Defenestrate by Renee Branum - ISBN: 9781529114485
Paperback
A family’s falling curse, a brother’s fall, can they break free?

Defenestrate

The debut to fall for in 2023

$22.99

  • Paperback

    240 pages

  • Release Date

    16 May 2023

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Summary

A wildly inventive, exhilarating debut narrated by a young woman meditating on her Czech ancestors’ ‘falling curse’, her twin brother’s fall from a window, and the malleable, breakable bonds keeping her family from falling apart.

There’s a superstition in our family about falling…

Marta’s great-great-grandfather Jiri was said to have given a gentle push to the back of a stonemason for having wronged him. The stonemason fell to his death and the family fled Prague for the Ameri…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9781529114485
ISBN-10:1529114489
Author:Renee Branum
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Imprint:Vintage
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:240
Release Date:16 May 2023
Weight:195g
Dimensions:198mm x 129mm x 15mm
What They're Saying

Critics Review

Ren

Defenestrate is an original and engaging novel from a fresh new voice, one deeply committed to understanding the beguiling experience of twinship, and to writing twins from the inside. – Jude Cook * Guardian *
Original…with an idiosyncratic humour that reminded me of Ottessa Moshfegh… there are some wonderful digressions about…comic genius that shouldn’t really work, but do. – Alasdair Lees * Daily Telegraph, Books to Look Out For 2022 *
Branum is a weaver of light, a writer of extraordinary sensitivity and insight. Her obsessions are contagious, and her prose is electric. – Karen Russell
Renée Branum writes with exceptional wisdom and tenderness about inheritance, obsession, and the power of storytelling… Defenestrate builds to a symphonic, exhilarating end. – Sanaë Lemoine, author of THE MARGOT AFFAIR
Branum’s prose lights up the imagination, every line a discovery and a pleasure. Beyond simple elegance or precision, she weaves sense and simile so stunningly, you have to throw your hands up and say damn! – Dina Nayeri, author of THE UNGRATEFUL REFUGEE and REFUGE
The wonders of this beautiful novel come to you the way ghosts do, almost invisibly, and from the past. The voice is haunted too, by family secrets, the history of Prague, an addiction, and much else… This is a fine and wonderful book. – Charles Baxter, author of THE SUN COLLECTIVE
An original, idiosyncratic debut * Daily Telegraph, Summer Reads of 2022 *

About The Author

Renee Branum

Renee Branum’s stories and essays have appeared in several publications including The Georgia Review, Narrative Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Best American Nonrequired Reading. She has earned MFAs in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Creative Nonfiction from the University of Montana. She was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Prose Fellowship in 2020. She currently lives in Cincinnati where she is pursuing a PhD in Fiction.

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