Island City
Mar 2023 · Macmillan + ORM
Ebook
290
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
About this ebook
A woman spills the story of her life to a bar full of strangers, in the acerbic first novel from Laura Adamczyk.
Anything can become the story of your life if you let it, and I suppose this became mine.
In Island City, a wry, wistful woman, estranged from her family, sells her belongings and moves back to her hometown in the Midwest. To her, it's the "perfect place to give up." She wants to get rid of everything—her stuff, her ambitions. Before making a "messy exit," she holes up in a dark bar and tells her stories to an audience of indifferent strangers. There's the time the river dried up and you could walk across its bed; the day her sister got clobbered at the nursing home; when her dad got cancer, then Alzheimer's, then cancer again. Now she's forgetting things the way he did, words slipping away. That third drink isn't helping.
Laura Adamczyk, whose writing is "super weird" and "super unsettling" (Eugenia Williamson, The Boston Globe), creates a full portrait of a person, even as the image blurs and fades. Delivered as a booze-soaked monologue, Island City is a funny, devastating first novel, one that bristles and burns with true feeling.
Anything can become the story of your life if you let it, and I suppose this became mine.
In Island City, a wry, wistful woman, estranged from her family, sells her belongings and moves back to her hometown in the Midwest. To her, it's the "perfect place to give up." She wants to get rid of everything—her stuff, her ambitions. Before making a "messy exit," she holes up in a dark bar and tells her stories to an audience of indifferent strangers. There's the time the river dried up and you could walk across its bed; the day her sister got clobbered at the nursing home; when her dad got cancer, then Alzheimer's, then cancer again. Now she's forgetting things the way he did, words slipping away. That third drink isn't helping.
Laura Adamczyk, whose writing is "super weird" and "super unsettling" (Eugenia Williamson, The Boston Globe), creates a full portrait of a person, even as the image blurs and fades. Delivered as a booze-soaked monologue, Island City is a funny, devastating first novel, one that bristles and burns with true feeling.
A woman spills the story of her life to a bar full of strangers, in the acerbic first novel from Laura Adamczyk.
Anything can become the story of your life if you let it, and I suppose this became mine.
In Island City, a wry, wistful woman, estranged from her family, sells her belongings and mo...
Discover more
About the author
Laura Adamczyk is the author of the short-story collection Hardly Children (FSG Originals, 2018). Her work has appeared in the Chicago Reader, Guernica, McSweeney's, and other publications. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.
Laura Adamczyk is the author of the short-story collection Hardly Children (FSG Originals, 2018). Her work has appeared in the Chicago Reader, Guernica, McSweeney's, and other publications. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
