- Published: 06/09/2018
- ISBN: 9781783782826
- 130x20mm
- 288 pages
Notes from the Fog
Ben Marcus
‘I wake up and I have to make the right choice,’ he said.
Master-stylist Ben Marcus returns with a wonder-cabinet of brain-rearranging stories. From the horrifyingly strange to the deeply touching, each story is a literary masterclass unlikely to leave the reader unchanged.
From parent/child relationships thrown agonisingly off kilter, to intensely moving scenarios of dependence and emotional crisis; from left-alone bodies to new scientific frontiers, Ben Marcus is the great chronicler of the contemporary uncanny and the peculiar future.
Piece by piece, he takes us apart.
£12.99
[A] brutal and brilliant story collection...Marcus is at once funny and serious, a characteristic blend ... Is this a bleak book? Absolutely. But there's beauty in it, too... deceptively straightforward, precise but chatty, and often a lot of fun
Chris Power, Guardian
Marcus's penchant for creeping presentiment elevates these tales ... blending noir suspense with brooding inwardness in an elegant prose style that is distinctively his own... Marcus is a brilliant anatomist of estrangement
Houman Barekat, Irish Times
Marcus's spectacular new collection [is] wickedly effective ... The sheer line-by-line joy of his phrase-making, caught between strung-out melancholy and tart misanthropy, electric with thrilling change-ups...Exhilaratingly bleak
Anthony Cummins, Observer
From the Same Author
Ben Marcus on Granta.com
Fiction | Granta 133
George and Elizabeth
Ben Marcus
‘She could see, or was starting to, that someone out there was seeing him, watching him.’
In Conversation | Granta 133
George Saunders and Ben Marcus In Conversation
George Saunders & Ben Marcus
‘One purpose of art is to get us to wake up, recalibrate our emotional life, get ourselves into proper relation to reality.’
Fiction | Granta 122
The Loyalty Protocol
Ben Marcus
‘The tally, indeed, on that particular activity, in that particular location – or, in fact, on any couch ever – was, indeed, zero.’