Like Being Killed

"I could never predict what was going to ruin me and what was going to rescue me..." Ilyana Meyerovich has never been very far from disaster and loss. A self-described " suicidal, strung-out, psychotic Jew under thirty," Ilyana retreats into her astonishing mind, prays to obscure Catholic saints, and seeks her equilibrium in six white lines laid out on the kitchen table of a squalid Lower East Side apartment. Masochism and nihilism form the twin poles of Ilyana's heroin blurred existence, but this was not always so. When Susannah Lyons entered Ilyana's life via a "roommate-wanted ad," she quickly became the best thing in it. Having no precedent for genuine friendship, Ilyana can't help but destroy this one, betraying her sweet, naive friend in a way that nearly has fatal consequences for them both. Ellen Miller's prose crackles with energy, black humor, and blazing insight. Harrowing and cathartic, Like Being Killed explores the limits of self-destruction and the possibilities of redemption. A vivid, unsparing new novel that "does no less than remind us why we read." --San Francisco Chronicle Book Review "An impressive accomplishment...graceful, lyrical prose." --Newsday "A powerful book...intense...profound." --Village Voice "In this novel, Ellen Miller hurls herself, along with her readers, into a world that resonates with moral complexity. The range of her narrative concerns proves that she can make anything interesting." --Annie Dillard