To Feel Stuff
A Novel
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A tale of a college student beset with afflictions, by an author whose "books are shot through with light and dark, with strangeness and humor" (Kelly Link).
Meet Elodie Harrington, college student and medical anomaly. From chicken pox to tuberculosis, Elodie suffers such a frequent barrage of illnesses that she moves into the Brown University infirmary. When charismatic Chess Hunter enters the infirmary with two smashed knees, he and Elodie begin an intense affair—but Chess is only a visitor to Elodie's perpetual state of medical siege.
As he heals, he moves back to his former life. But Elodie heads in the other direction and begins to experience strange visions. When Professor Mark Kirschling, MD, gets wind of Elodie, he's convinced he can make his professional mark by cracking her case. But he's entirely unprepared for what he's about to encounter.
By the author of Like the Red Panda, To Feel Stuff is a novel that is "a satire, ghost story, college romance, and medical drama . . . Seigel's confidence—her intelligence and nerve—lets her take risks that sweep the reader along" (Bret Easton Ellis, bestselling author of Less than Zero and American Psycho).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Seigel's sophomore effort is a scattershot case study in illness, love and the unexplained. Elodie Harrington is an undergraduate at Brown University who lives in the college infirmary, suffering from a series of unrelated illnesses "piggybacked one upon another," so that she never fully recovers. Her story is told from three points of view Dr. Mark Kirschling's account of her confounding symptoms in the Journal of Parapsychology and letters between Elodie and Chester Hunter III, a fellow undergrad she meets in the infirmary. Though the structure is a bit contrived (the letters and journal article are filled with dialogue), each section picks up with little repetition. As Chester mends and Elodie get sicker, it becomes clear that their blossoming love is threatened by the specter of health. It doesn't all hold up to close scrutiny, but Seigel has crafted believable characters to anchor the fantastical circumstances, and it's a testament to her ability to captivate that the book ends at what feels like just the beginning.
