Notes from the Fog: Ben Marcus - Softcover

'Beautiful, heart-breaking, impeccably crafted and original meditations on, and figurations of, how it feels to be a man, a father, an American, at the hither edge of the 21st century' --Michael Chabon

'[A] brutal and brilliant story collection...Marcus is at once funny and serious, a characteristic blend ... Is this a bleak book? Absolutely. But there's beauty in it, too... deceptively straightforward, precise but chatty, and often a lot of fun' -- Guardian

'Marcus's penchant for creeping presentiment elevates these tales ... blending noir suspense with brooding inwardness in an elegant prose style that is distinctively his own... Marcus is a brilliant anatomist of estrangement' --Irish Times

'Marcus's spectacular new collection [is] wickedly effective ... The sheer line-by-line joy of his phrase-making, caught between strung-out melancholy and tart misanthropy, electric with thrilling change-ups...Exhilaratingly bleak' -- Observer

'I do not know of any writer who writes like Marcus. His work is sui generis... In these stories, language buckles and twists in an attempt to convey what the pain of others might be like...Genius' -- Scotsman

'Ben Marcus needs no introduction as an exceptional composer of short stories... Each story is quietly eerie with electric characters who move through settings that look and sound exactly like our reality but are subtly disoriented, as if in a trick mirror' -- Paris Review

'[Marcus] is an engrossing, poetically surreal writer. He's often woundingly funny... His sentences deserve to be lingered over' -- New York Times Book Review

'Ruthless and hilarious' -- O Magazine

'Marcus excels [at] looking at his characters long enough for their hurt to flash... The world in Marcus' stories are weird reflections of our own, where science soars and people forget to touch one another... Each story is starved. Not right, and unforgettable; the reading experience, consuming' -- Totally Dublin

'I found the bleak, off-beat, laugh-or-be-sick spirit of the age uncannily reflected in Ben Marcus's Notes from the Fog' -- Spectator

'The avant-garde spirit is thankfully still alive across the pond' -- Morning Star

'A tour de force of twenty-first century imagination and well worth adding to your library' - --- Swansea Bay

'I wake up and I have to make the right choice,' he said. Master-stylist Ben Marcus returns with a wonder-cabinet of brain-rearranging stories. From the horrifyingly strange to the deeply touching, each story is a literary masterclass unlikely to leave the reader unchanged. From parent/child relationships thrown agonisingly off kilter, to intensely moving scenarios of dependence and emotional crisis; from left-alone bodies to new scientific frontiers, Ben Marcus is the great chronicler of the contemporary uncanny and the peculiar future. Piece by piece, he takes us apart.