Another Place You've Never Been
A Novel
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This "undeniably moving and emotionally true" debut novel offers the emotional complexity and narrative scope of A Visit from the Goon Squad and resonates with the strong mystical nature of Swamplandia (Publishers Weekly, starred review)
Most of us have experienced what it’s like to know what someone is going to say right before they say it. Or perhaps you have been shocked by the irrefutable phenomena of coincidence, when your life intersects with another’s in the most unlikely way. In gripping prose marked by stark simplicity, Another Place You’ve Never Been by debut novelist Rebecca Kauffman explores the intersection of human experience amidst the minutiae of everyday life.
In her mid-thirties and still living in her hometown Buffalo, NY, Tracy spends most days at the restaurant where she works as a hostess, despite her aspirations of a career that would make use of her creative talents. Tracy’s life is explored not only though her own personal point of view, but also through the viewpoints of other characters, wherein Tracy may only make a peripheral appearance or even emerge at different periods in her life.
At its core, Another Place You've Never Been is a broad investigation of such bold ideas as the possibility that any person, at any time, in any place, could find themselves shivering in the presence of great and ancient forces; and the notion that love is perhaps "far less voluntary" than we might believe it to be.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the center of Kauffman's wonderful debut, a novel told in stories, is Tracy, who first appears as a 10-year-old visiting her father, living on disability near Lake Michigan, and then at 13 as the neighborhood bad girl in a story about a sleepover. Two nearly perfect stories feature Tracy as an adult: one in which she interrupts her cousin's moment of intimacy with his girlfriend at an Embassy Suites, and another in which Tracy, now a restaurant hostess, begins an on-and-off relationship with a younger coworker named Greenie. Readers are also introduced to other characters that circle her in and around Buffalo, N.Y., including alcoholic Jim; his troubled son, Charlie; and Jim's ex-wife, Laura. Greenie himself gets his own story as he leaves Tracy behind for an ill-fated job in New Jersey, culminating in a memorable moment atop a Ferris wheel. Watching how these characters intersect is incredibly satisfying. In clear and vivid prose, Kauffman potently depicts lonely and isolated lives, marked by rash decisions made in the hope of finding connection. By the end of the novel, the pieces of the puzzle that is Tracy's life fit together, her disappointments as much a part of her as her small victories, resulting in an undeniably moving and emotionally true portrayal of the kitchen sink of human experience.
