Synopses & Reviews
From one of the most innovative and vital writers of his generation, an extraordinary collection of stories that showcases his gifts — and his range — as never before.
In the hilarious, lacerating “I Can Say Many Nice Things,” a washed-up writer toying with infidelity leads a creative writing workshop on board a cruise ship. In the dystopian “Rollingwood,” a divorced father struggles to take care of his ill infant, as his ex-wife and colleagues try to render him irrelevant. In “Watching Mysteries with My Mother,” a son meditates on his mother’s mortality, hoping to stave off her death for as long as he sits by her side. And in the title story, told in a single breathtaking sentence, we watch as the narrator’s marriage and his sanity unravel, drawing him to the brink of suicide.
As the collection progresses, we move from more traditional narratives into the experimental work that has made Ben Marcus a groundbreaking master of the short form. In these otherworldly landscapes, characters resort to extreme survival strategies to navigate the terrors of adulthood, one opting to live in a lightless cave and another methodically setting out to recover total childhood innocence; an automaton discovers love and has to reinvent language to accommodate it; filial loyalty is seen as a dangerous weakness that must be drilled away; and the distance from a cubicle to the office coffee cart is refigured as an existential wasteland, requiring heroic effort.
In these piercing, brilliantly observed investigations into human vulnerability and failure, it is often the most absurd and alien predicaments that capture the deepest truths. Surreal and tender, terrifying and life-affirming, Leaving the Sea is the work of an utterly unique writer at the height of his powers.
Review
“Exhilarating....A peculiar, funny, original analysis of the human psyche and modern language....A very strong collection.” Publishers Weekly
Review
“Mind-bending....Boundary-pushing....Fifteen tales of modern anxiety that display Marcus’ range....Marcus has mastered a bitterly comic tone and a level of psychological insight that make the characters more than repositories of middle-age rage....At once smart, claustrophobic, and comic.” Kirkus
Review
“Marcus’s stories are nothing if not intense. They are opaque, elliptical. They go on, Beckett-like. Each finds its own form on its own terms. He’s always looking for a new way to tell an old story. As he has written elsewhere, stories ‘seek personal residence within a reader.’ They should take over the reader’s imagination, as these do.” Shelf Awareness
Review
“Brilliant, unsettling....Unmatched in his imagining of the human form....Marcus articulates every grade of the uncanny, with masterful attention to the twisted vortices of language....Hilarious and ingenious.” Booklist (starred review)
Synopsis
From one of the most innovative and important writers of his generation, a brilliant collection of stories that showcase his gifts — and his range — as never before.
In the dystopian "Rollingwood," a divorced father struggles to hold on to his job while taking care of his ill infant son. In the hilarious "I Can Say Many Nice Things," a writer toying with infidelity teaches a brutal creative writing workshop on a cruise ship. In "Watching Mysteries with My Mother," a man spends time with his aging mother and meditates on mortality. And in the title story, told in a single breathless sentence, we watch as the narrator's marriage and his sanity unravel.
Surreal and tender, terrifying and life-affirming, Leaving the Sea brings us an utterly unique writer at the height of his powers.
About the Author
Ben Marcus is the author of four books of fiction: Notable American Women, The Father Costume, The Age of Wire and String, and The Flame Alphabet, and he is the editor of The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories. His stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in Harper's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, The Believer, The New York Times, Salon, and Time. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in fiction, and three Pushcart Prizes.