What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us
Laura van den Berg
Release Date: October 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0982631812
Price: $16.95
eBook Price: $7.99
Click here to read an excerpt from
What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us.
DESCRIPTION
Selected for Barnes & Noble's "Discover Great New Writers" program, 2009
Finalist for the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award, 2009
Longlisted for The Story Prize, 2009
Shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor Award, 2010
The stories in Laura van den Berg's rich and inventive debut illuminate the intersection of the mythic and the mundane: A failed actress takes a job as a Bigfoot impersonator. A botanist seeking a rare flower crosses paths with a group of men hunting the Loch Ness Monster. A disillusioned missionary in Africa grapples with grief and a growing obsession with a creature rumored to live in the forests of the Congo. And in the title story, a young woman traveling with her scientist mother in Madagascar confronts her burgeoning sexuality and her dream of becoming a long-distance swimmer.
Rendered with precision and longing, the women who narrate these starkly beautiful stories are consumed with searching—for absolution, for solace, for the flash of extraordinary in the ordinary that will forever alter their lives.
ADVANCE PRAISE
"In her debut collection, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, Laura van den Berg finds the tension between science and magic and walks it like a tightrope. These stories find the common ground between myth and the human condition, exploring the inner lives of men and women who cross paths with the Loch Ness monster, or Bigfoot, or lemurs in Madagascar whose screams can turn a heart into stone. It is a fantastic and fascinating world, full of discoveries and moments of wonder, a book meant for the explorer in all of us. Any reader will be glad to have found it." —Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief
" What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us is a lovely, remarkable book, full of people who strive mightily to believe in things—Bigfoot, the Lochness and Lake Michigan monsters, a tunnel leading to the other side of the world, husbands, wives, lovers, parents—they shouldn't. But Laura van den Berg lets her characters believe, and believes in them, and makes us believe, and care, too. Calm, wry, and compassionate, somehow all at once, this book is impossible to resist, and I'd bet big money that we'll be talking about Laura van den Berg and her fiction for years to come." —Brock Clarke, author of An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England
"There is a special kind of magic in the writing of Laura van den Berg, a damp-eyed sorceress who blends the mythological with the everyday, buoyant playfulness with lacerating sadness. Each sentence reads like a beautiful bruise smeared across pages as pale as the bodies that so often strip off their clothes and tangle together in these tender, elegant stories." —Benjamin Percy, author of Refresh, Refresh and The Language of Elk
"Discussions about debuts often allude to promise, as if to imply that better things will come, but in this particular case, there’s no need to wait. Laura van den Berg’s talents are already fully formed, and spectacular. This collection has searing emotions, a technical virtuosity, and a lyrical ferocity that dazzle us with undeniable force. Breathtakingly, we follow her characters as they seek escape in far-flung locales, both real and imagined, searching for that rarest of species—the feeling that they belong." —Don Lee, author of Wrack and Ruin and Yellow
REVIEWS
"van den Berg taps into her characters’ losses with an impressive clarity...these tales are the work of a notable author finding her voice." —Publishers Weekly
"Stunning, desolate, and unforgettable." —Booklist (starred review)
"These characters lose themselves, intentionally and otherwise, but they've got the courage to go about finding themselves, or changed versions of themselves, in the elegant process of drowning, cleansing, and rebirth." —The Believer
“The striking and affecting stories in Laura van den Berg’s recently published debut have a restless, adventurer’s spirit. They’re peopled with field researchers, scientists, and world travelers…And yet, their themes couldn’t be closer to home: fraught family ties, sexual longing, belief in the unknown.” —The Daily Beast
“…a young writer with talent to burn; the beauty of her writing is matched only by the fierce emotional empathy for her characters.” —The Courier-Journal
“The mysteries of science and the mysteries of the heart—perhaps nowhere have they been so proactively linked as in this debut short-story collection.” —Barnes & Noble "Discover Great New Writers" description
“Van den Berg has achieved something miraculous with What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, taking us to the very near dimension of everyday life through kaleidoscope binoculars. Her characters are imbued with the imaginative power of a Wonka glass elevator. Through their eyes, we begin to see all possible worlds—suspension of disbelief becomes a lifestyle.” —The Weekly Dig
“…it is with the final and eponymous What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us that the full possibility of van den Berg's writing is realized. This story of a woman who drags her teenage daughter (the narrator, here) to Madagascar in search of nature's most beguiling creatures, finds a perfect balance between the metaphorical and the real, as the daughter is both plagued and compelled by the vast expanse of water that surrounds her. With exquisite attention to detail, van den Berg creates a fantastic world underscored with restrained gravitas—a fitting end to a lovely debut.” —L Magazine
“It's a beautiful, moving, and accomplished collection—if the short story really is dead, nobody told van den Berg. Thank God.” —Bookslut
"Reading What the World Will Look Like, you may find yourself feeling as unsure and hungry as the people in it…Though the characters tell you..that they don’t understand the world, you understand them, and are reminded that no one is ever as alone as they think." —The Rumpus
“The recurring theme of water in Laura van den Berg’s debut collection is appropriate since while reading each story, you will likely find that you’re holding your breath…Ultimately, what allows each of the eight stories to breathe on their own is their ability to create those imperfect moments when submersion into the unknown is sometimes the only option left.” —Oxford American