.
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