Two crystalline novellas linked by one devastating crime: Say This is an immersive meditation on the interplay between memory, trauma, and narrative.
It’s a cold spring in Baltimore, 2018, when the email arrives: the celebrity journalist hopes Eva will tell him everything about the sexual affair she had as a teen with her older cousin, a man now in federal prison for murder. Thirteen years earlier, Lenore-May answers the phone to the nightmare news that her stepson’s body has been found near Mount Hood, and homicide is suspected. Following Eva’s unsettling ambivalence towards her confusing relationship, and constructing a portrait of her cousin’s victim via collaged perspectives of the slain man’s family, these two linked novellas borrow, interrogate, sometimes dismantle the tropes of true crime; lyrically render the experiences of grief and dissociation; and brilliantly mine the fault lines of power and consent, silence, justice, accountability, and class. Say This is a startling exploration of the devastating effects of trauma on personal identity.
Genre: Mystery
It’s a cold spring in Baltimore, 2018, when the email arrives: the celebrity journalist hopes Eva will tell him everything about the sexual affair she had as a teen with her older cousin, a man now in federal prison for murder. Thirteen years earlier, Lenore-May answers the phone to the nightmare news that her stepson’s body has been found near Mount Hood, and homicide is suspected. Following Eva’s unsettling ambivalence towards her confusing relationship, and constructing a portrait of her cousin’s victim via collaged perspectives of the slain man’s family, these two linked novellas borrow, interrogate, sometimes dismantle the tropes of true crime; lyrically render the experiences of grief and dissociation; and brilliantly mine the fault lines of power and consent, silence, justice, accountability, and class. Say This is a startling exploration of the devastating effects of trauma on personal identity.
Genre: Mystery
Praise for this book
"Every page of Elise Levine's Say This is a meticulously crafted, crystalline work of high art. These two novellas, fragmented and fractured in a manner that perfectly captures our present reality, are sharp and poetic, suspenseful and engaging. Everything one requires of the best narrative fiction is here, all told in gorgeous prose that commands your attention at every turn." - Robert Lopez
"Elise Levine is a taut and musical writer who experiments boldly and beautifully with form. The fragments of story here refract like a prism, bending and catching the complexity of her characters' experiences. This is an arresting and powerful book." - Alix Ohlin
"Elise Levine's brilliant Say This examines the damage inflicted by one man's life and another man's death, as experienced by the people they left behind. Intimate, provocative, and deeply unsettling in their power, these interconnected novellas showcase Levine's gift for telling stories that readers can't look away from, wrapped in prose so beautiful and precise." - Jung Yun
"Elise Levine is a taut and musical writer who experiments boldly and beautifully with form. The fragments of story here refract like a prism, bending and catching the complexity of her characters' experiences. This is an arresting and powerful book." - Alix Ohlin
"Elise Levine's brilliant Say This examines the damage inflicted by one man's life and another man's death, as experienced by the people they left behind. Intimate, provocative, and deeply unsettling in their power, these interconnected novellas showcase Levine's gift for telling stories that readers can't look away from, wrapped in prose so beautiful and precise." - Jung Yun
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