Permanent Earthquake

Review\n"A visionary novel that feels at once timeless and eerily well suited to our ongoing moment... Dara's first novel, The Lost Scrapbook, was celebrated by critics and writers including Richard Powers, who called it "monumental, cunning, heartfelt and unforgiving... Dara shows how a novel can be experimental, yet moral, rule-breaking but emotional, and post-humanist while remaining deeply human." This description applies equally to Permanent Earthquake."
--n+1\n"This is twenty-first-century American writing... [Permanent Earthquake's] unsparing intensity... requires total commitment to a form and voice that was never outmoded or transcended... Only a writer outside the circle of conventional publishing would have the [courage] to attempt this... [Yet] there's a humanist reading of the novel, in persistent tension with the created world that's not just shattered but perpetually shattering."
--The Baffler\n"This is one of those books that reminds me why I love to read. I read this in like a day and a half, and I can't wait to re-read it... The conceit is highly original, but it's the execution that makes this novel great... A brilliant, brilliant book by one of contemporary America's greatest authors."
--Travel Through Stories, Top Books of 2021\nSteven Moore: "Most Impressive Books of 2021"\n"Startling... The things I'd come to love about Evan Dara's writing were mostly missing and yet I loved this too. I loved this differently. I gnashed my teeth and bit skin off my fingers trying to figure how a writer could do this... Most of our probing questions on how to live center around what we might take from this world... I see [Evan Dara] as someone who is more concerned with what we might give."
--The Nervous Breakdown\n"In the running for best book of 2021. For me. Probably not for the New York Times, but only because the world's broken all the way down. It should be on all the lists... [Permanent Earthquake] is a fully immersive experience—you become surrounded by its story, and even now—a week after reading it—part of me is still back there, trembling alongside our hero... If you've never read [Evan Dara] before, it's time."
--Bloggy Come Lately\nOn an island perhaps in the Caribbean, a young American man - abandoned, resilient - grapples with nonstop instability. His island is being thrashed by an earthquake that has gone on for months, and shows no signs of shaking anything free...\nAurora Publication Date: August 1, 2021