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  • The Paris Review

    Staff Picks: Medusa, Magic, and Moshfegh

    by The Paris Review Feb 15, 2019 4 minutes

    T Kira Madden. Photo: Jac Martinez.

    T Kira Madden is magic. In her forthcoming memoir , she uses language new and strange but always devastatingly right. One of my favorite lines describes weather not unlike our recent New York squalls: “It’s a nickel-slapping kind of rain, a silver bounce to it. It is not cold enough to snow.” Such sentences, in their brevity and clarity, whirl the reader through this book. Whether in a loud coffee shop or our lively office, I found myself completely ensconced. Other books might possess similar powers—to steal a reader’s attention entirely—but I do think this memoir’s pull is uniquely sonic. “Nickel-slapping” and “silver bounce,” for instance, possess that ear-thrum of diving underwater. I’m thinking also of Madden’s dialogue: she” to the most thudding words and exchanges, Madden reveals the taut vulnerability in everyday speech, the feeling that we always say either too much or too little—our fear, but speaking anyway. 

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