A Questionable Shape by Bennett Sims

A Questionable Shape by Bennett Sims

In the wake of an infection that has left Baton Rouge unsettled and roiling with the ‘undead’, three young friends – Mazoch, Vermaelen and Rachel – band together to search for Mazoch’s missing father. Their mission is to visit all the places he once lingered: his favourite fast food restaurants, the movie theatre he frequented with his son and the city park. As hurricane season looms, uncertainty and suspicion of each other’s motives threatens to pull the group apart, but still, the friends’ search continues. Over the course of a week, day after day, they haunt the places Mazoch’s father once haunted, confronting the same persistent hope that faces all who grieve: that whomever, whatever they have lost, will return to them, in one shape or another. Turning typical zombie fare on its head, Bennett Sims delivers a wise and philosophical rumination on the nature of memory and loss in this remarkable debut novel.

‘[A] highly unusual take on the zombie novel… ambitious and thought-provoking’

* Guardian *

‘Unanswered questions, dictionary-demanding language and a rich sense of light characterise this addition to the “literary paranormal” stableIf you like… Justin Cronin’s The Passage you’ll like this’ 

 

* Metro *

‘Bennett Sims is a writer of obvious talent and literary skill’

* Curious Animal *

‘Bennett Sims is a writer fearsomely equipped with an intellectual and linguistic range to rival a young Nabokov’s, Nicholson Baker’s gift for miniaturistic intaglio, and an arsenal of virtuosities entirely his own. A Questionable Shape announces a literary talent of genre-wrecking brilliance.’

-- Wells Tower, author of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

 ‘Playful, absorbing, bittersweet, and intelligent, and, like a bite, it gets under your skin.’ 

-- Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead

Bennett Sims is 26 and was born in Baton Rouge. He graduated from Pomona College in 2008 and from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2012, where he held a Truman Capote Fellowship and a John C. Schupes Fellowship in Fiction. He is currently a Provost Postgraduate Visiting Writer at the University of Iowa. His stories have appeared in A Public Space, Zoetrope, Orion, Subtropics, Tin House and Electric Literature.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781780745855
ISBN 10	1780745850
Title	A Questionable Shape
Author	Bennett Sims
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Oneworld Publications
Year published	2014-06-05
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.