Synopses & Reviews
A lyrical, apocalyptic debut novel about addiction, friendship, and the struggle for survival …
It started with a single child, and quickly spread: you could get high by drinking your own shadow. At night, lights were destroyed so that addicts could sip shadow in the pure light of the moon.
Gangs of shadow addicts chased down children on playgrounds, rounded up old ladies from retirement homes. Cities were destroyed and governments fell. And if your shadow was sipped entirely, you became one of them, had to find more shadow, at any cost, or go mad.
150 years later, what’s left of the world is divided between the highly regimented life of those inside dome-cities that are protected from natural light (and natural shadows), and those forced to the dangerous, hardscrabble life in the wilds outside. In rural Texas, Mira, her shadow-addicted friend Murk, and an ex-Domer named Bale, search for a possible mythological cure to the shadow sickness — but they must do so, it is said, before the return of Halley’s Comet, which is only days away.
Review
"An utterly transporting voyage through an oddly sweet, surprisingly funny, and horribly human post-apocalyptic wasteland. As much a celebration of the wonders of our daily existence as it is an indictment of the hungers which bring us low, Brian Allen Carr's Sip inflated my shadow-soaked head and set me floating on strange and beautiful winds. Never before have I so deeply wanted to return to the end of the world."
Jeremy Robert Johnson, Author of Skullcrack City
Review
"Fans of postapocalyptic fiction will find it difficult to put down Carr’s haunting debut, which richly details its world’s harsh history while leaving readers enough hope for the future. The title also has excellent YA crossover potential." Library Journal (Starred Review)
Review
"Brian Allen Carr's Sip is funny, literate, crass, dark, violent, lyrical, oddly touching, and totally bat-shit crazy. I loved it." Paul Tremblay, Author of a Head Full of Ghosts
Review
"For a novel about domed worlds devoid of light, Sip has no shortage of luminosity. The precision of the images in this novel illuminate every scene like the water around a lighthouse. A fable about shadow addicts and sealed-over inaccessible domes feels eerily prescient for the increasing volatile divide in the United States."—Idra Novey, Author of Ways to Disappear
Synopsis
A lyrical, apocalyptic debut novel about addiction, friendship, and the struggle for survival at the height of an epidemic. The sickness with a single child and quickly spread: you could get high by drinking your own shadow. Artificial lights were destroyed so addicts could sip shadow at night in the pure moonlight. Gangs of shadow addicts chased down children on playgrounds, rounded up old ladies from retirement homes. Cities were destroyed and governments fell. And if your shadow was sipped entirely, you became one of them, had to drink the shadows of others or go mad.
One hundred and fifty years later, what's left of the world is divided between the highly regimented life of those inside dome cities who are protected from natural light (and natural shadows), and those forced to the dangerous, hardscrabble life in the wilds outside. In rural Texas, Mira, her shadow-addicted-friend Murk, and an ex-domer named Bale search for a possible mythological cure to the shadow sickness--but they must find it, it is said, before the return of Halley's Comet, which is only days away.
About the Author
Brian Allen Carr is the author of several story collections and novellas and has been published in McSweeney’s, Hobart, and The Rumpus. He was the inaugural winner of the Texas Observer short story prize as judged by Larry McMurtry, and the recipient of a Wonderland Book Award. He splits his time between Texas and Indiana, where he writes about engineers and inventors at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. This is his first novel.
Brian Allen Carr on PowellsBooks.Blog
I wrote
Sip over the course of three or four years while living in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas — a region of farmland that sits along the Texas-Mexico border near the Gulf Coast. I lived in that area, off and on, from the fall when I was 23 to the winter when I was 37. But they don’t have traditional seasons down there...
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