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Intimations: Stories
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman
24 posts | 11 read | 56 to read
From the celebrated author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, a thought-provoking, often unsettling story collection that consists, broadly, of narrative diagrams of the three main stages in a human life: birth, life, and death.Alexandra Kleeman s debut novel You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine earned her comparisons to Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Ben Marcus, and Tom Perrotta. It was praised by the New York Times as "a powerful allegory of our civilization s many maladies, artfully and elegantly articulated, by one of the young wise women of our generation." In her second book, a collection of twelve stories irresistibly seductive in their strangeness, she explores human life from beginning to end: the distress of birth into a world already formed; the brief and confusing period of "living" where we understand what is expected of us and struggle to do it; and the death-y period toward the end where we sense it is ending and will end only partially understood, at best.The title is taken from one of the stories ("Intimation"), but is also a play on Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality" only in this case it s not clear exactly what is being intimated, but it s nothing so gleaming and good as Immortality. The middle, "Living" section of the book, is fleshed out with a set of stories that borrow more from traditional realist fiction to illustrate the inner lives of the characters. At once familiar and mysterious, these stories have an eerie resonance as its characters find themselves in new and surprising situations. An unnamed woman enters a room with no exit and a ready-made life; the disappearance of people, objects, and memory creates an apocalypse; the art of dance is used to try to tame a feral child; the key to surviving a house-party lies in knowing the difference between fake and real blood. Elegant, surprising, wondrous, and haunting, Intimations is an utterly transporting collection from one of our most ingenious and brilliant young writers."
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review
8little_paws
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman
Panpan

Overall didn't like this one, the stories were too obscure to let the reader in so the experience reading isn't enjoyable. The last story is amazing and you can find it online, search for the author's name and the title "you, disappearing". Read it there and skip this book.

Megabooks I wasn‘t a fan of her novel that I read. In fact, it put her on my “never read” list! 3y
31 likes1 comment
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Bertha_Mason
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman

"Drivers honked sporadically, without aggression, like migrating geese."
-"You, Disappearing"

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Bertha_Mason
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman

"Hunger is, in and of itself, an eye pointed continually at what is lacking and how badly."
-"Rabbit Starvation"

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Bertha_Mason
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman

"There are times when any amount of being within the world is like rubbing bare skin against sandpaper, when any form of motion is a kind of abrasion, leaving you raw and pink and vulnerable to the next thing."
-"Fake Blood"

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Bertha_Mason
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman

"Infiltration: I tongued that [word] further. I knew it had a hostile aspect, like someone breaking into your house or posing as someone that you should trust. But it also had a lovely sound, a kind of tapered point and a gently ruffled edge"
-"Intimation"

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Bertha_Mason
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman

"Karen...had always believed that a person without trauma was dangerous in some way, untested."
-"Jellyfish"

3 likes1 stack add
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Bertha_Mason
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman

"The past was just a place where uncontrolled freaks you had never consciously decided to include in your life entered it anyway and staggered around, breaking things."
-"Choking Victim"

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Bertha_Mason
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman

"Her mother had a saying. Whenever you had given your all, she would tell you that it was time to “let the legumes grow.” This meant recognizing that you had nothing left to do because you had nothing left. You were a fallow field from which nothing more was going to come. Your task was to lay back and wait for the spring, when something might once again grow from you."
-"I May Not Be the One You Want, But I Am the One For You"

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Bertha_Mason
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman
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-"Unhabited," titled section of the story "A Brief History of Weather"

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Bertha_Mason
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman

"Lightning walks the plain like a tall, glowing man."
-"Unhabited," titled section of the story "A Brief History of Weather"

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Bertha_Mason
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman

"The utility of a sister stems from the longing for reinforcement, for an additional, aligned person inside the house to see what is happening and feel some way about it. This has something to do with why we are fitted with two eyes instead of one"
-"Instead of One," titled section of the story "A Brief History of Weather"

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Bertha_Mason
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman

"A feeling might claw you open with the simple intention of freeing itself, and it would be no one‘s fault."
-"The First Idea," titled section of the story "A Brief History of Weather"

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Bertha_Mason
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman
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-"Learned Motions," titled section of the story "A Brief History of Weather"
Asterisks mine; I asterisked out an ableist slur, whose inclusion in the passage I found baffling.

review
thejillest
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman
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Pickpick

Really fun to read, delightful little bites of surrealism. A perfect escape from the tedium if that *other* book

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dylanisreading
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman
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I just realized that I forgot to start my phone's stop watch again before I started the audiobook of Bright Lines. Oops. Not going to make it anyway. Picked this up at the library during my outing. Anyone read it yet? #24in48

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malloryomeara
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman
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Pickpick

Her novel was one of my favorite books of last year, so I've been excited to get to this collection. I didn't love every story, but the ones I did just blew my hair back. No one writes surreal like her. She's brilliant.

18 likes1 stack add
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slothandtabby
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman

"I would never have considered myself an expert on real blood or murder mysteries or staged deaths or party etiquette, but I have a good deal of experience with fake blood; and this just did not look like genuine fake blood."

6 likes1 stack add
blurb
Hoopiefoot
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman
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I mostly read library books so when I buy new friends I get really excited. Like "photo shoot on the beach" excited ?

Notafraidofwords Same 📚 7y
Christine Yes here too. Cutest photo! 7y
jessicarenee I looooved American housewife! 7y
LauraJ Money well spent! 7y
61 likes4 comments
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wisebravegirl
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman
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"A diet of questions is a steady way to shed weight, and health, and contentment."

36 likes3 stack adds
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Janitor
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman
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Happy book birthday, Alex!

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vincentscarpa
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman
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INTIMATIONS by the wickedly talented Alexandra Kleeman, out 9/13. You'll want to move it to the top of your TBR pile, just trust me on this.

A.Shari.A Love her writing. 8y
vincentscarpa @A.Shari.A Me too! She's a word wizard. 8y
5 likes2 stack adds2 comments
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BethFishReads
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman
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Another book that will make September great. Stories that explore the human lifespan with Kleeman's brand of quirky / odd.

37 likes3 stack adds
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Kiley
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman
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MEEP! Ahhhh I'm so excited about this one that I've lost my words!

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Liberty
Intimations: Stories | Alexandra Kleeman
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Eeeeeeeeeeee! I could not be more excited if I swallowed a cat and broke out in kittens!!!!!! I loved her debut so much.

Matilda Ooooooooo! 8y
mauveandrosysky Ahhhh, so jealous! 8y
Jessicav I skipped the name on this post and read the blurb and thought to myself, this must be Liberty. :) 8y
See All 6 Comments
dylanisreading I can't wait for this! 8y
A.Shari.A Cannot wait! 8y
Cinfhen Ha, great blurb 8y
98 likes32 stack adds6 comments