by Leni Zumas
First published 2012
Quinn sits in the wreckage of her music career, twenty years removed from the tragedy that split her childhood in two. Her younger sister died when Quinn was young, leaving a wound that never healed. Now in her thirties, Quinn watches her punk rock stardom crumble after a decade of decline. The ghosts refuse to stay buried. Memory and imagination blur together as Quinn tries to hold herself together with increasingly desperate methods. She creates strange coping mechanisms, but nothing works. The past keeps pushing through, demanding attention. Quinn must face what she has spent years avoiding. The shadows contain more than she wants to acknowledge, and they will not be ignored any longer.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: ghosts, memory, unreliable-narrator
352 pages · Paperback · Tin House
Content warnings: mental-illness