About the Book
'Propulsive, unflinching and disturbing' Eimear McBride
'A brilliant read' Daisy Johnson
'Terribly and splendidly moving' R. O. Kwon
A jagged, propulsive story of guilt and youth spinning off its axis in the wake of a drowning
She's one of the stars of the shore this summer; one of the girls who doesn't care what she's drinking or what pill she's taking; who ties perfectly knotted cherry stems with her tongue; her family is rich and she's untouchable. Except her parent's marriage is in brutal collapse and her brother is violently lashing out, the community around her wracked with suspicion and guilt. As her identity unravels, she circles back to the night that a local girl drowned, and no one tried to save her.
Daringly experimental, Machine is a kaleidoscopic interrogation of gender, class and privilege, an unforgettable rendering of youth spinning out of control.
About the Author :
Susan Steinberg is the author of Spectacle, Hydroplane, and The End of Free Love. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a United States Artists Fellowship, a National Magazine Award, and the Pushcart Prize. She teaches at the University of San Francisco.
Review :
There is innovation and beauty and exactitude in language here but these is also raw, undeniable power and rage. A brilliant read
This summer's real powerhouse... If you like your prose propulsive, unflinching and disturbing, this is going to be the one for you
Steinberg shifts backwards and forward in time, just as her prose shifts into a kind of poetry. The result is a glittering, knifelike reflection of despair through the eyes of a young woman, made richer by the fact that it's told in hindsight
Otherworldly, and every-other-line sublime, Machine reads like the text messages Laura Palmer might send back from the Black Lodge. It's a timely reminder of why our culture remains haunted by dead girls, and of the different ways we find to drown them
Her slim narrative of adolescent crisis is as propulsive as it is disorienting, subverting expectations at every turn
Steinberg's writing sinks its teeth in down to the bone and refuses to release
Machine is a work of boldness and singularity that is both deeply affecting and brilliantly written
Susan Steinberg is a conventions-defying, form-innovating wizard of a writer, and I already can't wait to reread her newest book, Machines. Unique, astounding, and terribly and splendidly moving, this novel is a revelation
Steinberg is an undersung genius, and her elliptical novel about one tragic summer - a girl, a drowning - should be a modern classic in the vein of Jenny Offill and Maggie Nelson
Her prose is urgent and fluid...The reader, unsure of which result to expect, is driven to attend to each word as if it might suddenly catch on fire....Machine is less a novel than a parable, one to be acted out again and again while women shake their heads in glum recognition and men plod along, indifferent.
An astonishment, a work of dazzlingly poetic prose that propels us through darkness and flashing light into the furthermost recesses of thought and feeling. Susan Steinberg has done it again - produced another breakthrough for modern fiction
What makes [Machine] so thrilling is Steinberg's artistry with form; she fractures narrative into its fundamental parts. Steinberg writes prose with a poet's sense of meter and line, and a velocity recalling the novels of Joan Didion. The result is a dizzying work that perfectly evokes the feeling of spinning out of control
The narrative shifts, experimental structure and poetic language in Steinberg's hypnotic first novel capture the teen years with their shifting emotional tides and heightened awareness of class, gender, self and others
Steinberg writes in small. interconnected, and poetic fragments... Heartbreaking, eerie, and acutely observant
Steinberg's beautifully structured sentences and wholly original stylistic decisions give Machine a delicate intricacy that enhances the depth of the plot
Taut, incantatory sentences, often laid out like poems
After making waves with her book Spectacle, bold stylist Susan Steinberg resurfaces with her first novel, a tale of gender, class, privilege and trauma set during a summer at the shore. . . . The narrative grapples with guilt and blame while eschewing formal conventions
Susan Steinberg takes everything you loved about her short story collections (Spectacle, anyone?) and brings them to this new tragedy: a hazy summer night in which one girl drowned. The voice of the story, sometimes singular, sometimes with other echoes, will guide and haunt you as it tries to make sense of what happened
Peril, fury, suspicion, rebellion, Steinberg's craft lies in accumulating these moods and sustaining them. . . . It's a bold and challenging way to make a book, to trust the reader to sit still for her own impalement. But the risk pays off. Machine embodies a new kind of novel in verse, a creature that's part stutter and part song, and its stark, strange melody echoes long after its musicians have packed up and gone home
With simple, lyrical language, Steinberg presents a mystery of privilege and youth that deftly captures the unadulterated gear quaking deep behind a teenager's invincible front
