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Book Title

Swallowed by the Cold

Subtitle
Stories
Author 1
Jensen Beach
Body
The intricate, interlocking stories of Jensen Beach’s extraordinarily poised story collection are set in a Swedish village on the Baltic Sea as well as in Stockholm over the course of two eventful years.   In Swallowed by the Cold, people are besieged and haunted by disasters both personal and national: a fatal cycling accident, a drowned mother, a fire on a ferry, a mysterious arson, the assassination of the Swedish foreign minister, and, decades earlier, the Soviet bombing of Stockholm. In these stories, a drunken, lonely woman is convinced that her new neighbor is the daughter of her dead lover; a one-armed tennis player and a motherless girl reckon with death amid a rainstorm; and happening upon a car crash, a young woman is unaccountably drawn to the victim, even as he slides into a coma and her marriage falls into jeopardy.    Again and again, Beach’s protagonists find themselves unable to express their innermost feelings to those they are closest to, but at the same time they are drawn to confide in strangers. In its confidence and subtle precision, Beach’s prose evokes their reticence but is supple enough to reveal deeper passions and intense longing. Shot through with loss and the regret of missed opportunities, Swallowed by the Cold is a searching and crystalline book by a startlingly talented young writer.

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List Price
$16.00
ISBN
ISBN
978-1-55597-738-2
Format
Format
Paperback
Publication Date
Publication Date
Subject
Subject
Pages
Pages
208
Trim Size
Trim Size
5.5 x 8.25
Keynote
Piercing, profound stories about the silences that calcify around the histories we fail to confront

About the Author

Jensen  Beach

Jensen Beach is the author of Swallowed by the Cold and For Out of the Heart Proceed. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, A Public Space, the Paris Review, Tin House, and elsewhere. He teaches in the BFA program at Johnson State College and lives in Vermont with his family.

https://jensenwbeach.com/

More by author

Praise

  • “Skillful.”—Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
  • Swallowed by the Cold empathizes with the way we get too caught up in our own messes to notice when our fellow man is, however figuratively, bleeding out alone on a beach.”The Paris Review
  • “[Jensen Beach’s] stark, yet multiply-layered prose explores the deep uneasiness people feel, and communicates a complexity of emotions using an economy of words.”—Vermont Public Radio
  • “Intricate, riveting. . . . In the face of life's random violence and disquieting volatility, Beach's collection offers an unforgettable affirmation of the interconnectedness of all things.”—The Rumpus
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