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by David Keenan
A transcendent love letter to literature and music, Xstabeth is an exciting new work from a writer who, book-by-book, is rewriting the rules of contemporary fiction.
Aneliya's father dreams of becoming a great musician but his naivete and his unfashionable music suggest he will never be taken seriously. Her father's best friend, on the other hand, has a penchant for vodka, strip clubs, and moral philosophy. Aneliya is torn between love of the former and passion for the latter.
When an angelic presence named Xstabeth enters their lives Aneliya and her father's world is transformed.
A short, stylish novel with a big heart, humor, Xstabeth moves from Russia to Scotland, touching upon the pathos of Russian literature and the Russian soul, the power of art and music to shape reality, and the metaphysics of golf while telling a moving father-daughter story in highly-charged, torrential prose.
"Music and the sacred converge in unexpected ways...It can be dizzying at times, but the risks and esotericism on display make this a memorable read. This isn't a typical rock novel—but that's what makes it so compelling." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[A] philosophical, poetic novel...The Russian soul and its attendant angst are well explored in this short novel, as Aneliya and her father contemplate the significance of art." - Library Journal (starred review)
"As the music writers wax extendedly on their esoteric subject, they land on occasional flashes of brilliance. Sometimes this odd text makes beautiful sense, but more often, it doesn't." - Publishers Weekly
"[Keenan's] meandering novel will shock and delight, confuse and inspire, all in a manner that truly elevates the form." - Booklist
"You can lose yourself in the novel's weird loops and whorls, searching for resolution while luxuriating in the lack of it...There's something here of the 19th-century Russian novelists' passion for authenticity, their fervid drama...The sense of a synchronous world being created even as you read, where past visions spark memories that echo the present, leaping across synaptic gaps with the grace of a bird in flight." - The Guardian (UK)
"It is one of the most interesting novels I've come across this year. Reading it, I felt the unmistakable pulse of something living, and it isn't done with me yet." - Literary Review (UK)
"Reading Xstabeth feels like being cut open to the accompanying sound of ecstatic music." - Edna O'Brien, author of Girl
"Prepare for more of that inimitable Keenan narrative voodoo brilliance." - Wendy Erskine, author of Sweet Home
This information about Xstabeth was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
David Keenan's This Is Memorial Device won the Collyer Bristow Award for Debut Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2017 Gordon Burn Prize. His second novel, For the Good Times won the 2019 Gordon Burn Prize. Edna O'Brien described reading his third novel, Xstabeth (Europa, 2022), as "feel[ing] like being cut open to the accompanying sound of ecstatic music." He lives in Glasgow, Scotland.
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