Grove Press
Grove Press
Grove Press
NEW!
From the award-winning author of We Ride Upon Sticks and When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East, a genre-bending novel of literary horror set in Antarctica that explores abandonment, guilt, and survival in the shadow of America’s racial legacy
Striker isn’t entirely sure she should be on this luxury Antarctic cruise. A Black film scout, her mission is to photograph potential locations for a big-budget movie about Ernest Shackleton’s doomed expedition. Along the way, she finds private if cautious amusement in the behavior of both the native wildlife and the group of wealthy, mostly white tourists who have chosen to spend Christmas on the Weddell Sea.
But when a kayaking excursion goes horribly wrong, Striker and a group of survivors become stranded on a remote island along the Antarctic Peninsula, a desolate setting complete with boiling geothermal vents and vicious birds. Soon the hostile environment will show each survivor their true face, and as the polar ice thaws in the unseasonable warmth, the group’s secrets, prejudices, and inner demons will also emerge, including revelations from Striker’s past that could irrevocably shatter her world.
With her signature lyricism and humor, Quan Barry offers neither comfort nor closure as she questions the limits of the human bonds that connect us to one another, affirming there are no such things as haunted places, only haunted people. Gripping, lucid, and imaginative, The Unveiling is an astonishing ghost story about the masks we wear and the truths we hide even from ourselves.
“Mesmerizing and delicate . . . A dazzling achievement . . . The rhythms are more like prayer than prose, and the puzzlelike plot yields revelations in unassuming sentences that a skimming eye could easily miss . . . The unlikeliness of the novel is exactly its magic.”—New York Times, on When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East
“Engrossing . . . At its heart, When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East asks questions fundamental to the human experience that will resonate regardless of the reader’s familiarity with Mongolia, and it’s bound to be beloved by book clubs.”—Boston Globe
“A wholly original, enlightening read.”—TIME, on When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East
“Spiritual and emotional . . . A journey worth taking . . . A peaceful and edifying story that can be endlessly mined for deeper meaning.”—The Rumpus, on When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East
“A dreamlike and lyrical journey steeped in the tenets of Tibetan Buddhism.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review), on When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East
“An imaginative tour de force . . . Evincing the same dazzling talents that won high critical praise for We Ride Upon Sticks, Barry vastly expands readers’ horizons, both geographical and metaphysical.”—Booklist (starred review), on When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East
“The expansive imagination of Massachusetts-raised Quan Barry knows no bounds.”—WBUR, on When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East
“Quirky, comic, and painstakingly detailed . . . Barry writes with a sustained, manic energy.”—New York Times Book Review, on We Ride Upon Sticks
“Spellbinding, wickedly fun . . . Each sentence fizzes like a just-opened bottle of New Coke.” —O, The Oprah Magazine, on We Ride Upon Sticks
“A perfect blend of aesthetic and narrative pleasure . . . Very funny and a little angry and a lot of fun.”—Maris Kreizman, on We Ride Upon Sticks
“You may come for the sizzle of genre elements here, but you’ll stay for the rich bond forged by friendships on the field, the memories of misguided youth and the power of belief.” —Variety, on We Ride Upon Sticks
“A delightful, hilarious ode to the ‘80s.” —Ms. Magazine, on We Ride Upon Sticks
“The prose style is neon and the laughs do not stop. I feel like the author wrote the entire book with an evil grin on her face.”—Vulture, on We Ride Upon Sticks
“Surprising and ultimately delightful . . . The narration is playful, making the emotional crescendos even more satisfying . . . Barry is a skilled storyteller and sentence artist who embraces irreverence where irreverence is due.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune, on We Ride Upon Sticks
“Almost too much fun to be allowed . . . Truly a delight in every way.”—Literary Hub, on We Ride Upon Sticks
“Charming . . . [Barry is] careful not to let nostalgia paper over the real ways in which things were worse in the 1980s, particularly for queer people and people of color.” —NPR, on We Ride Upon Sticks
“Touching, hilarious, and deeply satisfying.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review), on We Ride Upon Sticks
“Haunting and beautiful . . . A deft mix of folklore, magical realism and stories of struggle.”—Los Angeles Times, on She Weeps Every Time You’re Born
“Fascinating. . . . Deeply affecting novel.”—New York Times Book Review, on She Weeps Every Time You’re Born
“The great beauty of Quan Barry’s novel is in its transcendence . . . Its attention to all the stories, whose sum is not darkness but light, not death but life.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune, on She Weeps Every Time You’re Born
“Lyrical, luminous, and suspenseful . . . Rendered with shocking clarity and pathos on the page . . . This is a Vietnam of myriad faces, myriad aspects, beautiful and terrible all at once.”—Jesmyn Ward, on She Weeps Every Time You’re Born
“Barry’s absorbing debut paints a vivid, complex portrait of a land and an era that often elude American understanding.”—Marie Claire, on She Weeps Every Time You’re Born
“Mesmerizing . . . [Barry] writes with stunning language, which carries the novel and elevates moments of heartbreak, despair, and perseverance.”—Publishers Weekly, on She Weeps Every Time You’re Born
“Fierce, stunning, and devastating. Readers haunted by . . . Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life, and Tan Twan Eng’s The Gift of Rain will revel in it.”—Library Journal (starred review), on She Weeps Every Time You’re Born
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