Staff Pick
Swarm Theory is phenomenal for many reasons, the first and foremost being that it is a genre-bending "novel-in-stories." The perspective shifts multiple times, and there's no protagonist, unless you count the fictional setting of New Canaan, Michigan. This darkly beautiful collection explores the meaning of humanity using the lives of broken, complex characters. It's one of the most haunting books I've ever read! Recommended By Shannon B., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
It was a time of hippies, heroin, and All in the Family. It was a time, in the small town of New Canaan—a fictional town in mid-Michigan—when developers gobbled up farmland and spit out subdivisions.
Against this backdrop, Swarm Theory’s interlocking narratives reveal the troubled lives of Astrid (a young woman trying to hold her family together), Caroline (Astrid’s best friend who has lost her mother to heroin), Will (a soldier struggling to make sense of life after being discharged from the Marines), and Father Maurice Silver (a priest caring for a young man dying of AIDS).
Nothing in New Canaan is quite what it seems.
Swarm Theory is a book that reveals life’s amazing contradictions—the wonderful and the profane, devotion and infidelity, understanding and revenge—through stories told from different perspectives. These stories investigate what happens when people come together—whether to do admirable or horrific things. Here, intimates and strangers alike can’t help but be intertwined; their unpredictable journeys providing a backdrop for characters complex, honorable, and not.
Swarm Theory reveals our often misguided, dark, and life-sustaining dependency on each other.
Review
"I was absolutely enthralled. Christine Rice's masterful use of the novel-in-story form dropped me straight into the hearts of her characters and, like the most perfect puzzle, wove their lives and longings together into a total page turner. I found myself talking out loud ("No, Astrid, don't!" and "Caroline, get out of there!"). I hoped for them, shared their devastation. As a reader, I was in it. And as a writer, I'll go back again and again, trying to figure out how the hell Rice just did that." Megan Stielstra, author of Once I Was Cool
Review
"With joyful, violent beauty, Christine Rice’s Swarm Theory will seduce you from the first sentence, the first startling image, and by the last, you’ll be grateful to have read every inspired word (and fiercely impressed by Rice's talent). These are stories to be cherished, shared, and discussed, and read over and over." Christine Sneed, author of Paris, He Said and Little Known Facts
Review
"Christine Rice's novel-in-stories Swarm Theory is like a mosaic handmade from slivers of broken bottles, bits of razorblades, and shards from funhouse mirrors; it is beautiful and startling, shining and dark. The residents of New Canaan, Michigan–a fictional suburb stuck somewhere between Flint and Detroit, between dream and despair–live their damaged lives as best they can. In captivating, skillful prose that is thick with all kinds of knowledge and with realism and magic, Rice creates a place both unique and familiar. New Canaan is a microcosm of our nation's industry and failures. But despite the hard times of this small Midwestern town, of this particular era of our last century, Rice's characters are mostly resilient. In these stories that braid and twist, that buzz and sing, New Canaan's inhabitants struggle, and sometimes–remarkably, gloriously–they survive." Patricia Ann McNair, author of The Temple of Air
Synopsis
It was a time of hippies, heroin, and All in the Family. It was a time, in the small town of New Canaan--a fictional town in mid-Michigan--when developers gobbled up farmland and spit out subdivisions. Against this backdrop, Swarm Theory's interlocking narratives reveal the troubled lives of Astrid (a young woman trying to hold her family together), Caroline (Astrid's best friend who has lost her mother to heroin), Will (a soldier struggling to make sense of life after being discharged from the Marines), and Father Maurice Silver (a priest caring for a young man dying of AIDS). Nothing in New Canaan is quite what it seems. Swarm Theory is a book that reveals life's amazing contradictions--the wonderful and the profane, devotion and infidelity, understanding and revenge--through stories told from different perspectives. These stories investigate what happens when people come together--whether to do admirable or horrific things. Here, intimates and strangers alike can't help but be intertwined; their unpredictable journeys providing a backdrop for characters complex, honorable, and not. Swarm Theory reveals our often misguided, dark, and life-sustaining dependency on each other.
About the Author
Christine Rice’s novel, Swarm Theory, was published by University of Hell Press in April 2016. Most recently, her stories have been published in Roanoke College’s Roanoke Review, American University of Beirut’s Rusted Radishes, Farleigh Dickinson University’s The Literary Review, and Bird’s Thumb. Her writing has appeared in The Millions, The Big Smoke US, Chicago Tribune, Detroit’s Metro Times and Metro Parent, The Good Men Project, The Urbaness.com, CellStories.net, f Magazine, Chicago Literati, Jaded Ibis’s Bleed, and her radio essays have been produced by WBEZ Chicago. Christine is the founder and director of Hypertext Studio writing workshops and a proud adjunct faculty member of the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago (since 1992). From 2001 to 2013, Christine edited the Department of Creative Writing’s award-winning publication Hair Trigger and chaired their national Young Authors Writing Competition for high school writers. She’s the 2015 recipient of the Ragdale Rubin Fellowship.