The Box
A Novel
by Mandy-Suzanne Wong
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Pub Date Sep 19 2023 | Archive Date Aug 31 2023
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Description
* LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE *
A stylistically dazzling novel about objects, people, and the forces and seams between them.
Of course, each thing has its own sides to every story.
In a dark and crooked lane in an unnamed city where it never ceases to snow, a small white box falls from a coat pocket. It is made of paper strips woven tightly together; there is no apparent way to open it without destroying it. What compels a passing witness, a self-described anthrophobe not inclined to engage with other people, to pick up the box and chase after the stranger who dropped it?
The Box follows an impenetrable rectangle as it changes hands in a collapsing metropolis, causing confluences, conflicts, rifts, and disasters. Different narrators, each with a distinctive voice, give secondhand accounts of decisive moments in the box’s life. From the anthrophobe to a newly hired curator of a renowned art collection, from a couple who own an antiquarian bookshop to a hotel bartender hiding from a terrible past, the storytellers repeat rumors and rely on faulty memories, grasping at something that continually escapes them. Haunting their recollections is one mysterious woman who, convinced of the box’s good or evil powers, pursues it with deadly desperation.
In this mesmerizing, intricately constructed puzzle of a novel, Mandy-Suzanne Wong challenges our understanding of subjects and objects, of cause and effect. Is it only humans who have agency? What is or isn’t animate? What do we value and what do we discard?
Advance Praise
“If one of César Aira’s sly, sophisticated fictions took a detour through Jane Bennett’s theory of vibrant matter, the result might look something like The Box. Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s startling novel is literature for our times.”—Sofia Samatar
“Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s bold, singular, and brilliant novel is so strange, so enigmatic, it’s nearly impossible to describe. By turns funny and profound, The Box is a feat of language and storytelling and, in the end, a revelation.”—Mark Haber
“Riveting and elegant, The Box brings to mind Kazuo Ishiguro at his most enigmatic.”—Daisy Rockwell
Marketing Plan
National media campaign
Bookseller outreach campaign
2-city US tour
Targeted digital and social media advertising
National media campaign
Bookseller outreach campaign
2-city US tour
Targeted digital and social media advertising
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781644452493 |
| PRICE | $17.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 264 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Mark B, Reviewer
Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s 2nd novel, “The Box”, is sui generis. It is comprised of multiple stories with unique voices, settings, characters and narratives that are barely held together by a thread.
It is never terribly easy to find your footing. “The Box” is shrouded in mystery, at turns murky, dreary, bleak, and misty. Wong doesn’t provide many signposts. We rarely get to put a name or time to a person or place. Characters come and go, it is usually left to the reader to decide how they interrelate, if at all. It is not always clear if a cast member is dead or alive, or simply a figment of the present narrator’s unreliable imagination.
Each chapter is a new treat, a fresh world that demands close attention and re-reading. The segments are endlessly creative, wildly inventive. Stories cross genre, mixing mystery, crime, allegory, folk- and fairytale, performance art, and drug-aided fantasy. There are puzzles, riddles, illusions to solve, often with the barest minimum of guidance or clues.
And what is it that holds all this mania together? “The Box” that enigmatic, formidable, mysterious, scary object that everyone seems to want, no one can seem to find or hold on to, and everyone is pretty sure that opening it would lead to some advanced form of ruin. You may want to open it, but you do not want to see what's inside. And there is snow, lots and lots of snow.
Wong is clearly a powerhouse writer - hyper imaginative, daring, provocative, bold. I for one can’t wait to see what’s next.
Thanks to Graywolf Press and NetGalley for the eARC
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