Keynote
A stylistically dazzling novel about objects, people, and the forces and seams between them.
Book Title
The Box
Subtitle
A Novel
Cover Image
- "Wong displays formidable skill... intriguing us with subtle but unmistakable humor, drawing us into the highly wrought maze of her novel and making it fun."—David Szalay, The New York Times Book Review
Body
Of course, each thing has its own sides to every story.
In a dark and crooked lane in an unnamed city where it never ceases to snow, a small white box falls from a coat pocket. It is made of paper strips woven tightly together; there is no apparent way to open it without destroying it. What compels a passing witness, a self-described anthrophobe not inclined to engage with other people, to pick up the box and chase after the stranger who dropped it?
The Box follows an impenetrable rectangle as it changes hands in a collapsing metropolis, causing confluences, conflicts, rifts, and disasters. Different narrators, each with a distinctive voice, give secondhand accounts of decisive moments in the box’s life. From the anthrophobe to a newly hired curator of a renowned art collection, from a couple who own an antiquarian bookshop to a hotel bartender hiding from a terrible past, the storytellers repeat rumors and rely on faulty memories, grasping at something that continually escapes them. Haunting their recollections is one mysterious woman who, convinced of the box’s good or evil powers, pursues it with deadly desperation.
In this mesmerizing, intricately constructed puzzle of a novel, Mandy-Suzanne Wong challenges our understanding of subjects and objects, of cause and effect. Is it only humans who have agency? What is or isn’t animate? What do we value and what do we discard?
In a dark and crooked lane in an unnamed city where it never ceases to snow, a small white box falls from a coat pocket. It is made of paper strips woven tightly together; there is no apparent way to open it without destroying it. What compels a passing witness, a self-described anthrophobe not inclined to engage with other people, to pick up the box and chase after the stranger who dropped it?
The Box follows an impenetrable rectangle as it changes hands in a collapsing metropolis, causing confluences, conflicts, rifts, and disasters. Different narrators, each with a distinctive voice, give secondhand accounts of decisive moments in the box’s life. From the anthrophobe to a newly hired curator of a renowned art collection, from a couple who own an antiquarian bookshop to a hotel bartender hiding from a terrible past, the storytellers repeat rumors and rely on faulty memories, grasping at something that continually escapes them. Haunting their recollections is one mysterious woman who, convinced of the box’s good or evil powers, pursues it with deadly desperation.
In this mesmerizing, intricately constructed puzzle of a novel, Mandy-Suzanne Wong challenges our understanding of subjects and objects, of cause and effect. Is it only humans who have agency? What is or isn’t animate? What do we value and what do we discard?
List Price
$17.00
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About the Author
Credit: Heather Kettenis
Praise
- "Wong’s inventive latest is a feast of knotty sentences. A physical and metaphorical box, small enough to fit into a pocket, travels through multiple locations as a series of narrators share observations and philosophical tidbits... Fans of experimental fiction ought to check this out."—Publishers Weekly
"Wong delivers something rare, evoking a creepy sort of glamour around books and stories, as if craving a good read is itself sometimes a form of dark desire."—Kirkus
- “Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s novel traces the movement of a mysterious white box made of woven paper, which can’t be opened without destroying it. The elegant mysteries only expand from there.”—Maggie Lange, Bustle
