Inside

From the highly acclaimed author of The Missing Person and Babylon and Other Stories, a resonant novel of entwined lives and a woman with an unsettling ability to broach the innermost dynamics of the people around her.

When Grace, an exceedingly competent and devoted therapist in Montreal, stumbles across a man who has just failed to hang himself, her instinct to help kicks in immediately. Before long, however, she realizes that her feelings for this charismatic, extremely guarded stranger are far from straightforward. In the meantime, her troubled teenage patient, Annie, runs away from home and soon will reinvent herself in New York as an aspiring and ruthless actress, as unencumbered as humanly possible by any personal attachments. And Mitch, Grace's ex-husband, who is a therapist as well, leaves the woman he's desperately in love with to attend to a struggling native community in the bleak Arctic.

We follow these four compelling, complex characters from Montreal and New York to Hollywood and Rwanda, each of them with a consciousness that is utterly distinct and urgently convincing. With razor-sharp emotional intelligence, Inside poignantly explores the many dangers as well as the imperative of making ourselves available to — and responsible for — those dearest to us.

"A trio of interlocked stories, Ohlin's bleak second novel shadows three broken people on the hunt for fulfillment who sabotage any true chance of finding it. Grace, an indiscriminately nurturing yet controlling therapist, falls hard for 'Tug,' a PTSD-afflicted stranger she discovers after a botched suicide attempt; with all the glaring red flags Ohlin plants, it's a wonder Grace doesn't see his second attempt — this one successful — coming. Mitch, Grace's brooding ex-husband, takes up with an exacting beauty far beyond his league; surprisingly to him, if not to readers, she shacks up with her gynecologist after Mitch goes away on business. And then there's the morally vapid Annie, a former cutter and one of Grace's ex-patients, who abandons her banal New York life to pursue stardom — via copious sexual conquests — in Hollywood; the glamorous lifestyle, of course, isn't all it's cracked up to be. Some juicy side plots — such as the saga involving the pregnant homeless runaway who ingratiates herself with Annie — aren't given enough room to breathe, perhaps due to Ohlin's flair for crafting emotionally complex short stories that are often left open-ended. Nonetheless, the demonstrated chasm between her characters' intentions and actions and what inevitably transpires is, perhaps like life, what makes this book so voluminous and so empty at the same time. Agent: Amy Williams, McCormick & Williams." Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

"In her gripping novel, Alix Ohlin covers vast geographical and emotional territory. With extraordinary power, she takes us inside the profound and fragile connections of her deeply human characters — each searching for salvation from the past while struggling to find forgiveness and redemption in the present. This story of surprising turns, grace, and compassion left me feeling that my world and my heart had grown larger." Keith Scribner

"A skillful storyteller...attractively quick-witted and wry." J. M. Coetzee

"Ohlin has a great eye, a great ear, and all the other equipment auguring a very successful future." Jay McInerney

"Expect to hear her spoken of in the same reverent breath as Lorrie Moore and Joy Williams." Heidi Julavits

"A memorable read...consistently surprising, often devastating as the protagonists find themselves unable to share what's on the inside." BookPage

"Alix Ohlin is a crazy talented writer, smart and soulful. Inside is, in a word, stunning." Beverly Lowry

"In her gripping novel, Alix Ohlin covers vast geographical and emotional territory. With extraordinary power, she takes us inside the profound and fragile connections of her deeply human characters — each searching for salvation from the past while struggling to find forgiveness and redemption in the present. This story of surprising turns, grace, and compassion left me feeling that my world and my heart had grown larger." Keith Scribner

"We're lucky to live in a world with a writer as gifted and as graceful as Alix Ohlin. This book is instantly engrossing, engaging, and moving. I began to think I lived inside of this beautiful and absorbing novel, so real were her characters, so complicated and human their plights." Robin Romm

“A skillful storyteller . . . attractively quick-witted and wry.” —J. M. Coetzee

“Ohlin has a great eye, a great ear, and all the other equipment auguring a very successful future.”—Jay McInerney

“Expect to hear her spoken of in the same reverent breath as Lorrie Moore and Joy Williams.” —Heidi Julavits

 

 

From the highly acclaimed author of The Missing Person and Babylon and Other Stories, a resonant novel of entwined lives and a woman with an unsettling ability to broach the innermost dynamics of the people around her.

      When Grace, an exceedingly competent and devoted therapist in Montreal, stumbles across a man who has just failed to hang himself, her instinct to help kicks in immediately. Before long, however, she realizes that her feelings for this charismatic, extremely guarded stranger are far from straightforward. In the meantime, her troubled teenage patient, Annie, runs away from home and soon will reinvent herself in New York as an aspiring and ruthless actress, as unencumbered as humanly possible by any personal attachments. And Mitch, Grace’s ex-husband, who is a therapist as well, leaves the woman he’s desperately in love with to attend to a struggling native community in the bleak Arctic. We follow these four compelling, complex characters from Montreal and New York to Hollywood and Rwanda, each of them with a consciousness that is utterly distinct and urgently convincing. With razor-sharp emotional intelligence, Inside poignantly explores the many dangers as well as the imperative of making ourselves available to—and responsible for—those dearest to us.

Alix Ohlin is the author of The Missing Person, a novel; Babylon and Other Stories; and Signs and Wonders, a new collection. Her work has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Best New American Voices, and on public radio's Selected Shorts. She lives in Easton, Pennsylvania, where she teaches at Lafayette College.