Slow Stories - by Bette Adriaanse (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Teased from the fibers of parallel worlds and alternate histories yet to happen, Bette A.'s Slow Stories are imbued with a humanity all too familiar.

In villages and small cities, mysterious phenomena occur. A box appears at the edge of town and silently demands to be filled with meaning. A skinny little man trudges in from the desert refusing to put down the massive rock he carries on his back. And when a girl is born inside a poor one-bedroom house, a new door appears, leading to a new room, leading to another--while from the outside, the additions are made of an unbreakable mirrored glass reflecting the growing rage and confusion of the villagers. Naturally, people must respond.

In other locales, a memorial is raised for twenty-four fallen soldiers, but the story is distracted by the man who refused to arm himself. And inside a community of disembodied voices, we listen as the creatures try to solve an existential riddle. Meanwhile, there are fantastic discoveries that young people keep secret until they are no longer young, enthralling monsters made of smoke and desire, and a short biography for the last inventor, who, "like the first inventor," was a woman.

Slow Stories impose a tension that demands quiet attention, while the narrator's voice insists that we take our time, and contemplate our own place in the universe. Reminiscent of Calvino's fabular world building, though tinged perhaps more radically with concerns over safety and property, sovereignty and identity, Bette's A's voice transports us to other worlds while resonating powerfully inside our own.

Review Quotes

PRAISE FOR WHAT'S MINE

"Bette Adriaanse is becoming a major literary novelist in the best European tradition. She has the down-and-out life experiences of the early Orwell, the desperate humor of Flann O'Brien, the prose immediacy of Beckett, and the avalanche of bureaucracy of Kafka. What's Mine is a stellar achievement of depicting the absurdist brutality of contemporary urban capitalism where nothing but narcissism and arbitrary outcomes rule." --Alan N Shapiro

"Bette Adriaanse is my favourite Dutch writer. No one writes like she does. Her voice-- frank, whimsical, philosophical, funny, gorgeously tactless-- points a lens at the world that sharpens everything, then she plays with the focus, then resharpens it so the world never looks quite the same. What's Mine is a timeless book that deserves a wide readership." --Caoilinn Hughes, author of Orchid & the Wasp, winner of the Collyer Bristow Prize, Dalker Literary Award, the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award 2021 and the O. Henry award

"What's Mine is a surprising and deep work with a persistent quiet momentum carrying the reader back-and-forth in time and space across the slivers of four interlocking lives. It is totally engaging." --Brian Eno

"Bette's inimitable voice is always a treat to escape into. I cannot wait for this dark, absurdist tale to go out into the world. " --Jing-Jing Lee, author of How We Disappeared, selected for the British Royal Big Jubilee Read

"The shifting perspectives give this surprising, absurdist novel a cinematic character, but what stays with you is the way small events find their place in the larger story." --Tzum

"Surprising." --Nederlands Dagblad

"With subtlety and humor WHAT'S MINE addresses how confusing justice and property can be..." --Argos

"Full of accessibility, lightness and humor... Are you on Luis' side or William's side? Adriaanse leaves the answer almost entirely to the reader. A special book." --Hebban