Advanced Praise:
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"Gorgeous debut..."
— Jenny Boully, author of Betwixt and Between, The Body, and more
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"McCarthy’s book is fearless, brave and a godsend to readers.”
— Rebecca Brown, author of The Gifts of the Body (winner of the LAMBDA Literary award) and Not Heaven, Somewhere Else
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“The searing prose and arresting visuals of the hybrid form are nothing short of orchestral in McCarthy’s hands.”
—Piper J. Daniels, author of Ladies Lazarus (finalist for a LAMBDA Literary award & a PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award)
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"A Summoning is a vital work and an admirable debut."
—Renee Gladman, author of Calamities and the Ravicka Series
Can we exorcise a memory? Can we purge those that are a danger to us?
Rewriting moments of trauma while coming to terms with a family in the early stages of memory loss, A Summoning muddles the line between fiction and nonfiction, poetry and prose, text and image. Each segment is fragmented but fluid, weaving in and out to show how malleable and unreliable memory can be; how it manifests in the body, mentally, physically, emotionally; how it mutates and betrays as we age.
A conceptual, psychological experiment focused on memory, Nicole McCarthy's collection lays the groundwork explaining the physiology of memory and how it changes in our bodies.
to start: an invocation
the Greek goddess Mnemosyne assists in the process of summoning or re-writing memory
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she starts and ends the book with an encounter
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"Would you re-write a memory if you could?"
“McCarthy does an incredible job blending the informational with the emotional and creates a strong foundation for affective or sentimental attachment to the rest of her story.”
—DIAGRAM
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