"Elven’s crisp and creepy debut looks at the transactional nature of relationships and the subtle signals of power at play in small-town dynamics . . . Skillfully polished prose keeps things intriguing. Elven successfully channels the magic and mood of Kafka’s fables." —Publishers Weekly


"The Weak Spot is at once a charming and a gently profound novel, bringing to mind the elegant fabulism of Anne Serre and the grace-filled contemplativeness of Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. In sentences that quietly astonish, Lucie Elven shows us how consciousness is shaped by landscape—by distance, light, and heat—and by radically opening ourselves, for better and for worse, to the aspirations and struggles of others. I know I will be returning to these pages again and again." —Mary South, author of You Will Never Be Forgotten

"This eccentric, intensely observed book—full of dry humor and sturdy, elegant sentences—examines the slippery quality of the self in relation to others and the treacherous terrain of a world governed by manipulative men. Slightly gothic, vaguely old-world, and briskly contemporary, The Weak Spot is a singular work from a writer whose fiction I’ve long admired in the pages of NOON." —Kathryn Scanlan, author of The Dominant Animal and Aug 9—Fog

"In prose reminiscent of Fleur Jaeggy, The Weak Spot is a prismatic fable spiked with dozens of elegant revelations. Lucie Elven is an extremely promising new writer, one in touch with a greater, richer world that exists just below the surface of daily life." —Catherine Lacey, author of Pew and The Answers

"Recalling the mood of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain and the aesthetic of a Dario Argento film, The Weak Spot is an evocative and intriguing novel. The thrill is in the prose—vivid, expansive, perfectly controlled. I love where Lucie Elven's sentences take me, and I adore this book." —Lauren Aimee Curtis, author of Dolores

"No word is wasted in Lucie Elven's whipsmart, elegiac debut. Every scene and image is vivid, cutting, and fluid, turning a peculiar mountain town into a wonderland of social insights and frictions. I knew I would be rereading The Weak Spot halfway during my first read—and a few pages into my second read. Elven is a master in the making." —Stephen Kearse, author of In the Heat of the Light