Bøger af Joanna Novak

"A poetry collection contorting the idea of home away from being a site of comfort and nourishment by coaxing the reader to think about domesticity in knotty new ways..."--

"Five months pregnant and struggling with a creative block, JoAnna Novak becomes obsessed with the enigmatic Abstract Expressionist painter Agnes Martin. She is drawn to the contradictions in Martin's life as well as art-the soft and exacting brushstrokes she employs for grid-like compositions that are both rigid and dreamy. But what most calls to JoAnna is Martin's dedication to her art in the face of paranoid schizophrenia. Uneasy with the changes her pregnant body is undergoing, JoAnna relapses into damaging old habits and thought patterns. When she confides in her doctor that she's struggling with depression, he tells her she must stop being so selfish, given she has a baby on the way, and start taking antidepressants. Appalled by his patronizing tone and disregard of her mental health history, JoAnna instead makes a deal with herself: she'll surrender to her obsession with Agnes Martin and adopt the painter's doctrine of joyful solitude and isolation."--Provided by publisher.

A subversive glimpse into the dark wildness of preparing for motherhood. New Life is a meditation on the changing/changeling body, wrought in lyric decadence. Novak leads a seductive tour through plashy islands, Great Lakes hideouts, cursed apartments, and castaway nightmares, sighting the baroque and the barren, and celebrating the romance of isolation amidst an interior of plenty.

In her lush, lyrical, and unflinching short fiction debut, JoAnna Novak examines the restless throb of desire amid the rote work of jobs and obligations, from the walk-ins of a New York banquet kitchen to the pier of Venice Beach.