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Read a sample from the book.
Finalist for the 2015 Locus Award for Best First Novel
Special Citation, the 2015 Philip K. Dick Award
A Locus New and Notable Book
A Locus Recommended First Novel for 2014
A computer program etched into the atmosphere has a story to tell, the
story of two people, of a city lost to chaos, of survival and love. The
program’s data, however, has been corrupted. As the novel's characters
struggle to survive apocalypse, they are sustained and challenged by the
demands of love in a shattered world both haunted and dangerous.
Interviews
Jennifer Brissett talks at length about the novel with Julia Wade, on a
videocast here.
Strange Horizons interview
by Sofia Samatar:
Advance Praise
Elizabeth Hand, acclaimed author and critic, writes: "It's really
quite difficult for me to believe it's a first novel, it's so good:
incredibly ambitious, beautifully written, moving, and with an extremely
poignant ending, not to mention that remarkable, intricate balancing act
with all your various hall-of-mirrors characters."
"Jennifer Marie Brissett has written an audacious first novel that pushes
against the limits of the form. With a spiral narrative and a dance of
identity and incident, she limns an array of characters and their worlds in
deft strokes. Be warned that you will puzzle about the story behind the
stories as you read this novel, only to discover a profound and moving
answer at its conclusion. With its bold interrogation of gender, Elysium
is a book like no other."
—James Patrick Kelly, author of Wildlife and
Think Like a Dinosaur
"Wow! Jenn Brissett's new novel Elysium from Aqueduct Press is a knockout.
The writing and structure of the book are so accomplished, I'm amazed
this is a first novel. The style flows and draws you into the fiction and
keeps you there—poetic in its imagery but simultaneously economical.
It's a science fiction, post-apocalyptic, tale, a love story, but not your
dumb old man's love story. A love story for a new age. The structure of
the novel was the most startling thing to me—a complex construction that
never comes across as complicated. The effect is like a magic trick. Great
characters that make the adventure worth the journey. I hope reviewers
don't miss this one."
—Jeffrey Ford, author of The Shadow Year and Crackpot Palace
Reviews
Some of the praise heaped on this book includes the words "audacious,"
"ambitious," and "hard to believe this is a first novel." These are all
entirely apt. Already shortlisted for the Philip K Dick Award, this book
also seems like a natural fit for the Tiptree, and could be a serious Hugo
contender if it gets enough circulation....[E]very once in awhile it’s
great to see a book with such unconventional structure, that takes the
genre playbook, tears all the pages out and shuffles them back together,
and still manages to tell both one and many moving and satisfying stories.
—Locus, Karen Burnhm, April, 2015 Page by page Elysium merely dazzles; and then it absorbs;
and then, at the end, as it must, it burns. It tells a story,
and a history, that matter. You should open the book. (Read the whole review)
—Strange Horizons, Niall Harrison, Feb. 27, 2015 This is a complex, dense book, and reminds me of the best parts of
Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.
Brissett’s novel, her first, is as ambitious and experimental as those works, and
I hope it receives similar attention.... What the book may lack in
philosophical meditation it makes up for in emotional resonance: every
character Brissett draws is, in one way or another, an emotional
survivor—and a visceral one at that. The feeling of loss pervades the
novel, reminding us that sometimes it’s not enough to survive, that
living requires more than that in ways that only the best writers and
thinkers—and stories—can describe. (Read the whole review)
—The Future Fire, Cait Coker, Oct. 25, 2014 Brissett deftly handles the challenge of a multitude of characters all
being the same people in a multitude of places that are the same place,
while exploring complicated questions about identity. (Read the whole review)
—Publishers Weekly, October 2014 ...follows the lives of two characters as they switch genders and lives in
this haunting, surreal story about surviving at all costs...In a desperate
attempt to save their loved ones from madness, decay and invaders who live
in the fourth dimension, humans build underground cities, even growing
wings and flying in this rich exploration of identity and memory. (Read the whole review)
—The Washington Post, Nancy Hightower, Nov. 25, 2014 ...Jennifer Marie Brissett's debut novel really delivers. Surrender to the
weird structure and it's a unique, surprising and clever book that turns
the post-apocalyptic genre on its head.
(Read the whole review)
—The Register, Brid-Aine Parnell, Dec. 6, 2014
Brissett handles this not uncommon SF trope as if it were freshly
minted. Her subtle morphings of identity and circumstance among her deeply
felt characters serve to make us ponder, as I said earlier, what make up
the core constituents of self and personality, and what is superficial. Her
crabwise plotting is a bold and successful counterpoint to more linear
narratives. And while her treatment of the theme is clear-eyed and
personal, she also harks to many ancestors.
(Read the whole review)
—Locus Online, Paul di Filippo, Dec. 13, 2014
The novel's unsettling and unusual structure works because Brissett
skillfully seeds symbols and repeats elements to carry the reader through
each version of the world. Just as the heroine/hero slowly comes to realize
what is happening to the world, so, too, does the reader. It will
inevitably bring the movie The Matrix to mind; this is a weird, however,
original play on reality.
(Read the whole review)
—Library Journal, Megan M. McArdle, Dec. 1, 2014
When I finished reading Elysium a couple of weeks ago, my first thought
was, "This was a debut?" It certainly is a daring first effort, as
Brissett tackles issues of gender/sex identities and love through the
interactions of two souls, Adrianne/Adrian and Antoine/Antoinette, over the
course of several "lives," each of which are seen only as vignettes
interrupted by seeming computer code/rebooting.... By the novel's end, the
cumulative lessons that these two souls (or perhaps computer simulacra?)
have learned makes Elysium one of the best debut novels that I've read in a
year full of strong first novels and collections.
(Read the whole review)
—The Of Blog, Larry Nolen, Dec. 20, 2014
Elysium is a powerfully ambitious book. In a certain sense, it is
a love story. But it is also a book about identity politics, about history
and collective memory, about technology and culture, and ultimately about
extermination and genocide.
(Read the whole review)
—Los Angeles Review of Books, Steven Shaviro, June 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61976-053-0 (13 digit)
Publication Date: Dec 2014
paperback 208 pages
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