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We Were the Universe: A novel

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Description

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024 A DAKOTA JOHNSON BOOK CLUB PICK AN ELLE BEST BOOK OF 2024 A young mother, in denial after the death of her sister, navigates the dizzying landscapes of desire, guilt, and grief in this darkly comic, highly anticipated debut novel from Kimberly King Parsons, author of the story collection, Black Light (long-listed for the National Book Award). "Kimberly King Parsons sings the lushest, cruelest, kindest, weirdest, darkest and most hilarious songs on paper; I want to hang these sentences in my house and admire them like the interdimensional multisensory illuminated artworks they truly are." —Karen Russell, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Swamplandia! The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit's best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They'll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into a dive bar and drink too much, like old times. Instead, their getaway only reminds Kit of everything she's lost lately: her wildness, her independence, and—most heartbreaking of all—her sister, Julie, who died a few years ago. When she returns home to the Dallas suburbs, Kit tries to settle in to her routine—long afternoons spent caring for her irrepressible daughter, going on therapist-advised dates with her concerned husband, and reluctantly taking her mother's phone calls. But in the secret recesses of Kit's mind, she's reminiscing about the band she used to be in—and how they'd go out to the desert after shows and drop acid. She's imagining an impossible threesome with her kid's pretty gymnastics teacher and the cool playground mom. Keyed into everything that might distract from her surfacing pain, Kit spirals. As her already thin boundaries between reality and fantasy blur, she begins to wonder: Is Julie really gone? Neon bright in its insight, both devastating and laugh-out-loud funny, We Were the Universe is an ambitious, inventive novel from a revelatory new voice in American fiction—a fearless exploration of sisterhood, motherhood, friendship, marriage, psychedelics, and the many strange, transcendent shapes love can take. Read more

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf (May 14, 2024)


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 288 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0525521852


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 53


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.15 pounds


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.02 x 9.52 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #635,938 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #9,588 in Family Life Fiction (Books) #9,718 in Women's Domestic Life Fiction #31,423 in Literary Fiction (Books)


#9,588 in Family Life Fiction (Books):


#9,718 in Women's Domestic Life Fiction:


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • A Wild Ride
This novel is a wild ride with Faulkner-like time shifts mixed in with more than a bit of Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas gonzo style. The author brings you into Kit’s brain, but brains operate in messy, non-linear ways. Kit longs to reunite with her now-deceased sister, the one she both deeply loved and fought with. She longs to be a good mother, yet resents the around-the-clock attention her child demands of her. She knows it’s time to grow up, but leaves her husband and child at home for a drug-fueled road trip with a male friend. She resents her mom for neglecting her throughout her childhood, but now must help mom anyway because there is no one else who will. It’s the consistently brilliant writing that make all of Kit’s contradictions so interesting to read about: a wonderful blend of clever observations mixed with multiple, serious insights into life, many of which are painful to confront. You will simultaneously laugh and cry, both love and resent Kit, as the author cleverly reveals Kit’s world to you. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2024 by Stephen M. Picca MD
    • A Dark Story Lightly Told
<i>Sure, death is one thing people will let you open your jaws and scream about for a while, especially when someone dies young--it isn't fair, I'll never get over it, etc.--but what nobody admits is how incredibly dull grief is to witness. It's boring, like hearing about somebody's toothache, all-consuming but completely personal, nontransferable. Shut up about your sorrow--take that grief and tamp it down. The people who love you need you to hurry and clean yourself up, blow your nose and fix your hair, come back from the brink.</i> Kit's the mother of a toddler. Barely in her twenties, she's suddenly a stay-at-home mom in the Texas suburbs, and while she adores her daughter, she's often bored and would like a few minutes to herself, maybe to read a book. But when her daughter's attention is focused somewhere else, she ends up having sexual fantasies about the people she sees at the playground. Kit is kind of a mess, and it's not just because she dropped out of university to have a kid; her sister recently died. She and her sister were inseparable, as neglected children, they raised each other and their closeness persisted until Kit decided that without opportunities in their rural Texas community, she needed to go to college. She feels responsible for what happened to her sister and she's having trouble holding herself together. Kimberly King Parsons, author of an excellent collection of short stories, <i>Black Light</i>, has created an engaging character in Kit, one who makes many mistakes, but who is also someone you can't help rooting for. Parsons likes oddballs and people who just don't fit, the rebels and the weirdos and this works very well here. This novel is far more focused on character than it is on plot, looking back at Kit's childhood and teenage years, showing how she became the person she is now, without much worry about forward momentum. It feels very much like life with a toddler, a lot of activity with little to show for it, and the things that Kit gets up to are entertaining mainly because they are recounted in Kit's voice. This is a dark story lightly told. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2024 by RidgewayGirl
    • For a very specific reader
But I can’t figure out who that might be. When I read about this book and the author in Texas Monthly, this sounded like MY kind of book. I love reading stories about weirdos, unique characters , interesting people- don’t they always make the best stories? Kit was all of that, and more. SO much more. But she was just so unlikeable. So self-absorbed. Such a mess! Yes, she was grieving, but that doesn’t explain her behaviors, which were always there. I wanted an epiphany. Some change in her. She was too self absorbed for that. The story and the character never went anywhere. It was a stream of consciousness rambling. I REALLY expected to like this one, but sadly, did not. If you have G or PG rated sensibilities, you’ll want to skip this because of language, sex & drug use. Which added some fun to the weirdness of the story, I guess. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2024 by Julie
    • Stellar, Hilarious, Emotional Debut!
Kimberly King Parsons is here to stay. She knocked us out with her National Book Award longlisted short story collection Black Light full of lovable crazies, and now, with her debut novel, We Were the Universe, she proves that she's a contender for the belt in the long form as well. Hysterical, stirring and resonant, Parsons shares the story of a young mother absorbed in the budding life of a bright child while stifling her grief over an enormous loss in her life. In lesser hands this novel could fall into sappiness but Parsons eschews sentimentality with horny abandon. She explores what binds family with empathy, wit, and a unique eye for detail. Her sentences are forces of nature. They will water your soul. You will love this book as much as I did and long for her next. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2024 by Chad Robert Miller
    • Beautiful and claustrophobic in the best way possible
Review Image by Ann Marie Norrid Ann Marie Norrid
This book was beautiful and just viscerally claustrophobic in the best way possible. Kit is a young mother trying to live her life while caught in the maw of grief over her sister, Julie dying a few years before. Whether she’s at the playground, on a trip with her best friend, with her therapist, or at home, she seems sort of stuck. Stuck in motherhood, stuck in Texas, stuck in a world without Julie. Our author captures grief so well. There are the mundane parts that are ridiculous and the infinite parts that can barely be touched. Even choosing whether to use the past or present tense is a struggle. I’ve also gotta say, I usually ignore the quotes at the beginning of a book because I’m trash. But, when I saw the Of Montreal lyrics at the beginning, it put me in a great headspace to love this little book. They are such a phenomenal and trippy band! I think that mothers would definitely connect with this book. Our author writes in such a way that you feel like you could relate to so much of motherhood, but in my personal case (since we don’t have kids) also a bit relieved that you don’t. There are so many similarities between motherhood and grief and this book does a great job of finding those connections. The last chapter was the perfect way to end this. This book was absolutely solid from beginning to the end. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2024 by Ann Marie Norrid Ann Marie Norrid

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