The Thing Is

The Thing Is
Christopher Potter
RRP:
NZ$ 29.99
Our Price:
NZ$ 23.99
Paperback
h196 x 124mm - 176pg
1 Jul 2021 UK
International import eta 7-19 days
9781472134332
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
The Thing Is . . . A novel, a confession, a poem, an autofiction, a commonplace book, a prose poem. By turns serious and playful, profound and trivial, sad and joyful, TheThing Is is a shape-shifting narrative: one that starts out as written by an alien, seeing the earth and its inhabitants from the outside. This perspective then becomes that of an everychild, who vaguely remembers having once been an alien, and evolves into the biography of everybody who has ever lived. The narrative moves deftly from an ingenious theory about the origins of the universe and the emergence of life, to a riff on the poetic power of doorways (and other thresholds); or from stories about things hidden from view or buried by time, to what it feels like to be alive at this particular moment in history. Beautifully wrought, often funny and poignant, The Thing Is is designed to be read in a variety of ways: in gobbets, all in one go, slowly, quickly, repeatedly. This slow/fast read is the perfect novel for our fast/slow times. Whatever The Thing Is to you, it will provide a new twist on the continuing adaptability of the form that we call the novel.
Christopher Potter' s The Thing Is is that great rarity: a book so original that it resembles, not even slightly, any other book I' ve ever read. A book of such breadth and depth, such mystery, such lacerating beauty that I found myself putting it down occasionally because with every page I was that much closer to the end. It' s a remarkable accomplishment * Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours * Artful and illuminating, this meditative novel is a hugely enjoyable take on the risky business of being human * Salley Vickers, author of Miss Garnet' s Angel * Christopher Potter' s book is a post-modern cabinet of wonders, an enigmatic, compulsive wander around his remarkable head, in words wondrously streamed out of his conscious: poetic, chaotic, crazy, sublime. Spooling back to childhood and into the future, like a half-remembered dream, it speaks to faith and infinity, filling the spaces in between with the kind of acute and raw observation that comes from an uninhibited, but deeply humane mind. An often hilarious game of word association, there' s a little of Woolf and Joyce and Thomas Browne going on here - but a lot of whimsical fun too. The Thing Is is like being at the most fantastical cocktail party, and saying, or hearing, the most wonderful things * Philip Hoare, author of RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR *
Christopher Potter is the author of three books: The Earth Gazers: On seeing ourselves; How to Make a Human Being: A body of evidence;and You Are Here: A portable history of the universe. He works in publishing and divides his time between London and New York.
Status: Indent title, imported to order
ISBN-13: 9781472134332
Published: 1 Jul 2021
Published In: United Kingdom
Imprint: Constable
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Format: Paperback
Height: 196mm
Width: 124mm
Spine: 18mm
Weight: 160g
Pages: 176

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