The Book of Dahlia - by Elisa Albert (Paperback)

About the Book

From the author of the acclaimed story collection "How This Night Is Different" comes a fearless, arresting, outrageously funny exploration of one young woman's terminal illness.

Book Synopsis

From the author of the critically acclaimed story collection How This Night Is Different comes a dark, arresting, fearlessly funny story of one young woman's terminal illness. In The Book of Dahlia, Elisa Albert walks a dazzling line between gravitas and irreverence, mining an exhilarating blend of skepticism and curiosity, compassion and candor, high and low culture.

Meet Dahlia Finger: twenty-nine, depressed, whip-smart, occasionally affable, bracingly honest, resolutely single, and perennially unemployed. She spends her days stoned in front of the TV, watching the same movies repeatedly, like "a form of prayer." But Dahlia's so-called life is upended by an aggressive, inoperable brain tumor.

Stunned and uncomprehending, Dahlia must work toward reluctant emotional reckoning with the aid of a questionable self-help guide. She obsessively revisits the myriad heartbreaks, disappointments, rages, and regrets that comprise the story of her life -- from her parents' haphazard Israeli courtship to her kibbutz conception; from the role of beloved daughter and little sister to that of abandoned, suicidal adolescent; from an affluent childhood in Los Angeles to an aimless existence in the gentrified wilds of Brooklyn; from a girl with "options" to a girl with none -- convinced that cancer struck because she herself is somehow at fault.

With her take-no-prisoners perspective, her depressive humor, and her extreme vulnerability, Dahlia Finger is an unforgettable anti-heroine. This staggering portrait of one young woman's life and death confirms Elisa Albert as a "witty, incisive" (Variety) and even "wonder-inducing" writer (Time Out New York).

Review Quotes

"The Book of Dahlia does not go gently into that good night -- each line howls with pain and rage and laughter. It takes an unflinching look at terminal illness in our culture of sunny denial and doesn't let readers off the hook, either -- this book will bring you to your knees. It's also the funniest thing I've read in years." -- Karen Russell, author of St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

"[H]ilarious and heartbreaking.... Albert's superb first novel...begins with the omniscient narrator's scathingly Edith Wharton-worthy catalogue of Dahlia's symptoms and ends with her first grand mal seizure.... Throughout, Albert delivers Dahlia's laissez-faire attitude toward other people and lack of ambition with such exactness as to strip them of cliche and make them grimly vivid. Her brilliant style makes the novel's central question -- should we mourn a wasted life? -- shockingly poignant." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Elisa Albert has the unique gift of making bedmates out of humor and heartbreak. The Book of Dahlia is wonderful." -- Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan

"Never maudlin, occasionally harrowing, and often hilarious, The Book of Dahlia is a dark, surprising wonder. Faced with her own imminent and unavoidable demise, Dahlia doesn't flinch -- but you will." -- Kelly Braffet, author of Last Seen Leaving

About the Author

Elisa Albert is the author of After Birth, The Book of Dahlia, the short story collection How This Night Is Different, and the editor of the anthology Freud's Blind Spot. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Tin House, The New York Times, Post Road, The Guardian, Gulf Coast, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Believer, The Rumpus, Time Magazine, on NPR, and in many anthologies. Albert grew up in Los Angeles and received an MFA from Columbia University, where she was a Lini Mazumdar Fellow. A recipient of the Moment magazine emerging writer award and a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize, she has received fellowships from The Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Djerassi, Vermont Studio Center, The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in Holland, the HWK in Germany, and the Amsterdam Writer's Residency. She lives with her family in upstate New York.