Us - by Michael Kimball (Paperback)

About the Book

The star of Oprah's 2011 Summer Reading List, Us by Michel Kimball may be the saddest book of the century.

Book Synopsis

"Michael Kimball is a hero of contemporary fiction." --Sam Lipsyte

A husband wakes up to find his wife has had a seizure during the night. His wife is rushed to a hospital where she lies in a coma. By day, the husband sits beside his wife and tries to think of ways to wake her up. The husband sleeps in the chair next to his wife's bedside dreaming that she will wake up. He wants to be able to take her back home.

Michael Kimball is author of The Way the Family Got Away, Dear Everybody, and the forthcoming Ray.

Review Quotes

"There are two books I can remember that ever made me physically cry. There were the rape scenes in Saramago's Blindness, and there was nearly every chapter of Michael Kimball's [US]. While the first hurt because it was so brutal, Kimball's was a softer kind of invocation--as I read it in a bathtub, I could not shake the feeling of being held, as if somehow the words had interlaced my skin. This is the essence of the magic Michael Kimball holds--his sentences come on so taut, so right there, and yet somehow so calming, it's as if you are being visited by some lighted presence."

--Blake Butler

"Michael Kimball never ceases to astonish. He is a hero of contemporary fiction."

--Sam Lipsyte

"Be warned: this book has the power to make even the most hard-hearted of readers shed a tear. Kimball has broken into new territory: [US] is one of the most graphic depictions of illness and loss I have ever read."

--The Glasgow Herald

About the Author

Michael Kimball: Michael Kimball is the author of three novels including "Dear Everybody" and "The Way the Family Got Away", which have been translated into a dozen languages, and "US". His work has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered, in Vice, and in The Guardian. www.michael-kimball.com