First published 2008
The sleepless speakers in these poems wander through a mythical America where cathedrals lie in ruins and war threatens on the horizon. They move between destructive relationships and moments of aesthetic revelation, searching for authentic identity in a world that offers both danger and possibility. One voice chronicles the aftermath of a love affair that left emotional wreckage. Another obsesses over art and beauty while external conflicts encroach. These insomniac narrators speak with dry wit about their experiences, refusing to surrender their belief in imagination's transformative power even as they confront personal and collective destruction. Their coming of age unfolds against America's fallen monuments, where they must choose between cynicism and hope.
Genres: american-fiction, american, poetry, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: America
Period: 21st-century
88 pages · Paperback · W. W. Norton & Company
Content warnings: depression, mental-illness