Quick! Grab your galleys for Anthony Marra’s A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (RH/ Hogarth). If you don’t have a print copy, digital ARC’s are available on Edelweiss and on NetGalley.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this debut novel set in Chechnya and arriving next week, is the hot new accessory. Sarah Jessica Parker is a huge supporter and has been working to help get the word out it.

The WSJ sits in on a book discussion, organized by the publisher and featuring the actress with a group of women in New York’s Tribeca nieghborhood,

…the conversation moved from the surprise that despite the lucidity with which Mr. Marra describes the environment in the novel, he had actually never visited Chechnya; to how people responded to the book’s leaps back and forth in time; to the pockets of humor, warmth and charm in this seemingly bleak fictional canvas; to whether the recent events in Boston would bring more people to the novel.

There’s more enthusiasm, it’s

• the number one IndieNext pick for May
• an NPR “First Read“
• on PW‘s list of  books  “Most Anticipated for Spring,” which mentions yet another supporter, “Ann Patchett [who] came on board early, calling the book ‘simply spectacular. Not since Everything Is Illuminated have I read a first novel so ambitious and fully realized.'”
• received three starred prepub reviews (the only holdout being Kirkus, which gave it a strong review, but complained that some plot elements were contrived.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 30th, 2013 at 12:38 pm and is filed under 2013 -- Summer, Fiction, Literary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.