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The Karaoke Singer's Guide to Self-Defense |
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Sunday, 18 September 2011 |
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"BEST NEW CHICAGO BOOK" - CBS Chicago
"Shit-your-pants brilliant." -NewCity
"I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this might just be one of the best novels of the year. I compared this book to The Corrections, but this family lives on the other side of the tracks to Jonathan Franzen’s dysfunctional family and would have beaten the shit out of The Corrections kids when they were in school." -The Lit Pub
"By the time I finished the book, my copy was more dog-eared than just about any other book I own, and when it ended, I felt bittersweetly bereft. I thought The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self-Defense was a brilliant read, highly recommended for readers who like a little nostalgia in a smart, dark, funny, and engrossing novel." -LitStack
"Most Exciting New Books this Fall" - Flavorpill
"The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self-Defense takes moments and characters who could be quirky or grotesque and finds their essential humanity via the minutiae of their lives." -Vol.1 Brooklyn
Interview in The Onion A.V. Club Chicago
"Brilliantly delineated and heartbreaking. One comes away transported by the melancholy mood, put in mind of how homecomings fail to match up with our memories of immortal youth, how easily hopes and dreams tremble and shatter, how irreversible infrastructural decay seems inescapable in some corners of America."- Splice Today
"Much like everything Kinsella has been apart of, there is nothing typical or cliche about this read." - The Byke Rack
"Let’s be clear: this novel is not for the feint of heart or the casual reader."- Curbside Splendor
"Evelyn Waugh on Adderall." -Agit Reader
"Another dense and rewarding read." -Chicagoist
For all this novel's depth of story, and that story's grip and wealthy undercurrents, Tim Kinsella's rushing, trippily meticulous prose is so exciting to follow that the story seems as much the novel's soundtrack and topography as it is the point. A thorough and wildly distinctive read. -Dennis Cooper, Author of The Marbled Swarm
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The Karaoke Singer’s Guide
to Self-Defense
By Tim Kinsella
For all this novel's depth of story, and that story's grip and wealthy undercurrents, Tim Kinsella's rushing, trippily meticulous prose is so exciting to follow that the story seems as much the novel's soundtrack and topography as it is the point. A thorough and wildly distinctive read. -Dennis Cooper, Author of The Marbled Swarm Reunited for a funeral and leery of one another, a family compares splintered memories. Will bathes his grandmother. Mel gives her wig a haircut. Norman is not prepared to take over his father’s club. Jesse has never known how old he is. They each cope with limited options and murky desires.
An irreducible collage, as intuitive as it is formal, The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self-Defense drifts between story lines and perspectives. Long bus rides through a post-industrial Gothic Midwest, Classic Rock, and compulsive brawls hum a requiem for the late night life of Stone Claw Grove. |
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