{"title":"Plotless fiction","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"pond-by-claire-louise-bennett","title":"Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eImmediately upon its publication in Ireland, Claire-Louise Bennett’s debut began to attract attention well beyond the expectations of the tiny Irish press that published it. A deceptively slender volume, it captures with utterly mesmerizing virtuosity the interior reality of its unnamed protagonist, a young woman living a singular and mostly solitary existence on the outskirts of a small coastal village. Sidestepping the usual conventions of narrative, it focuses on the details of her daily experience—from the best way to eat porridge or bananas to an encounter with cows—rendered sometimes in story-length, story-like stretches of narrative, sometimes in fragments no longer than a page, but always suffused with the hypersaturated, almost synesthetic intensity of the physical world that we remember from childhood. The effect is of character refracted and ventriloquized by environment, catching as it bounces her longings, frustrations, and disappointments—the ending of an affair, or the ambivalent beginning with a new lover. As the narrator’s persona emerges in all its eccentricity, sometimes painfully and often hilariously, we cannot help but see mirrored there our own fraught desires and limitations, and our own fugitive desire, despite everything, to be known.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShimmering and unusual, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003ePond\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003edemands to be devoured in a single sitting that will linger long after the last page.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Womb House Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53100308332853,"sku":null,"price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0965\/6247\/9413\/files\/pond.jpg?v=1783366679"},{"product_id":"dreaming-of-dead-people-by-rosalind-belben","title":"Dreaming of Dead People by Rosalind Belben","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn the ‘middle of life’ Lavinia reviews her frustrations, her solitariness, the grief and the rapture, her seeming companions in a pageant presided over, as it were, by the masks of Owl, for winter, and Cuckoo, for erotic love. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eDreaming of Dead People\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, first published in the UK in the 1970s, remains as surprising, frank, mordantly funny and raw as ever.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Womb House Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53100344246581,"sku":null,"price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0965\/6247\/9413\/files\/dreamingOfDeadPeople.jpg?v=1783367089"},{"product_id":"the-ravishing-of-lol-stein-by-marguerite-duras","title":"The Ravishing of Lol Stein by Marguerite Duras","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Ravishing of Lol Stein\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is a haunting early novel by the author of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Lover.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Lol Stein is a beautiful young woman, securely married, settled in a comfortable life—and a voyeur. Returning with her husband and children to the town where, years before, her fiancé had abandoned her for another woman, she is drawn inexorably to recreate that long-past tragedy. She arranges a rendezvous for her friend Tatiana and Tatiana’s lover. She arranges to spy on them. And then, she goes one step further . . .\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Womb House Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53100346573109,"sku":null,"price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0965\/6247\/9413\/files\/TheRavishing.jpg?v=1783367339"},{"product_id":"grove-a-field-novel-by-esther-kinsky","title":"Grove: A Field Novel by Esther Kinsky","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAn unnamed narrator, recently bereaved, travels to a small village southeast of Rome. It is winter, and from her temporary residence on a hill between village and cemetery, she embarks on walks and outings, exploring the banal and the sublime with equal dedication and intensity. Seeing, describing, naming the world around her is her way of redefining her place within it. In Kinsky’s \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eGrove\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, winner of the 2018 Leipzig Book Prize, grief must bear the weight of the world and full of grief the narrator becomes one with the brittle manifestations of the Italian winter.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Womb House Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53100348178741,"sku":null,"price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0965\/6247\/9413\/files\/Grove.jpg?v=1783367550"},{"product_id":"sleepless-nights-by-elizabeth-hardwick","title":"Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick","description":"\u003cdiv id=\"bookDescription_feature_div\" class=\"celwidget\" data-feature-name=\"bookDescription\" data-csa-c-type=\"widget\" data-csa-c-content-id=\"bookDescription\" data-csa-c-slot-id=\"bookDescription_feature_div\" data-csa-c-asin=\"0940322722\" data-csa-c-is-in-initial-active-row=\"false\" data-csa-c-id=\"dio0qp-uuywmv-c75o9w-js48ui\" data-cel-widget=\"bookDescription_feature_div\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-a-expander-name=\"book_description_expander\" data-a-expander-collapsed-height=\"280\" class=\"a-expander-collapsed-height a-row a-expander-container a-spacing-base a-expander-partial-collapse-container\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-expanded=\"false\" class=\"a-expander-content a-expander-partial-collapse-content\"\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003eIn \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eSleepless Nights\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e a woman looks back on her life—the parade of people, the shifting background of place—and assembles a scrapbook of memories, reflections, portraits, letters, wishes, and dreams. An inspired fusion of fact and invention, this beautifully realized, hard-bitten, lyrical book is not only Elizabeth Hardwick's finest fiction but one of the outstanding contributions to American literature of the last fifty years.\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"globalStoreInfoBullets_feature_div\" class=\"celwidget\" data-feature-name=\"globalStoreInfoBullets\" data-csa-c-type=\"widget\" data-csa-c-content-id=\"globalStoreInfoBullets\" data-csa-c-slot-id=\"globalStoreInfoBullets_feature_div\" data-csa-c-asin=\"0940322722\" data-csa-c-is-in-initial-active-row=\"false\" data-csa-c-id=\"8jsu8q-u3foqd-ndjwfy-nw2c85\" data-cel-widget=\"globalStoreInfoBullets_feature_div\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"buyingOptionNostosBadge_feature_div\" class=\"celwidget\" data-feature-name=\"buyingOptionNostosBadge\" data-csa-c-type=\"widget\" data-csa-c-content-id=\"buyingOptionNostosBadge\" data-csa-c-slot-id=\"buyingOptionNostosBadge_feature_div\" data-csa-c-asin=\"0940322722\" data-csa-c-is-in-initial-active-row=\"false\" data-csa-c-id=\"uybduk-xeonrq-74s3bu-yvyb3s\" data-cel-widget=\"buyingOptionNostosBadge_feature_div\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"tellAmazon_feature_div\" class=\"celwidget\" data-feature-name=\"tellAmazon\" data-csa-c-type=\"widget\" data-csa-c-content-id=\"tellAmazon\" data-csa-c-slot-id=\"tellAmazon_feature_div\" data-csa-c-asin=\"0940322722\" data-csa-c-is-in-initial-active-row=\"false\" data-csa-c-id=\"9tam0i-velbom-gjcilc-8k6bkz\" data-cel-widget=\"tellAmazon_feature_div\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"celwidget c-f\" data-csa-op-log-render=\"\" data-csa-c-content-id=\"DsUnknown\" data-csa-c-slot-id=\"DsUnknown-11\" data-csa-c-type=\"widget\" data-csa-c-painter=\"tell-amazon-desktop-cards\" data-csa-c-id=\"atqvzp-2au22n-4f5bqa-txjxh4\" data-cel-widget=\"tell-amazon-desktop_DetailPage_10\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"CardInstance2jZ6mYFAoTtayAmx0MBhMg\" data-card-metrics-id=\"tell-amazon-desktop_DetailPage_10\" data-acp-tracking=\"{}\" data-mix-claimed=\"true\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Womb House Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53100349391157,"sku":null,"price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0965\/6247\/9413\/files\/SleeplessNights.jpg?v=1783367698"},{"product_id":"speedboat-by-renata-adler","title":"Speedboat by Renata Adler","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhen \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eSpeedboat\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e burst on the scene in the late ’70s it was like nothing readers had encountered before. It seemed to disregard the rules of the novel, but it wore its unconventionality with ease. Reading it was a pleasure of a new, unexpected kind. Above all, there was its voice, ambivalent, curious, wry, the voice of Jen Fain, a journalist negotiating the fraught landscape of contemporary urban America. Party guests, taxi drivers, brownstone dwellers, professors, journalists, presidents, and debutantes fill these dispatches from the world as Jen finds it.\u003cbr\u003e       \u003cbr\u003eA touchstone over the years for writers as different as David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Hardwick, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eSpeedboat\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003ereturns to enthrall a new generation of readers.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Womb House Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53100350308661,"sku":null,"price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0965\/6247\/9413\/files\/Speedboat.jpg?v=1783367861"},{"product_id":"malina-by-ingeborg-bachmann","title":"Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eMalina, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eoriginally published in German in 1971, Ingeborg Bachmann invites the reader into a world stretched to the very limits of language. An unnamed narrator, a writer in Vienna, is torn between two men: viewed, through the tilting prism of obsession, she travels further into her own madness, anxiety, and genius. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eMalina \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eexplores love, \"deathstyles,\" the roots of fascism, and passion.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Womb House Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53100362760501,"sku":null,"price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0965\/6247\/9413\/files\/Malina.jpg?v=1783368353"},{"product_id":"outline-by-rachel-cusk","title":"Outline by Rachel Cusk","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eRachel Cusk's\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eOutline\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eis a novel in ten conversations. Spare and lucid, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing over an oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises. She meets other visiting writers for dinner. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her neighbor from the plane. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves: their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face a great loss.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Womb House Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53100376621365,"sku":null,"price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0965\/6247\/9413\/files\/Outline.jpg?v=1783368670"},{"product_id":"transit-by-rachel-cusk","title":"Transit by Rachel Cusk","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn the wake of her family’s collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The process of this upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions―personal, moral, artistic, and practical―as she endeavors to construct a new reality for herself and her children. In the city, she is made to confront aspects of living that she has, until now, avoided, and to consider questions of vulnerability and power, death and renewal, in what becomes her struggle to reattach herself to, and believe in, life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFiltered through the impersonal gaze of its keenly intelligent protagonist, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eTransit\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e sees Rachel Cusk delve deeper into the themes first raised in her critically acclaimed novel \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eOutline\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e and offers up a penetrating and moving reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering, the moral problems of personal responsibility, and the mystery of change.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this second book of a precise and short yet epic cycle, Cusk describes the most elemental experiences, the liminal qualities of life. She captures with unsettling restraint and honesty the longing to both inhabit and flee one’s life, and the wrenching ambivalence animating our desire to feel real.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Womb House Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53100379406645,"sku":null,"price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0965\/6247\/9413\/files\/Transit.jpg?v=1783368770"},{"product_id":"kudos-by-rachel-cusk","title":"Kudos by Rachel Cusk","description":"\u003cdiv id=\"bookDescription_feature_div\" class=\"celwidget\" data-feature-name=\"bookDescription\" data-csa-c-type=\"widget\" data-csa-c-content-id=\"bookDescription\" data-csa-c-slot-id=\"bookDescription_feature_div\" data-csa-c-asin=\"1250207398\" data-csa-c-is-in-initial-active-row=\"false\" data-csa-c-id=\"ko6l4p-tsgtc4-xji26f-ji09tb\" data-cel-widget=\"bookDescription_feature_div\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-a-expander-name=\"book_description_expander\" data-a-expander-collapsed-height=\"280\" class=\"a-expander-collapsed-height a-row a-expander-container a-spacing-base a-expander-partial-collapse-container\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-expanded=\"false\" class=\"a-expander-content a-expander-partial-collapse-content\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eRachel Cusk, the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eOutline\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eand \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eTransit\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, completes the transcendent literary trilogy with \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eKudos\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, a novel of unsettling power.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA woman writer visits a Europe in flux, where questions of personal and political identity are rising to the surface and the trauma of change is opening up new possibilities of loss and renewal. Within the rituals of literary culture, Faye finds the human story in disarray amid differing attitudes toward the public performance of the creative persona. She begins to identify among the people she meets a tension between truth and representation, a fissure that accrues great dramatic force as \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eKudos\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003ereaches a profound and beautiful climax.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this conclusion to her groundbreaking trilogy, Cusk unflinchingly explores the nature of family and art, justice and love, and the ultimate value of suffering. She is without question one of our most important living writers.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"globalStoreInfoBullets_feature_div\" class=\"celwidget\" data-feature-name=\"globalStoreInfoBullets\" data-csa-c-type=\"widget\" data-csa-c-content-id=\"globalStoreInfoBullets\" data-csa-c-slot-id=\"globalStoreInfoBullets_feature_div\" data-csa-c-asin=\"1250207398\" data-csa-c-is-in-initial-active-row=\"false\" data-csa-c-id=\"mugc73-713ig9-t78c2w-e5zskg\" data-cel-widget=\"globalStoreInfoBullets_feature_div\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"buyingOptionNostosBadge_feature_div\" class=\"celwidget\" data-feature-name=\"buyingOptionNostosBadge\" data-csa-c-type=\"widget\" data-csa-c-content-id=\"buyingOptionNostosBadge\" data-csa-c-slot-id=\"buyingOptionNostosBadge_feature_div\" data-csa-c-asin=\"1250207398\" data-csa-c-is-in-initial-active-row=\"false\" data-csa-c-id=\"hyjwgl-lvpail-n6qbud-ucytuj\" data-cel-widget=\"buyingOptionNostosBadge_feature_div\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"tellAmazon_feature_div\" class=\"celwidget\" data-feature-name=\"tellAmazon\" data-csa-c-type=\"widget\" data-csa-c-content-id=\"tellAmazon\" data-csa-c-slot-id=\"tellAmazon_feature_div\" data-csa-c-asin=\"1250207398\" data-csa-c-is-in-initial-active-row=\"false\" data-csa-c-id=\"lldjtl-t1pxyq-wtdpkc-y46nkv\" data-cel-widget=\"tellAmazon_feature_div\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"celwidget c-f\" data-csa-op-log-render=\"\" data-csa-c-content-id=\"DsUnknown\" data-csa-c-slot-id=\"DsUnknown-7\" data-csa-c-type=\"widget\" data-csa-c-painter=\"tell-amazon-desktop-cards\" data-csa-c-id=\"wkutiz-4axt6p-8w10y3-w6u18a\" data-cel-widget=\"tell-amazon-desktop_DetailPage_6\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"CardInstanceVK-_-GW65U38pTgxR--gYA\" data-card-metrics-id=\"tell-amazon-desktop_DetailPage_6\" data-acp-tracking=\"{}\" data-mix-claimed=\"true\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Womb House Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53100400410933,"sku":null,"price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0965\/6247\/9413\/files\/Kudos.jpg?v=1783368877"},{"product_id":"banal-nightmare-by-halle-butler","title":"Banal Nightmare by Halle Butler","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn a Midwestern college town at the height of the Me Too era, a group of simultaneously self-flagellating and self-aggrandizing pseudo-academics sit around, think, and send one another insulting emails. As the impulses and memories they have barely managed to repress begin to surface, their relationships become increasingly deranged. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eBanal Nightmare\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003ecaptures the volatile, surreal, and entirely disorienting atmosphere of the modern era.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Womb House Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53100406866229,"sku":null,"price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0965\/6247\/9413\/files\/BanalNightmare.jpg?v=1783368984"},{"product_id":"bitter-water-opera-a-novel-by-nicolette-polek","title":"Bitter Water Opera: A Novel by Nicolette Polek","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAn electrifying debut novel about art, solitude, family, and faith in a world without it\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1967, the dancer Marta Becket and her husband were traveling through Death Valley Junction when they came across an abandoned theater. Marta decided it was hers. She painted her ideal audience on its walls and danced her own dances until her death five decades later.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the present day, Gia has ended a relationship and taken a leave from her job in film studies at a university. She is sleeping fifteen hours a night and ignoring calls from her mother. In a library archive, she comes across a photo of Marta Becket and decides to write her a letter. Soon Marta magically appears in her home.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGia hopes Marta Becket will guide her out of her despair. But is Marta―the example of her single-minded, solitary life―enough? Through precise, vivid vignettes, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eBitter Water Opera\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003efollows Gia as she resists the urge to escape into herself and struggles to form a lasting connection to the world. Her search has her reckoning with a set of terrifying charcoal drawings on her garage walls, a corpse in the middle of a pond, a crooked pear sapling, and other mysterious entities before bringing her to Marta’s theater, the Amargosa Opera House. There in the desert, Gia finds one answer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this brief, astonishing novel, Nicolette Polek describes an individual awakening to faith while exploring our deepest existential questions. How do we look beyond ourselves? Where do words go? What is art for?\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Womb House Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53100414206261,"sku":null,"price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0965\/6247\/9413\/files\/BitterWater.jpg?v=1783369116"},{"product_id":"ruth-a-novel-by-kate-riley","title":"Ruth: A Novel by Kate Riley","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eRuth is raised in a snow globe of Christian communism, a world without private property, television, or tolerance for idle questions. Every morning she braids her hair and wears the same costume, sings the same breakfast song in a family room identical to every other family room in the community; every one of these moments is meant to be a prayer, but to Ruth they remain puzzles. Her life is seen in glimpses through childhood, marriage, and motherhood, as she tries to manage her own perilous curiosity in a community built on holy mystery. Is she happy? Might this in fact be happiness? \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eRuth\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e immerses us in an experience that challenges our most fervent beliefs.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Womb House Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53100422365493,"sku":null,"price":29.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0965\/6247\/9413\/files\/Ruth.jpg?v=1783369231"},{"product_id":"drifts-a-novel-by-kate-zambreno","title":"Drifts: A Novel by Kate Zambreno","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHaunting and compulsively readable, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eDrifts\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eis an intimate portrait of reading, writing, and creative obsession. At work on a novel that is overdue, spending long days walking neighborhood streets with her restless terrier, corresponding ardently with fellow writers, the narrator grows obsessed with the challenge of writing the present tense, of capturing time itself. Entranced by the work of Rainer Maria Rilke, Albrecht Dürer, Chantal Akerman, and others, she photographs the residents and strays of her neighborhood, haunts bookstores and galleries, and records her thoughts in a yellow notebook that soon subsumes her work on the novel. As winter closes in, a series of disturbances—the appearances and disappearances of enigmatic figures, the burglary of her apartment—leaves her distracted and uncertain . . . until an intense and tender disruption changes everything.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA story of artistic ambition, personal crisis, and the possibilities and failures of literature, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eDrifts\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is the work of an exhilarating and vital writer.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Womb House Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53100428525877,"sku":null,"price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0965\/6247\/9413\/files\/drifts.jpg?v=1783369362"},{"product_id":"pure-colour-by-sheila-heti","title":"Pure Colour by Sheila Heti","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHere we are, just living in the first draft of creation, which was made by some great artist, who is now getting ready to tear it apart.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this first draft, a woman named Mira leaves home for school. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira’s chest like a portal―to what, she doesn’t know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and she enters the strange and dizzying dimension that true loss opens up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003ePure Colour\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e tells the story of a life, from beginning to end. It is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. It is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and a shape-shifting epic. Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Womb House Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53100440584501,"sku":null,"price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0965\/6247\/9413\/files\/PureColour.jpg?v=1783369511"},{"product_id":"the-apple-in-the-dark-by-clarice-lispector","title":"The Apple in the Dark by Clarice Lispector","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“It’s the best one,” Clarice Lispector remarked on the occasion of the publication of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Apple in the Dark\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e: “I can’t define it, how it is, I can only say that it’s much better constructed than the previous ones.” A book in three chapters, with three central characters, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Apple in the Dark\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is in fact highly sculpted, while being chiefly a metaphysical book, and in this stunning new translation, the novel’s mysteries and allegories glow with a fresh scintillating light.\u003cbr\u003eMartim, fleeing from a murder he believes he committed, plunges into the dark nocturnal jungle: stumbling along, in a state of both fear and wonder, eventually he comes to a remote, quiet ranch and finds work with the two women who own it. The women are tranquil enough before his arrival, but are affected by his radical mystery. Soaked through with Martim’s inner night (his soul is in the darkness where everything is created), the novel vibrates with his perpetual searching state of vigil. Often he feels close to an epiphany: “for the first time he was present in the moment in which whatever is happening is happening.” Yet such flashes flicker out, so he’s ever on the watch for “life to take on the dimensions of a destiny.”\u003cbr\u003eIn an interview, Lispector once said: “I am Martim.” As she puts it in \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Apple in the Dark\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e: “All I’ve got is hunger. And that unstable way of grasping an apple in the dark―without letting it fall.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Womb House Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53100451004725,"sku":null,"price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0965\/6247\/9413\/files\/TheAppleinTheDark.jpg?v=1783369652"}],"url":"https:\/\/wombhousebooks.com\/collections\/plotless-fiction.oembed","provider":"Womb House Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}