Stealing: A Novel in Dreams
Author: Shelly Brivic
Imprint: Frayed Edge Press
ISBN: 9781642510034 (pbk.)
Physical description: 6X9; 260 p.
Two Jewish brothers growing up in the 1950s Bronx navigate a toxic home environment headed by an emotionally abusive father and an unhappy mother. One brother eventually finds escape through academic achievement and a new life on the west coast, while the other brother remains entangled in the darkness of his existence, his life and mind slowly unraveling. By presenting the conscious and unconscious connections between family members, this experimental novel explores the concept of individuality, the psychological influences of family, and the very nature of reality.
Shelly Brivic was an internationally recognized James Joyce scholar and university professor. He wrote extensively on Joyce and other modernists from the perspective of Lacanian psychology, including Revolutionary Damnation: Badiou and Irish Fiction from Joyce to Enright, from Syracuse University Press. Stealing: A Novel in Dreams is his first work of fiction.
"Yes our waking dreams mean divided we stand together: this looping, original, anxiously funny novel a tangle of yearning & frustration
and vivid, bold appetite--how can it not find a host of readers."
Joseph McElroy, author of Women and Men and Plus
“With the logic of dream and memory, voice runs along with voice to tell a set of interbraiding tales of brothers and cities in a time everyone will recognize some of, wherein the moments before waking, before sleeping are evoked with wonderfully clean prose . . .”
Samuel R. Delany, author of Dhalgren and the Return to Nevèrÿon series
“A brutal thought-experiment on the psychological connections (and disconnections) between people and the long-term effects of growing up in a deeply flawed family; by turns amusing and disturbing.”
Robert Helms, editor of Guinea Pig Zero
elevating the trials of ordinary people into a narrative about freedom and consciousness through art."
Janina Levin in the Journal of Modern Literature blog
https://journalofmodernliterature.blogspot.com/2019/04/shames-voices-in-shelly-brivics.html
"Brivic’s effort to shed the mantle of analytical prose in favor of in-your-face realism (sometimes surrealism) in this bumpy, knotty family narrative is heroic..."
Bradley Buchanan in the San Francisco Book Review
https://sanfranciscobookreview.com/product/stealing-a-novel-in-dreams/