Crudo A Novel

<b>A <i>New York Times</i> Notable, <i>Washington Post</i>, <i>NPR</i>, <i>Guardian</i>, and <i>Bustle</i> Best Book of 2018<br> <br> A brilliant, funny, and emphatically raw novel of love on the brink of the apocalypse, from the acclaimed author of <i>The Lonely City</i>. </b><br><p><i>"She had no idea what to do with love, she experienced it as invasion, as the prelude to loss and pain, she really didn’t have a clue."</i></p> <p>Kathy is a writer. Kathy is getting married. It’s the summer of 2017 and the whole world is falling apart. Fast-paced and frantic, <i>Crudo</i> unfolds in real time from the full-throttle perspective of a commitment-phobic artist who may or may not be Kathy Acker.</p> <p>From a Tuscan hotel for the superrich to a Brexit-paralyzed United Kingdom, Kathy spends the first summer of her forties adjusting to the idea of a lifelong commitment. But it’s not only Kathy who’s changing. Fascism is on the rise, truth is dead, the planet is heating up, and Trump is tweeting the world ever-closer to nuclear war. How do you make art, let alone a life, when one rogue tweet could end it all?</p> <p>In <i>Crudo</i>, her first work of fiction, Olivia Laing radically rewires the novel with a fierce, compassionate account of learning to love when the end of the world seems near.</p>