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Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life
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Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life
$2999
Unit price
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Description
From the discomfort of my own home I buy dresses, look up recipes, do online surveys.
In Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life, an unnamed young woman in her late twenties navigates unemployment, boredom, chronic illness, and online dating. Her activities are banal—applying for jobs, looking up horoscopes, managing depression, going on Tinder dates.
"I want to tell someone I love them but there is no one to tell," she says. "Except my sister maybe. I want to pick blackberries on a farm and then die." She observes the ambiguities of social interactions, the absurd intimacies of sex, and the indignity of everyday events, with a scepticism about the possibility of genuine emotion, or enlightenment. Like life, things are just unfolding, and sometimes, like life, they don't actually get better.
Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle's novella-in-fragments blends artifice with sincerity, is darkly funny, and alive to the incongruous performance that constitutes getting by.
Written in a fragmentary form reminiscent of Renata Adler, Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life, Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle's deadpan fiction debut, documents an unnamed young protagonist's listless existence in an unnamed city. The book's droll dispatches from daily life under late capitalism recall the writing of the author's New Zealand contemporaries Hera Lindsay Bird and Eamonn Marra, but Butcher-McGunnigle's distinctive voice is her own. Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life is a grimly funny rendering of the absurdity of life in the 2020s—an era in which, with nowhere to turn, the hopeless millennial turns in on herself.' - Kelsey Oldham, Books+Publishing
Praise for Autobiography of a Marguerite:
'Workbook for surviving illness, guide to familial dysfunction and an intersection between fact and fiction...one of the most innovative New Zealand books published in recent years.' - Booknotes 'Books of the Year'
'The writing goes to the aching heart of disconnection and of longing for repair...Butcher-McGunnigle has created a crooked beauty out of shards.' - takah magazine
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life by Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle is generally praised for its candid and raw narrative. Reviewers appreciate the book's exploration of mundane despair and existential dread, noting the poignant and often darkly humorous prose. The novel's introspective nature and unconventional structure resonate with readers seeking a reflection on life's monotony and unfulfilled dreams.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781925818772
Publisher: Giramondo Publishing Co
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 01 August 2021
Country: Australia
Imprint: Giramondo Publishing Co
Illustration: Illustrations
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 148.0mm
Height: 210.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 68
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