A Questionable Shape [Paperback] [Jun 05, 2014] Bennett Sims - Softcover

Bennett Sims

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1780745850 ISBN 13: 9781780745855

Publisher: Oneworld Publications, 2014

Synopsis

BOOKS

About this title

About the Author

Bennett Sims is the author of the novel A Questionable Shape, which received the Bard Fiction Prize and was a finalist for The Believer Book Award, and the collection White Dialogues. He is a recipient of a Michener-Copernicus Society Fellowship. His fiction has appeared in A Public Space, Conjunctions, Electric Literature, Tin House, and Zoetrope: All-Story, as well as in the Pushcart Prize Anthology. He has taught at Bard College, Grinnell College, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Review

*Bard Fiction Prize 2014
*The Believer Book Award Finalist
*One of the Best Books of 2013 --Complex Magazine, Book Riot, Slate, The L Magazine, NPR's 'On Point,' Salon

"Equal parts David Foster Wallace and Richard Matheson [...] A Questionable Shape is certainly the first Proustian zombie novel, but hopefully not the last horror novel of ideas."
--Slate

"Bennett Sims delivers a disquisition on the idea of the zombie, combining low and high culture in a firework display of extended metaphors, obscure vocabulary and intellectual sparks...[A Questionable Shape] is ambitious and thought-provoking."
--The Guardian

"A Questionable Shape is a novel for those who read in order to wake up to life, not escape it, for those who themselves like to explore the frontiers of the unsayable. [A Questionable Shape] is more than just a novel. It is literature. It is life."
--The Millions

"A Questionable Shape is a rewriting of the genre in rather literal sense...Sims's zombie novel perhaps contains the highest proportion of great descriptions of light per page since Proust."
--Los Angeles Review of Books

"The smartest zombie novel since Colson Whitehead's Zone One."
--Ron Charles, Washington Post

"A Questionable Shape presents the yang to the yin of Whitehead's Zone One, with chess games, a dinner invitation, and even a romantic excursion. Echoes of [Thomas] Bernhard's hammering circularity and [David Foster] Wallace's bright mind that can't stop making connections are both present. The point is where the mind goes, and, in that respect, Sims has his thematic territory down cold."
--The Daily Beast

"Evokes the power of David Foster Wallace with a narrative that's cerebral, strangely beautiful, philosophical, and pretty, well, brilliant."
--Bustle

"Unlike anything I'd ever read. Underlying the seemingly quirky subject matter of Sims's novel is a notable linguistic dynamism and impressive command of philosophical challenges. Sims' work has a life of its own."
--Full Stop

"Bennett Sims is insanely talented. Over and over again, Sims demonstrates astonishing skill with image. In the details of his characters, Sims is nothing short of brilliant. [A Questionable Shape is] an extraordinarily prodigious debut novel."
--Electric Literature's 'The Outlet' 

"My favorite novel of 2013... complex, erudite, and profoundly affecting. A Questionable Shape, Sims' debut, reveals him to be a writer of great range, depth, and intelligence, who has only just begun to show us what he has to say... Groundbreaking."
--The American Reader

"Sims demonstrates he isn't just smart--he's brilliant; his book's not beautiful--it's gorgeous. It's sensitive, insightful and ruminative, which aren't always things you get to say about zombie fiction, let alone most books."
--The L Magazine

"Brilliantly sensitive, whip-smart... Sims' genius lies in how he builds a terrifically engrossing and utterly unique novel, not in spite, but rather because of the familiarity of the material. A book that is just as touching and funny as it is riotously smart."
--The Rumpus

"[A Questionable Shape is] much more W.G. Sebald than George A. Romero. And I loved it. Bennett Sims: you are a brilliant writer. A Questionable Shape was a huge success for me. It's easily one of the best books I'll read this year."
--Book Riot

"Bennett Sims is a writer fearsomely equipped with an intellectual and linguistic range to rival a young Nabokov's, Nicholson Baker's gift for miniaturistic intaglio, and an arsenal of virtuosities entirely his own. A Questionable Shape announces a literary talent of genre-wrecking brilliance."
--Wells Tower    

Edition details

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1780745850
• ISBN 13: 9781780745855
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224