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We are in the thick of winter here in the Pacific Northwest, which means it's dark, damp, and chilly. Rather than escaping to stories with warmer, brighter climates, I personally want nothing more than to dive deep into gothic and uncanny fiction as the wind rattles my windows at night...
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This Is Between Us

by Kevin Sampsell
This Is Between Us

  • Comment on this title
  • Synopses & Reviews
  • Award Excerpt

ISBN13: 9781935639701
ISBN10: 1935639706
Condition: Standard


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Awards

Staff Top 5s 2013 2013 Powell's Staff Top 5s

Staff Pick

Sampsell's gorgeous novel is an intricate and layered account of a relationship on its trajectory of either success or failure. The tiny snippets of interaction between the nameless couple begin to pile up and form the texture of this sometimes troubled, sometimes blissful union. The use of "you" and "I" as the only identifiers connects the reader to the characters in a profound way; this relationship is mine and yours and everyone's. Beautifully illustrating the slightly skewed way in which we somehow miss each other, or the glorious way in which we connect, This Is Between Us is a marvel: a two-way mirror that sees all. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

Chronicling five years of a troubled romance,This Is Between Us offers an intimate view of one couples struggle — from the illicit beginnings of sexual obsession to the fragile architecture of a pieced-together family. Full of sweet moments, emotional time bombs, unexpected humor, and blunt sexuality, the daily life of this man and woman, both recently divorced, with children and baggage in tow, emerges in all of its complexity. In this utterly engrossing debut novel, Kevin Sampsell delivers a confessional tale of love between two resilient people who have staked their hearts on each other.

Review

"This Is Between Us is an imperturbable, strange, melancholy (but never maudlin) piece of work. Kevin Sampsell straddles the line between candor and oversharing with an artful grace I found infectious." Patrick deWitt, author of Ablutions and The Sisters Brothers

Review

"This Is Between Us is an utterly unsentimental and deeply nuanced portrait of a relationship. With great delicacy and compassion, Kevin Sampsell unflinchingly examines love from every angle — sacred and profane, transcendent and mundane. This is Between Us asserts that messy, terrifying, imperfect love is worth it, after all. After reading it, you'll be a believer." Jillian Lauren, author of NY Times best-selling memoir Some Girls and Pretty

Review

"Here is the quiet, funny, heartbreak truth of Real Love. Read it and weep." Amelia Gray, author of Threats

Review

"In This Is Between Us Kevin Sampsell writes with grace and intimacy about the toughest subject of all — love — and manages to capture a relationship in its natural state: wry and wistful, strange and sexy, humming with desire, quaking with vulnerability." Jess Walter, #1 New York Times Best Selling author of Beautiful Ruins

Review

"This Is Between Us lets the reader under the covers of what it means to be in human relationships — not the lame-o story everyone so desperately wants to smoothly fit within, but the crumpled and stained and yet still beautiful version we actually live. Kevin Sampsell has written the pieces of our glorious failures and fleeting victories with such poignancy my head and my heart are laughing, bleeding, and, above all, dreaming onward. You want this book more than Facebook and chocolate. I love it with my whole body." Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water

Review

"Finely detailed and beautifully observed, This Is Between Us captures the humorous and heart-wrenching intimacies of two people in love. Kevin Sampsell sheds exquisite insight into the way a hundred ordinary moments in a relationship add up to something extraordinary and deeply meaningful. This novel is moving, surprising, and utterly absorbing — I couldn't put it down." Davy Rothbart, author of My Heart Is an Idiot, creator of Found Magazine, contributor to public radio's This American Life

Review

"Kevin Sampsell is the original unadorned romantic. His writing makes you love him, and it's easy all the way down. This Is Between Us really DOES feel like you and he are sharing these intimacies — sexy, honest moments that not everyone is lucky enough to experience."Susie Bright, author of Big Sex, Little Death

Synopsis

Spanning five years of one relationships ups and downs — the insecurities and passions, the sadness and joy, the hopes and disappointments — This Is Between Us is a detailed portrait of a man and a woman, both divorced, both with a child, and both trying to create a good life together in Portland, Oregon. Full of sweet moments, emotional time bombs, blunt sexuality, and laugh-out-loud scenes, This Is Between Us is an intimate collection of personal moments that come together to form a complete view of a troubled romance and the people whose hearts are at stake.

About the Author

Kevin Sampsell is the author of the memoir, A Common Pornography (2010 Harper Perennial), and the short story collection, Creamy Bullets (Chiasmus) and the editor of the anthology, Portland Noir (Akashic).

Sampsell is the publisher of the micropress, Future Tense Books, which he started in 1990. He has worked at Powell's Books as an events coordinator and the head of the small press section for fifteen years. His essays have appeared recently in Salon, The Faster Times, Jewcy, and The Good Men Project. His fiction has been published in McSweeney's, Nerve, Hobart, and in several anthologies. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and son.


4.8 6

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 4.8 (6 comments)

`
ashraf , December 16, 2013 (view all comments by ashraf)
This is the kind of book we should encode into sounds and shoot out to space for the aliens to pick up and understand who we are better. If we want to be honest with the aliens. So real and honest and observant and human, there's no easy arcs or sentiments here, but muddled, at-times cathartic cataloguings of the first five years in the first significant relationship for a mid-to-late thirties working class man and woman since their divorces. Each have a kid around ten that they bring into the relationship, along with their confusions from the last relationship, and ongoing confusions about how to be a person.

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brandawn , November 06, 2013
I just finished This is Between Us and I LOOOOOOOOOOVVVVVVEEEED it. Every spare moment I had the last three days was spent utterly absorbed in it. Kevin Sampsell gifts us with vignettes so utterly relatable (even when they're not) because his characters are so unabashedly HUMAN. I completely admire his organization, flashing us to moments in the past which provide depth and relevance we didn't even know we were missing. Sometimes, the imagery was so beautiful I re-read portions over and over just to soak them up. I'm recommending this book to anyone who's ever loved anything or anyone.

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hollylaycock , November 04, 2013
I read Kevin Sampsell’s This Is Between Us in two days, and I’m surprised it took me that long, honestly. Kevin Sampsell’s writing kept me up all night, and I eventually fell asleep with the book in my hand, not wanting to close it. Told in a series of vignettes, This is Between Us chronicles the relationship of a man and woman over five years, from their first days together to their times apart, and back again. Sampsell captures all the ins and outs of this relationship in a way that feels both uniquely special to the characters, as well as universally familiar to the reader. Reading this book was like a love affair in and of itself, but also felt like a retrospective of past relationships. Even though the characters in the book are older than myself and at different stages in life (divorced, with kids), their daily interactions are comparable to my own (23 year old college graduate). It is a book that I recommend to everyone�"my girlfriends, my parents, my younger brother. Just lovely!

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mollyedickinson , November 04, 2013
There is nothing slow about getting to know This is Between Us. One moment it is foreign, and the next you are dunked full body and naked into freezing water with the characters. The narrator is entirely frank and unmediated: sometimes I hated him and oftentimes I was just as baffled as he was by his partner and kids. Having these polarizing experiences with the narrator made me love the book even more. He doesn’t try to win you over like I sometimes feel characters are in books. But part of what makes this book so great is the episodic style. The vignettes are so easily accessible and so very personal because they are not contextualized in any greater narrative. What remains with me days after finishing the book, however, is how much this portrait of a relationship is based in the physical. Even when the couple is apart their interactions are rooted in their physical connection: touching a tree together, the feeling of the phone on his chest as her thoughts flow out of her head, riding a cow together in Sandy. The ending is just as simple and frank as the rest of the book: the narrator simply stops for a moment to breathe. There is no triumphant feeling of having witnessed something happen when you close the book. It is more simple and beautiful than that. It is the feeling that for a brief while your life overlapped with the characters’, and that’s that.

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Lauren Perez , November 04, 2013 (view all comments by Lauren Perez)
Devoured this book in a night--it combines guilty, voyeuristic pleasure with great prose. You ride in the narrator's head through the beginning of a relationship, its near dissolution and ultimate tenderness. Sampsell writes so honestly it feels reckless.

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David Atkinson , October 30, 2013 (view all comments by David Atkinson)
I've been waiting and waiting to read this book. I heard Sampsell read at an offsite event at AWP Chicago and I swear he said it was from a book he was working on. It just struck me heavy and I had to see the whole thing. Since then, I've been watching and watching for the novel to come out. I just couldn't wait, and then it was here. I'm virtually certain this is the book that piece he read was from, though I can't say for certain or whether, if so, that piece made it in the final book. Regardless, this is exactly what I was waiting for. There is an oddness to the stream of thoughts, though still completely normal and human, that pulls me right in. Honestly, it feels like I'm intruding in a way, though I still feel welcome. It's so intimate and so sweeping: funny, embarrassing, awkward, tender, erotic, and so much else. A love story really can't be simple, clearly defined boundaries between only exact people and only one emotion at a time, and Sampsell doesn't try to force it to be so. Instead Sampsell somehow manages the full gamut, everything. Some moments are hysterical and some are beautifully heartbreaking. I'm so glad I was watching for this one. It's absolutely worth it.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9781935639701
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
11/12/2013
Publisher:
TIN HOUSE BOOKS
Pages:
240
Height:
.80IN
Width:
4.80IN
Thickness:
1.00
Author:
Kevin Sampsell
Author:
Kevin Sampsell
Subject:
Literature-A to Z

Ships free on qualified orders.
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List Price:$15.95
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