The Likely World - by Melanie Conroy-Goldman (Paperback)

About the Book

Single mom Mellie has just emerged from a shattering addiction to the memory drug, cloud, when a stranger who may be her baby's father appears with a dangerous agenda.

Book Synopsis

Twenty years of addiction to cloud, a drug which wipes the user's short-term memory, have left single mom Mellie with her mind in fragments. With the help of a tough-minded sponsor, and motivated by her own medically-challenged daughter, Mellie clings to a fragile sobriety. Then, on the evening of her twenty-ninth day sober, a stranger pulls into her driveway and her heart surges. However, when Mellie's pursuit of this man and the past they may share threatens her sponsor, Mellie will have to put her tiny family and her recovery at risk in hopes of saving the woman who saved her first.

Review Quotes

"Conroy-Goldman's gritty street postmodernism will rewire your brain in ways that recall David Foster Wallace or Philip K. Dick. But it's the depth of feeling here, about love, about motherhood, reminiscent of Rachel Kushner or Claire Vaye Watkins, that will break your heart." -Peter Ho Davies

"The Likely World is bizarre and beautiful, equal parts brainy lit and gut-bucket pulp. Its heroine is unlike any female character I've ever encountered and I love her." --Mary Gaitskill

"Inside the strata of motherhood and memory a pulse throbs, a rhythm around a body that won't quit asking: Who are you? Where are you? Why? The woman at the center of The Likely World vibrates between addiction, memory, nostalgia, and being in a future landscape about ten seconds from our present tense. To be sober in The Likely World is to risk having heart again; to be fully alive is to risk having your heart broken open. I love this mother. I love this daughter. I love this revision of what we mean when we say family--fragmenting its way into the future one glorious mind flip at a time. I fucking love this book." --Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Verge

"I don't know if you'll ever read a literary novel like The Likely World this or any other year. It's groovy, badass smart, and totally trippy, but also full of heartache and longing and the woundings of love. This novel absolutely sparkles with brightness and life." --Chang-rae Lee, author of Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN/Hemingway Award for first fiction

"This book takes risks, and for that I am thankful. The complex depictions of motherhood and childhood colliding with a disturbingly tempting memory-wiping drug make this novel special and unforgettable." --Lindsay Lerman of Lit Reactor

A "propulsive debut . . . [where] themes of motherhood, love, and addiction collide in heartbreaking and dangerous ways. . . [T]he prose is exquisite . . . This skillful twist on the addiction narrative is worth a look." --Publishers Weekly

"Conroy-Goldman's postmodern novel beautifully speaks to the complexity of real life and addiction. Similar to David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, it's a novel about addiction with an affinity for the strangeness of modern life, an investigation into modern brains, which are treated as computers with intricate and complex webs of synapses." --Alexis David, North of Oxford