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Published Nov 2021
0 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Paperback Original.
Publication Information
Skin Elegies uses the metaphor of mind-upload technologies to explore questions about the relationship of the cellular brain to the bytes-entity to which it gives rise; memory and our connection to the idea of pastness; refugeeism (geographical, somatic, temporal, aesthetic); and where the human might end and something else begin.
At the center stands an American couple who have fled their increasingly repressive country, now under the authoritarian rule of the Reformation Government, by transferring to a quantum computer housed in North Africa. The novel's structure mimics a constellation of firing neurons―a sparking collage of many tiny narraticules flickering through the brain of one of the refugees as it is digitized. Those narraticules comprise nine larger stories over the course of the novel: the Fukushima disaster; the day the Internet was turned on; the final hours of the Battle of Berlin; John Lennon's murder; an assisted suicide in Switzerland; the Columbine massacre; a woman killed by a domestic abuser; a Syrian boy making his way to Berlin; and the Challenger disaster.
With his characteristic brilliance and unrivaled uniqueness, Lance Olsen delivers an innovative, speculative, literary novel in the key of Margaret Atwood, Stanislaw Lem, and J.G. Ballard.
"Olsen draws on stories of historical disasters for this impactful speculative vision of a totalitarian future...the elegant and heartbreaking set pieces prompt deep reflection on the connections between minds and bodies, and on where both are ultimately headed." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[W]hile these storylines can be emotionally devastating on the page...the skill with which Olsen links them together keeps things moving at an impressive pace. Readers willing to immerse themselves in this challenging novel will be left with plenty to discuss afterward." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Reading Skin Elegies feels like watching your mind explode, translating and transfiguring its limitless possibilities into a brilliant galaxy all around and piercingly inside you. Memories spark and intensify, each flare fueled by compassion, invention, despair, horror. We are not ourselves, alone. Lance Olsen's spectacularly innovative novel is a song of exaltation for the limitlessness of our minds—and a lament for limits of our bodies." - Melanie Rae Thon, author of The Voice of the River and The 7th Man
"Skin Elegies is an enormously subtle and complex feat of the imagination, blending historical and contemporary artifacts and memories within a much larger and vaguely conspiratorial context fitting for some its late sixties setting. Shades of Pynchon and DeLillo and all Lance Olsen in this important new book." - Joseph Salvatore, author of To Assume a Pleasing Shape
This information about Skin Elegies 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.
Lance Olsen is author of more than 25 books of and about innovative writing, including, most recently, the novels My Red Heaven (Dzanc, 2020) and Dreamlives of Debris (Dzanc, 2017). His short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, such as Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Village Voice, BOMB, McSweeney's, and Best American Non-Required Reading. A Guggenheim, Berlin Prize, D.A.A.D. Artist-in-Berlin Residency, two-time N.E.A. Fellowship, and Pushcart Prize recipient, as well as a Fulbright Scholar, he teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah.
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