“One day, the woman passed by the empty lot and saw one stray dog humping another, surrounded by flowers. And she thought: ‘I also want a transformative friendship.’”
The woman lives on a cul-de-sac with her lover and her dog. She is smart and sensible. She buys groceries and goes to work. And she finds herself reliving her childhood memories while she waits—for what, she is not sure.
In the tradition of Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti, The Ballad of Big Feeling reveals the mind of a woman perched before middle age and confronting the hidden contradictions and intricacies of everyday life.
In the hands of an exciting new writer, Ari Braverman, it's a tale both spare and spacious, textured and poetic, frustrating and funny—a delicately crafted volume that will linger in the mind of the reader long after they've put it down. It is, in short, a startling and assured debut.
“Brilliant, quietly explosive and slyly purposeful, like a controlled avalanche … It’s an auspicious debut.”
—Paul Beatty, author of The Sellout
“Braverman spins images that pull that perfect trick of making the familiar feel fresh … It’s a thrill to see that language can still be made to help us feel the rush of life anew.”
—Lynn Steger Strong, New York Times Book Review
“An original, compelling, and enigmatic first novel.”
—Kirkus
“The Ballad of Big Feeling reveals, in intimate and surprising detail, the strangeness of the everyday.”
—Bomb Magazine
“Braverman’s debut novel is committed to exploding the interior voice that festers inside human loneliness … The roaring quietness of this book is one that is just right for this moment.”
—Believer Magazine
“I can’t think of a young writer more exactingly hilarious and insightful than Ari Braverman.”
—Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet