Counting Backwards - by Binnie Kirshenbaum (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A middle-aged couple struggles with the husband's descent into early-onset Lewy Body dementia in this profound and deeply moving novel shot through with Kirshenbaum's lacerating humor. It begins with hallucinations. From their living room window, Leo sees a man on stilts, an acting troupe, a pair of swans paddling on the street. Initially, Leo believes the visions are related to visual impairment-they are something he and his wife, Addie, can joke about. Then, he starts to experience occasional, but fleeting, oddities that mimic myriad brain disorders: aphasia, the inability to perform simple tasks, Capgras Syndrome, audial hallucinations he believes to be real. The doctors have no answers. Leo, a scientist, and Addie, a collage artist, had a loving and happy marriage. But as his periods of lucidity become rarer, Addie finds herself less and less able to cope. Eventually, Leo is diagnosed with Lewy Body disease. Life expectancy ranges from 3 to 20 years. A decidedly uncharacteristic act of violence makes it clear that he cannot come home. He moves first to an assisted living facility and then to a small apartment with a caretaker where, over time, he descends into full cognitive decline. Addie's agony, anger, and guilt result in self-imposed isolation, which mirrors Leo's diminished life. And so for years, all she can do is watch him die-too soon, and yet not soon enough. Kirshenbaum captures the couple's final years, months, and days in short scenes that burn with despair, humor, and rage, tracking the brutal destruction of the disease, as well the moments of love and beauty that still exist for them amid the larger tides of loss."--

Book Synopsis

From the author of Rabbits for Food comes a profound and deeply moving new novel about a middle-aged couple's struggle with the husband's descent into early onset Lewy Body dementia, shot through with Kirshenbaum's signature lacerating humor.

"Gutsy, funny, heart-wrenching."--The New York Times Book Review

It begins with hallucinations. From their living room window, Leo sees a man on stilts, an acting troupe, a pair of swans paddling on the Manhattan streets below. Then he's unable to perform simple tasks and experiences a host of other erratic disturbances, none of which his doctors can explain. Leo, 53, a research scientist, and Addie, a collage artist, have a loving and happy marriage. They'd planned on many more years of work and travel, dinner with friends, quiet evenings at home with the cat. But as Leo's periods of lucidity become rarer, those dreams fall away, and Addie finds herself less and less able to cope with an increasingly unbearable present.

Eventually, Leo is diagnosed with early onset dementia in the form of Lewy body disease. Life expectancy ranges from 3 to 20 years. A decidedly uncharacteristic act of violence makes it clear that he cannot live at home. He moves first to an assisted living facility and then to a small apartment with a caretaker, where, over time, he descends into full cognitive decline. Addie's agony, anger, and guilt result in self-imposed isolation, which mirrors Leo's diminished life. And so for years, all she can do is watch him die--too soon, and yet not soon enough.

Kirshenbaum captures the pair's final years, months, and days in short scenes that burn with despair, dark humor, and rage, tracking the brutal destruction of the disease as well as the moments of love and beauty that still exist for them.

Review Quotes

Praise for Counting Backwards

A New York Times Editors' Choice
An Air Mail Editors' Pick
Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of the Year

"Counting Backwards is to illness narratives what yellow is to the rainbow. It mixes well with others, but it's going to do its own thing -- brighten up a room, get on your nerves, define the beginning of a new day or the end of an old one. Its beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This one couldn't look away, and didn't want to."
--The New York Times Book Review

"[Kirshenbaum] has not lost her knack for narrative propulsion or her ear for pitch black comedy . . . Her vision has only become bolder and darker."
--The Washington Post

"Counting Backwards abounds in moments of beauty, humor, and tragedy."
--Chicago Review of Books

"Leavened with humor, a sharp eye, and bracing asides."
--Air Mail

"Binnie Kirshenbaum is a thrilling writer I'd follow anywhere--unflinching, darkly comic, and masterfully stylish--and now, with Counting Backwards, a sage on the intricacies of grief, the self, and what it means to love and live in the face of loss. Sharp, penetrating, and powerful."
--Chelsea Bieker, author of Madwoman and Godshot

"A novel about the end of life that somehow brims with life, with generosity, humanity, honesty, and, unsurprisingly given the author, bouts of first-class humor. I read all 392 pages in one ten-hour span, unable to stop."
--Gary Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends

"Counting Backwards is a marvel of modulation--it is beautiful and devastating, heart-wrenching and darkly funny, wry and achingly empathetic. Kirshenbaum has always been a bold and outrageously gifted writer, but this novel is her finest yet."
--Kimberly King Parsons, author of We Were the Universe

"In short, sometimes painful and sometimes funny vignettes, Kirshenbaum captures the most important details of their final years together as well as the moments they are forced to spend apart, as Leo's descent into cognitive decline is punctured by violence which means he must be cared for elsewhere. A true love story ends with tears, and Counting Backwards is, if boiled down to one thing, surely that."
--Lit Hub

"Kirshenbaum, longtime fiction professor at Columbia University and the author of acclaimed Rabbits for Food, is a practitioner of delectable, witty sentences and, in a mix of Addie's journal entries and a structure that follows the disease's seven stages, captures both the grim humour and devastating heartbreak of the situation."
--Everything Zoomer

"A man diagnosed with Lewy body dementia lives his final years with his wife in New York City, showing the best of Binnie Kirshenbaum's mordant, cutting comedy."
--Our Culture

"[Kirshenbaum's] storytelling chops are evident . . . Counting Backwards [is] a truly special novel and Kirshenbaum its star."
--BookBrowse

"Kirshenbaum puts her lively wit to good use, tempering the sadness of her drawn-out depiction of Leo's deterioration and Addie's attempts to wrap her head around the ultimately lonely nature of existence. It's a tour de force."
--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"In Kirshenbaum's raw novel about loss, caretaking, and love, biting humor is used to relate searing observations on marriage, art, friendship, and disease."
--Library Journal, Starred Review

"The grounded prose makes room for touching moments, as with Leo fumbling with once-familiar objects that now feel foreign to him. The emotional weight of his disease is made resonant, and the novel honors the complexities of the human experience . . . Counting Backwards explores the hardships of caregiving, the resultant strain on relationships, and internal conflicts between loyalty and self-preservation."
--Foreword Reviews

"The literary equivalent of a collage electric with unexpected juxtapositions, Counting Backwards is a novel of exquisite sensitivity and artistry."
--Booklist

"An exquisitely nuanced mix of bleak humor and heartrending drama."
--Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Binnie Kirshenbaum

"Champagne--the driest, with giddy pinpoint bubbles--to accompany death row's last meal."
--The New York Times

"The writing is splendid . . . and it offers readers a memorable picture of an often wittily acerbic woman trying to find herself in the gray fog of sadness."
--Nancy Pearl, NPR

"Binnie Kirshenbaum is a rare and remarkable writer. I've been waiting anxiously for her new book since the day I finished the last one."
--Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours

"Kirshenbaum's barrage of wit in both expository prose and dialogue has the reader in a titter while contemplating issues of recrimination and forgiveness."
--Philadelphia Inquirer

"[Her characters are] deeply, even ludicrously flawed, but they're not figures of fun because they all carry the existential burden of loneliness . . . funny and compassionate."
--The Washington Post

"A refreshingly gimlet-eyed examination of memory, one that cuts through the gauzy layers imposed by time."
--Time Out New York

"A reality check, sobering truths about family, regret, loss, history . . . Just about the only thing she doesn't serve up is a happy ending."
--The Daily Beast

"The cinematic, effortlessly beautiful descriptions will spark the reader's imagination."
--Chicago Tribune

"Kirshenbaum refuses to corral what is funny or sad into separate camps, but allows one to flip over into the other, creating unexpectedly poignant effects . . . A litany of longing, at once unsettling and deeply moving."
--San Francisco Review of Books

"Binnie Kirshenbaum is a fearlessly unsentimental storyteller, a gifted comic writer and a thoughtful archaeologist of family life."
--Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story

"Writing swift, pointed chapters . . . Kirshenbaum offers hilarious and sage advice in the battle of the sexes. Readers anxious for an entertaining female character to emulate, if only in their fantasies, will find themselves in good company."
--People

"Kirshenbaum has an original voice and, even better, an original sensibility."
--Los Angeles Times

"Bitter truths [are] rendered palatable by the delicious sauciness of Kirshenbaum's prose."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"Binnie Kirshenbaum is an unflinching teller of truths. She's also sublimely funny."
--Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Specultation

"Lyrical and prosaic, laced with sardonic wit, often hilarious, yet filled with an overwhelming sadness."
--The Review of Contemporary Fiction

"Funny, tender, and heartbreaking, often in the same line."
--Tash Aw, author of Map of the Invisible World

"For years, Binnie Kirshenbaum has been one of the funniest and smartest writers we have in the US. Her books have razor sharp teeth and surprising depths."
--Jessa Crispin, Bookslut

About the Author

Binnie Kirshenbaum is the author of the story collection History on a Personal Note and seven novels, including Rabbits for Food, On Mermaid Avenue, Hester Among the Ruins, An Almost Perfect Moment, and The Scenic Route. Her novels have been chosen as Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, NPR, TIME, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post. Her work has been translated into seven languages.