Author: Chadburn, Melissa
Binding: Hardcover
Number Of Pages: 352
Release Date: 12-04-2022
Details: Product Description “Addictive and headlong” (Lauren Groff), A Tiny Upward Shove is inspired by Melissa Chadburn's Filipino heritage and its folklore, as it traces the too-short life of a young, cast-off woman transformed by death into an agent of justice―or mercy."My grandmother, sitting at her doily-covered table, marmalade on her cheek, explained that the aswang is all the evil bad things that a town or a society would want to deny―eventually it has to come out, has to be personified into something or the truth will reveal itself."Marina Salles’s life does not end the day she wakes up dead.Instead, in the course of a moment, she is transformed into the stuff of myth, the stuff of her grandmother's old Filipino stories―an aswang. She spent her life on the margins, knowing very little about her own life, let alone the lives of others; she was shot like a pinball through a childhood of loss, a veteran of Child Protective Services and a survivor, but always reacting, watching from a distance. Death brings her into the hearts and minds of those she has known―even her killer―as she is able to access their memories and to see anew the meaning of her own. In the course of these pages she traces back through her life, finally able to see what led these lost souls to this crushingly inevitable conclusion.In A Tiny Upward Shove, the debut novelist Melissa Chadburn charts the heartbreaking journeys of two of society’s cast-offs as they find their way to each other and their roles as criminal and victim. What does it mean to be on the brink? When are those moments that change not only our lives but our very selves? And how, in this impossible world, can we rouse ourselves toward mercy? Review “A Tiny Upward Shove is gloriously voiced, the kind of addictive and headlong novel that makes reading into a wild bronco ride. Melissa Chadburn has it, the spark; her first novel is strange and tender and not to be missed.”―Lauren Groff, author of Matrix“Melissa Chadburn writes with tenderness and grit, and A Tiny Upward Shove is a beautiful and brave novel about powerlessness, longing, and that universal, unavoidable desire to be loved. Let this book happen to you.”―Edan Lepucki, author of Woman No. 17“There is no soft or easy way to reveal the truth of some lives: that suffering does not earn survival. The women of Melissa Chadburn’s gorgeous, wrecking debut novel don’t find much mercy in the streets of their stories, or other people. Still, I could not look away. Her telling held me captive and reminded me that art is its own kind of mercy. The hardest stories need a writer like this to tell them―brilliant and brave enough to lead us into the darkest corners of this life, to find what glowing parts of us persist, in any darkness.”―Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood“Melissa Chadburn has written a novel that grabs your attention and won’t let it go―it’s fueled by a wild, jagged energy and an exuberant mixing of cultures and a narrator whose frank, poignant voice will keep echoing in your head.”―Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, author of Likes“Melissa Chadburn is a fiercely original, brave writer. She writes with the voice of the survivor she is, finding the lyrical and the deeply human in seemingly dark and impenetrable landscapes.”―Héctor Tobar, author of The Last Great Road Bum“In A Tiny Upward Shove, Melissa Chadburn leans into the center of a bad dream. Go with her. Keep going.”―Sia, singer/songwriter“Melissa Chadburn gives words to a life’s sorrow, breathing into a life’s pain what novels provide―detailed and observant empathy. In sharing the trauma of a haunted and hunted soul, the novel gives back to society its terrible face.”―Gina Apostol, author of Insurrecto“Melissa Chadburn’s A Tiny Upward Shove is haunting, teeming with grit, humor, and longing. A mesmerizing work in which beauty and ugliness and realism and mythology coexist. Chadburn is an emerging literary force!”―Jaquira Díaz, author of Ordinary Girls“Melissa Chadburn’s wr
EAN: 9780374277758
Package Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 1.0 inches
Languages: English