Caren Beilin Libri

Exploring the transformation of youthful dreams into the stark realities of adulthood, this work reflects on the journey of writing as both a refuge and a haunting experience. The narrative juxtaposes the idealized vision of life as a writer with the painful truths of loss and disillusionment. As the past fades and relationships dissolve, the remnants of life become a chaotic and vivid encyclopedia of experiences, blending hallucinatory elements with raw emotion. It captures the essence of existence as both miraculous and tragic, revealing the complexities of identity and creativity.

One day Iris, an adjunct at a city arts college, receives a terrible package: recently unearthed letters that her father had written to her in her teens, in which he blames her for their family’s crises. Driven by the raw fact of receiving these devastating letters not once but twice in a lifetime, and in a panic of chronic pain brought on by rheumatoid arthritis, Iris escapes to the countryside—or some absurdist version of it. Nazi cows, Picassos used as tampons, and a pair of arthritic feet that speak in the voices of Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pécuchet are standard fare in this beguiling novel of odd characters, surprising circumstances, and intuitive leaps, all brought together in profoundly serious ways.