Blue Field

Description

When her friend Jane dies while exploring an underwater cave with her husband Rand, Marilyn takes up diving again, to honourand outdoher late friend. Marilyn drags Rand with her as she increasingly pushes herself far past her limits and skill level, endangering them both in their private underwater version of hell.More than two decades afterthe release of her sensational, critically acclaimed collectionDriving Men Mad,Blue Fieldmarks Elise Levines much anticipated return to form.PRAISE FORBLUE FIELDReading the novel is a sensation akin to drifting weightlessly beneath the surface of the textdazzling, textured, tightly woven.Music & LiteratureLevine uses raw, hallucinatory prose to tell this curious story of a woman becoming undone The novels visceral wordplay, rough sexuality, and anguished depiction of survivors guilt are bound to captivate its audience. A transgressive, gut-wrenching portrayal of grief that asks what its like to drown.Kirkus ReviewsA vibrant mixture of intimate moments Blue Field is an exploration of two selves coming together with the sea. Levines aquatic language is gorgeous, displaying her literary prowess.This MagazineElise Levines new novel takes place in a state of not suspense, but suspension. It is set, tellingly, in the rough space between two deaths in the protagonists lifefirst Marilyns parents, back to back, then her best friend. The novel ceaselessly evokes the hanging feeling of being deep underwater: all is muted, slow, and yet sensation is almost unbearably heightened Levine is, undeniably, an outstanding wordsmith. Her writing style moves in multiple directions, making high stakes out of small movements while turning panic into poetry.Winnipeg ReviewLevines spare language works brilliantly to capture both the vastness of the open water and the claustrophobic chaos of underwater caverns [as well as] a heightened, stylized canvas for Marilyns addictive nature The result is a tale of self-destruction and hubrisabsolutely gripping.Numero CinqSome novels draw you in;Blue Fielddrags you under and keeps clamping down, an exercise in storytelling as centrifugal force.Quill & QuireThis taut novel immerses its readers in griefs disorienting morass Levine pares down sentences to a hypnotically lyrical minimalism, expressing a maximalist level of physical and emotional detail with few words It reads like a telegraph dispatching psychological Morse code a slim read that lands with a monolithic force.JHU MagazineElise Levines novelBlue Fieldis as immersive, hyper-vivid and true as fiction ever gets. Levine swims in the alien worlds of underwater caves, gets caught up inthe forcefulcurrents of loveandthefleeting, peripheral shadows ofsex and death. Here are characters whoneed to prove something big and occasionallymake terrible mistakes. This novelilluminatesthe murky world of fast and altering friendships;what it feels liketo lose the people we love. All of this rendered in compressed prose diamond hard, diamond bright. Fill your lungs; you are about to dive deep. Break the surface;everything glittering and changed.Lisa Moore, author ofFebruaryWhat James Salter did inSolo Facesfor mountain climbing, Elise Levine does for diving.Blue Fieldis full immersionan adventure story in a literary guise, one that holds your head under the current of its gorgeous prose until you gasp. Mysterious and terrifying, this book enthralled me.Caroline Adderson, author ofEllen in PiecesandA History of ForgettingElise LevinesBlue Fieldsubmerged me in its exhilarating mix of languageat once visceral and beautiful, intense and immediate, moving and distant. This deep and complex narrative of loss and risk wrecked me and then rescued me with an unexpected compassion.Blue Fieldis an exquisite novel.Michael Kimball, author ofDear EverybodyPRAISE FOR ELISE LEVINEA dazzling wordsmith, a lexical tease, Levine is like a kid let loose in a leaf pile, kicking up words for the sheer joy of watching them spin.Toronto StarReading Elise Levine is akin to a wild ride down a dark road at night Bold and startling Precipitous and exhilarating.Globe and MailTaut and direct, Elise Levines writing compresses the distance between art and audience, drawing a reader experientially through her fiction. Levine is a visceral imagist. Her fiction renders event indistinguishable from emotion, affecting the gut as fully as the mind The tension that Levines writing evokes remains unresolved, extending beyond the page of her fictions.Ottawa Citizen