Search History - by Eugene Lim (Paperback)

About the Book

"Frank Exit is dead--or is he? While eavesdropping on two women discussing a dog-sitting gig over lunch, a bereft friend comes to a shocking realization: Frank has been reincarnated as a dog! This epiphany launches a series of adventures--interlaced with digressions about AI-generated fiction, virtual reality, Asian American identity in the arts, and lost parents--as an unlikely cast of accomplices and enemies pursues the mysterious canine. In elliptical, propulsive prose, Search History plumbs the depths of personal and collective consciousness, questioning what we consume, how we grieve, and the stories we tell ourselves"--

Book Synopsis

Search History oscillates between a wild cyberdog chase and lunch-date monologues as Eugene Lim deconstructs grieving and storytelling with uncanny juxtapositions and subversive satire.

Frank Exit is dead--or is he? While eavesdropping on two women discussing a dog-sitting gig over lunch, a bereft friend comes to a shocking realization: Frank has been reincarnated as a dog! This epiphany launches a series of adventures--interlaced with digressions about AI-generated fiction, virtual reality, Asian American identity in the arts, and lost parents--as an unlikely cast of accomplices and enemies pursues the mysterious canine. In elliptical, propulsive prose, Search History plumbs the depths of personal and collective consciousness, questioning what we consume, how we grieve, and the stories we tell ourselves.

Review Quotes

Literary Hub, "Most Anticipated Books of 2021"
The Millions, "Most Anticipated of 2021"
Literary Hub, "22 Novels You Need to Read This Fall"
Bustle, "Best Books of October 2021"

"Fans of Haruki Murakami's melancholy, oneiric tales will also delight in Lim's assault upon consensus reality. He encourages the reader to 'stop making sense, ' in the Talking Heads manner, and experience the universe as a magical tapestry of events whose overall pattern is perceivable only by God-or maybe after one's own death." --Paul Di Filippo, The Washington Post

"Sometimes new works arrive, such as Eugene Lim's strange, sinuous, highly memorable novel Search History that seem to herald some dawning technological epoch. . . . A work of eerie and lasting power." --Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"[A] humorous philosophical novel, which entertains questions about the nature of narrative and the aesthetic implications of technology. Subversions of the conventional structure of the novel abound. . . . As the book toggles between the narrator's autobiography, a meandering quest for the friend, and conversations among the search party about grief, selfhood, and Asian American authorship, Lim evokes the disorienting idiosyncrasy of an Internet search history." --The New Yorker

"A post-human manifesto on loss, identity, and the transfigurative potential of art. . . . This brilliant sui generis takes storytelling to new heights." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"As befits a book dealing with death and rebirth, the novel oscillates between the uncanny and the philosophical. . . . Lim brings together the mundane and the extraordinary to powerful effect." --Kirkus, starred review

"Lim's novel hints at W.G. Sebald and Kathy Acker, and sits alongside contemporaries such as Ling Ma and Elizabeth Tan. . . . The construction of self and identity and the transformative nature of art underpin a work that, despite being clothed in clever satire and searing humor, is a tender exploration of how we love and what we consequently risk losing, of death and its aftermath, grief." --Justine Hyde, Saturday Paper

"This novel is very funny. It has a quick wit that comes on barrel-chested, deriding at times poetry, the neo-liberal consensus, and various pop culture ephemera. . . . Search History is a living, breathing novel. Its fascinations and enthusiasms are important yet ambivalent. . . . Mature, without being self-serious or fatalistic. An Ode to Joy in Autotune." --Joseph Houlihan, Chicago Review of Books

"To read Search History is to fall through a series of trap doors. . . . Often simultaneously hilarious and devastating, Search History is an adventure story that offers profound insight into grief and grieving in the contemporary era." --Spencer Quong, Poets & Writers

"A rabbit hole of grief and humor in equal measure. . . . Eugene Lim collages it all together masterfully. Suffice to say, it's hard to describe to you exactly what happens in these gleefully experimental pages, but I

About the Author

Eugene Lim is the author of the novels Fog & Car (Ellipsis Press, 2008), The Strangers (Black Square Editions, 2013), and Dear Cyborgs (FSG Originals, 2017). His writings have appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, the Baffler, Dazed, Fence, Little Star, Granta, and elsewhere. He is a high school librarian, runs Ellipsis Press, and lives in Queens, NY, with Joanna and Felix.