About this item
"Ambitious, original, deliciously philosophical. Kingdom of the Young invites comparison to the crnicas of Clarice Lispector and the fabulas of Italo Calvino." - Carolyn Cooke, author of Daughters of the RevolutionThe dynamic characters in Kingdom of the Young are searching: for adventure, work, love, absolution, better chances elsewhere. In a symphonic stream of consciousness, a fanatical child army loses faith in its commander as he ages unforgivably into his thirties. A woman possessed with wanderlust and a small inheritance seeks love among the cave-dwelling Roma in Granada. Traumatized war veterans run local rackets; smarmy bureaucrats rise through the ranks of repressive regimes; civilians attempt to escape the stranglehold of life under dictatorships.
About the Author
A Most Anticipated Book of 2017 - The Millions
Kirkus Reviews:
Starred Review, January 2017:
A probing and deeply ruminative cross-genre odyssey.Meidav (Lola, California, 2012, etc.) pulls readers through a series of dreamy, complex, poignant stories with language that is by turns gauzy-poetic and pinpoint-precise but unfailingly inventive. Divided into three sections of short fiction, "Believers," "Dreamers," and "Knaves," the book ends with a coda of two touching and philosophically expansive essays, which, by their curious inclusion, stand as tacit commentary on the membranes of varying thickness and toughness between the fictive and the "real"; the permeability of each to the other. In the first of the two, "Questions of Travel," Meidav recalls, among other things, a visit to Parc Güell in Barcelona, which greatly diverged from both the memory of a previous visit and from the glittering image of a postcard that inspired the trip at hand. The story picks at a thread that runs throughout the tales that precede it, of the disparity between perception and memory and experience, between gloss and exegesis, image and analysis. In "Quinceañera," Meidav dives deep into the complications and bittersweetness of the decline and demise of a passionate childhood friendship, the messiness and roving loyalties of youth, exploring the disappointments and stagnation of the now-grown narrator, the entanglements of responsibility, and "how blame alone can basically embalm you for life." In "The Buddha of the Vedado," a young woman waits for her charismatic boyfriend to get out of prison so they can marry and start a family, amid other deprivations of latter-day Cuba. In another, "Beef," a Southern swindler who supports his cancer-stricken mother invades unsuspecting people's homes, forcing freezers full of meat upon them and quickly extracting payment, until a couple he's marked as easy targets swoops down in an act of retribution like the hand of Flannery O'Connor herself. A penetrating collection that glides among an impressive breadth of storytelling modes with warmth and easy brilliance.
EVENTS in 2017
April 4: Rhinebeck, book launch at Oblong - RSVP requested
http://www.oblongbooks.com/event/book-launch-event-edie-meidav-kingdom-young-stories
April 5: smaller event at Bard
April 6: UMass Amherst, 8 pm, Memorial Hall
*April 11: Slought Foundation in Philadelphia
April 12: Center for Fiction with Sunil Yapa and Dana Johnson - conversation on social engagement - in NYC
*April 13: Soho's McNally Jackson with the great Cal Morgan - also NYC
*April 17: Booksmith in San Francisco with Oscar Villalon/Zyzzyva
April 18: Mrs. Dalloways in Berkeley
April 19: Berkeley or Oakland: Western Institute for Social Research and/or A Great Good Place for Books
*Ap
