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The Shimmering Go-Between: A Novel

This imaginatively unhinged yet formally controlled contemporary fable would set the record if Willful Suspension of Disbelief were an Olympic event. If this OMG exploration of WTF were edible, it would be an inside-out eel roll served atop a Russian doll. Set at the dawn of the Internet age, this semi-perverted post-YA novel dramatizes the struggle between impulsiveness and restraint. Never has a semi-illustrated story about longing, loss, and love been so good-natured, inventive, and insane.

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"The novel’s title, taken from a Nabokov quote, gives us some insight into what Klein is doing here: Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall tale, there is a shimmering go-between. The 'go-between' is the art of literature or the place where belief and disbelief overlap. Being asked to believe the unbelievable, in the words of Wilson, is 'like being told you’re a werewolf when you’ve never once awoken with a mouthful of chicken feathers.' It’s almost like being told you can Wile E. Coyote to the bottom of the canyon, hit the ground at 100 mph and crawl out of the Wile E.-shaped crater with only the slightest of headaches. Klein leads the reader to a ledge of unbelievability and dares the reader to believe. Isn’t this exactly what magic realism should do? Klein does it so well ... and then he pushes you off that ledge. Giggling."

— — Christopher Allen, Word Riot

"The Shimmering Go-Between will appeal to fans of Kafka and Nabakov as readily as it will to fans of Chuck Palahniuk and Etgar Keret. With impeccable prose, Klein juggles a variety of extreme personalities and viewpoints, switching narrative perspective with ease, always leaving the reader with unforgettable images, as in the opening scene of a prepubescent Dolores who’s decided to place a cooled light bulb in her mouth, wondering what it’d feel like if she bit down."

— — Brittany Harmon, The Philadelphia Review of Books

  • Format
  • paperback
  • Pages
  • 270
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780991546909
  • Genres
  • fiction, novels
  • Release date
  • 2014