The Exhibition of Persephone Q: A Novel

ISBN: 1250785936

Author: Stevens, Jessi Jezewska

Condition: Used

About the AuthorJessi Jezewska Stevens holds a BA in mathematics from Middlebury College and an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, Guernica, BOMB, and elsewhere. She lives in New York, where she teaches fiction. The Exhibition of Persephone Q is her debut novel.Product DescriptionA New York Times Book Review Editors ChoiceA WALL STREET JOURNAL AND VOGUE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2020"A triumph of tone and intelligence. Percy Q's perspective is skewed and searching at once, and through her eyes, we see afresh not only New York's post-9/11 landscape but also the world of art, and love, and the process of becoming." -Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric DisturbancesPercy is pregnant. She hasnt told a soul. Probably she should tell her husband-certainly she means to-but one night she wakes up to find she no longer recognizes him. Now, instead of sleeping, Percy is spending her nights taking walks through her neighborhood, all the while fretting over her marriage, her impending motherhood, and the sinister ways the city is changing.Amid this alienation-from her husband, home, and rapidly changing body-a package arrives. In it: an exhibition catalog for a photography show. The photographs consist of a series of digitally manipulated images of a woman lying on a bed in a red room. It takes a moment for even Percy to notice that the woman is herself . . . but no one else sees the resemblance.Percy must now come to grips with the fundamental question of identity in the digital age: To what extent do we own our own image, and to what extent is that image shaped by the eyes of others?Capturing perfectly the haunted atmosphere of Manhattan immediately after 9/11-and the simmering insanity of America ever since-Jessi Jezewska Stevens's The Exhibition of Persephone Q is a darkly witty satire about how easy it is to lose ownership of our own selves.ReviewI was magnetized not just by a great story, but one that felt uncannily timely...Percy is forced to confront questions of identity and selfhood that feel both poignant and meta during a time of crisis. -Michael Baron, Literary HubStevens has combined the surreal with the actual to create a book painfully relevant to this new age of female testimony . . . A fantastic debut. -Noelle McManus, Womens Review of BooksStevens debut is a compelling and visually rich novel that explores alienation in all its forms. The books poetic language and realistically absurd characters will keep readers intrigued until the final page. -Leah von Essen, Booklist"Finally a book that exposes how dull Occams Razor has become after all these years. Adroitly crafted, The Exhibition of Persephone Q is a fun, urbane look at the faulty heuristics of perception and authenticity. Proof positive that in the age of Photoshop and Trumpian Denialism, the simplest explanation no longer applies." -Paul Beatty, author of The Sellout"An intimate and obsessive exploration of the act of seeing and the act of being seen. Its also a metaphysical detective story, an investigation of absence and voids, and a darkly comedic treatise on the art world and living in a series of apartments and rooms in New York . . . The Exhibition of Persephone Q mostly reminded me of taking a walk at night alongside a brilliant companion who has a keen mind, and an eye for absurdity." -Patty Yumi Cottrell, The Believer"Stevenss writing proves that both time and technology are best understood in retrospect, sequences made logical long after each moment has passed. The novel has a romantic slowness, unfurling gracefully, little by little, to show how quickly the present gives way to the future, or concedes to the past." -Haley Mlotek, New York Times"The Exhibition of Persephone Q is a resonant and uncanny novel, a moving meditation on how casually one version of reality detaches from the truth; it peels away naturally, like damp wallpape