名列各家指標媒體──衛報、赫芬頓郵報、Literary Hub …2019最期待的作品！
當我們的愛人註定變成我們不認識的樣子 我們該如何是好？
一段淒美的愛情 一段過去與未來交錯的掙扎
紐約，2000年夏末，一些外帶水餃、一些香檳、一些二十多歲的男男女女熱烈交談，一場派對在曼哈頓舉行著。有一位年輕男孩Ben，還是個博士生，遇見了一位曾主修藝術的年輕女孩Kate，然後他們墜入了愛河。
Kate從小，當夜晚來臨而她步入了夢鄉──她就一直夢見自己活在伊莉莎白時代的英國，是一位貴族的情婦，名為Emilia。可是當她和Ben訴說這件事時，Ben卻因為認為Kate是個未經世事且富有想像力的女孩，從不特別放在心上。
然而，這個夢境卻越來越真實，甚至影響到了Kate的現實生活。漸漸的，Kate發現每次醒來，她的生活都有些改變，譬如她牆上掛了幅從沒見過的畫像，一棟建築就在一夜之間從無到有，聳立天際。Kate試著認為發生的一切都是合理的，但Ben已經開始擔心，他是不是愛上了一位分不清現實與夢境的女孩…
被書評比擬為如獲得廣大書迷喜愛的《The Time Traveler’s Wife時空旅人之妻》，本書帶著讀者穿梭於十六世紀的英國與當下，充滿想像力的故事設計，若夢的力量並不僅是我們所以為的那樣？我們的抉擇可能產生巨大的後果……而在Ben與Kate揪心的愛情裡，也設問：當我們所愛的人如果有天讓我們開始無法理解，甚或憂慮他是否邁向瘋狂，該如何面對？愛的力量能帶我們跨過多少困難險阻？（文/博客來編譯）
New York, late summer, 2000. A party in a spacious Manhattan apartment, hosted by a wealthy young activist. Dozens of idealistic twenty-somethings have impassioned conversations over takeout dumplings and champagne. The evening shines with the heady optimism of a progressive new millennium. A young man, Ben, meets a young woman, Kate―and they begin to fall in love.
From their first meeting, Ben knows Kate is unworldly and fanciful, so at first he isn’t that concerned when she tells him about the recurring dream she’s had since childhood. In the dream, she’s transported to the past, where she lives a second life as Emilia, the mistress of a nobleman in Elizabethan England.
But for Kate, the dream becomes increasingly real and compelling until it threatens to overwhelm her life. And soon she’s waking from it to find the world changed―pictures on her wall she doesn’t recognize, new buildings in the neighborhood that have sprung up overnight. As she tries to make sense of what’s happening, Ben worries the woman he’s fallen in love with is losing her grip on reality.
Transporting the reader between a richly detailed past and a frighteningly possible future, The Heavens is a powerful reminder of the consequences of our actions, a poignant testament to how the people we love are destined to change, and a masterful exploration of the power of dreams.
Review
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2019 by the Guardian, the Huffington Post, Literary Hub, the Millions, and the San Gabriel Valley Tribune
“In Newman’s stellar novel, a woman’s ability to travel back in time in dreams―specifically, to 16th-century Britain―morphs into a world-altering liability. Kate, an art school dropout living in Brooklyn in 2000, has since childhood entered alternate worlds as she sleeps; but the dreams shift and intensify when, in her 20s, she meets and begins dating Ben, a grounded PhD student. . . . Newman’s novel expertly marries historical and contemporary, plumbing the rich, all-too-human depths of present-day New York and early modern England, and racing toward a well-executed peak. But it’s the evolution of Kate and Ben’s relationship that serves as the book’s emotional anchor, making for a fantastic, ingenious novel.”―Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed review)
“Newman is known for her bold imagination, and this kaleidoscopic novel is no exception. Like an apocalyptically tinged version of The Time Traveler’s Wife, Kate and Ben’s love story encompasses difficult questions: What is mental illness? Can art, or love, have power? Is humanity doomed? And if it is, then how do we create a life with meaning? . . . Newman’s sentences, like the embroidery Kate practices, pull the story along with their intricate beauty. A complex, unmissable work from a writer who deserves wide acclaim.”―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Newman neatly manages the uneasy feat of pulling off a historical novel featuring both William Shakespeare and Alexander the Great, foreshadowing the action with philosophical musings on the butterfly effect and the Great Man theory of history. A thought-provoking, head-spinning fever dream of a novel; highly recommended.”―Library Journal (starred review)
“In this tender love story, Newman ponders the impact of individual action on the world as she creates alternative universes, realities, even endings . . . Provocative.”―Booklist
“Smart and terrifying and delicious literary storytelling.”―Literary Hub
“I was bewitched by the ambition and charge of Sandra Newman’s time-slip narrative, which is at once troubling and beautiful, emotionally resonant and fantastically strange.”―Olivia Laing, author of Crudo
“I fell into The Heavens and it was not unlike falling in love: effortless, magical, seductive, humming with beauty and possible danger. This gorgeous novel is a feat of the imagination. Sandra Newman has created a fictional world that was a frightening pleasure to inhabit, one in which the realm of dreams and its mysteries were as compelling as waking life.”―Fatima Farheen Mirza, New York Times-bestselling author of A Place for Us
“What a wonderful, strange, terrifying, brilliant novel this is.”―Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire
“Reading Sandra Newman’s The Heavens is like falling up a brilliant flight of stairs. Inventive and moving and surprising on every level, it’s a novel that doesn’t just play with time and history and certainty: it turns those things inside out. I’ve been haunted by its characters and ideas ever since I reluctantly finished it.”―Elizabeth McCracken, author of Thunderstruck & Other Stories and Bowlaway
“An elegant and untamed novel that illuminates the soft edges between love, madness, idealism, and the narrative power of the unconscious mind.”―Catherine Lacey, author of The Answers and Certain American States
“Unique and brilliant, I tore through The Heavens and I loved it. It is a house made of trapdoors, where dreams are real and reality a dream. Through this strange labyrinth of 21st century New York and Renaissance England, it is love which deftly, movingly, finds the way.”―Adam Foulds, author of The Quickening Maze
“The Heavens, shifting restlessly between worlds, gently encouraging Elizabethan England into eccentric New York, rolling everything into a dreamy, desperate new reality, is everything we expect from Sandra Newman. It’s strange but focused, beautifully written and put together, dangerously benign, comic and clever, bright as a knife.”―M. John Harrison, author of Light and You Should Come With Me Now
Praise for The Country of Ice Cream Star:
Longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Folio Prize
Washington Post Notable Fiction Books of the Year
NPR Best Books of the Year
“The latest novel to imagine the Earth undone by illness is Sandra Newman’s epic, The Country of Ice Cream Star. And it is an epic, with all that connotes: It’s a big, sweeping saga set in Western Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., with ferocious battles, a desperate romance and an against-all-odds quest for a cure . . . what makes the novel so fascinating―and, yes, so challenging―is the language Newman has created for Ice Cream and the way we see this disease-ravaged world through her eyes . . . I worried about Ice Cream, and I rooted for Ice Cream. And when I was done with her story, I was very glad that I had gotten my flu shot.”―Washington Post
當我們的愛人註定變成我們不認識的樣子 我們該如何是好？
一段淒美的愛情 一段過去與未來交錯的掙扎
紐約，2000年夏末，一些外帶水餃、一些香檳、一些二十多歲的男男女女熱烈交談，一場派對在曼哈頓舉行著。有一位年輕男孩Ben，還是個博士生，遇見了一位曾主修藝術的年輕女孩Kate，然後他們墜入了愛河。
Kate從小，當夜晚來臨而她步入了夢鄉──她就一直夢見自己活在伊莉莎白時代的英國，是一位貴族的情婦，名為Emilia。可是當她和Ben訴說這件事時，Ben卻因為認為Kate是個未經世事且富有想像力的女孩，從不特別放在心上。
然而，這個夢境卻越來越真實，甚至影響到了Kate的現實生活。漸漸的，Kate發現每次醒來，她的生活都有些改變，譬如她牆上掛了幅從沒見過的畫像，一棟建築就在一夜之間從無到有，聳立天際。Kate試著認為發生的一切都是合理的，但Ben已經開始擔心，他是不是愛上了一位分不清現實與夢境的女孩…
被書評比擬為如獲得廣大書迷喜愛的《The Time Traveler’s Wife時空旅人之妻》，本書帶著讀者穿梭於十六世紀的英國與當下，充滿想像力的故事設計，若夢的力量並不僅是我們所以為的那樣？我們的抉擇可能產生巨大的後果……而在Ben與Kate揪心的愛情裡，也設問：當我們所愛的人如果有天讓我們開始無法理解，甚或憂慮他是否邁向瘋狂，該如何面對？愛的力量能帶我們跨過多少困難險阻？（文/博客來編譯）
New York, late summer, 2000. A party in a spacious Manhattan apartment, hosted by a wealthy young activist. Dozens of idealistic twenty-somethings have impassioned conversations over takeout dumplings and champagne. The evening shines with the heady optimism of a progressive new millennium. A young man, Ben, meets a young woman, Kate―and they begin to fall in love.
From their first meeting, Ben knows Kate is unworldly and fanciful, so at first he isn’t that concerned when she tells him about the recurring dream she’s had since childhood. In the dream, she’s transported to the past, where she lives a second life as Emilia, the mistress of a nobleman in Elizabethan England.
But for Kate, the dream becomes increasingly real and compelling until it threatens to overwhelm her life. And soon she’s waking from it to find the world changed―pictures on her wall she doesn’t recognize, new buildings in the neighborhood that have sprung up overnight. As she tries to make sense of what’s happening, Ben worries the woman he’s fallen in love with is losing her grip on reality.
Transporting the reader between a richly detailed past and a frighteningly possible future, The Heavens is a powerful reminder of the consequences of our actions, a poignant testament to how the people we love are destined to change, and a masterful exploration of the power of dreams.
Review
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2019 by the Guardian, the Huffington Post, Literary Hub, the Millions, and the San Gabriel Valley Tribune
“In Newman’s stellar novel, a woman’s ability to travel back in time in dreams―specifically, to 16th-century Britain―morphs into a world-altering liability. Kate, an art school dropout living in Brooklyn in 2000, has since childhood entered alternate worlds as she sleeps; but the dreams shift and intensify when, in her 20s, she meets and begins dating Ben, a grounded PhD student. . . . Newman’s novel expertly marries historical and contemporary, plumbing the rich, all-too-human depths of present-day New York and early modern England, and racing toward a well-executed peak. But it’s the evolution of Kate and Ben’s relationship that serves as the book’s emotional anchor, making for a fantastic, ingenious novel.”―Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed review)
“Newman is known for her bold imagination, and this kaleidoscopic novel is no exception. Like an apocalyptically tinged version of The Time Traveler’s Wife, Kate and Ben’s love story encompasses difficult questions: What is mental illness? Can art, or love, have power? Is humanity doomed? And if it is, then how do we create a life with meaning? . . . Newman’s sentences, like the embroidery Kate practices, pull the story along with their intricate beauty. A complex, unmissable work from a writer who deserves wide acclaim.”―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Newman neatly manages the uneasy feat of pulling off a historical novel featuring both William Shakespeare and Alexander the Great, foreshadowing the action with philosophical musings on the butterfly effect and the Great Man theory of history. A thought-provoking, head-spinning fever dream of a novel; highly recommended.”―Library Journal (starred review)
“In this tender love story, Newman ponders the impact of individual action on the world as she creates alternative universes, realities, even endings . . . Provocative.”―Booklist
“Smart and terrifying and delicious literary storytelling.”―Literary Hub
“I was bewitched by the ambition and charge of Sandra Newman’s time-slip narrative, which is at once troubling and beautiful, emotionally resonant and fantastically strange.”―Olivia Laing, author of Crudo
“I fell into The Heavens and it was not unlike falling in love: effortless, magical, seductive, humming with beauty and possible danger. This gorgeous novel is a feat of the imagination. Sandra Newman has created a fictional world that was a frightening pleasure to inhabit, one in which the realm of dreams and its mysteries were as compelling as waking life.”―Fatima Farheen Mirza, New York Times-bestselling author of A Place for Us
“What a wonderful, strange, terrifying, brilliant novel this is.”―Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire
“Reading Sandra Newman’s The Heavens is like falling up a brilliant flight of stairs. Inventive and moving and surprising on every level, it’s a novel that doesn’t just play with time and history and certainty: it turns those things inside out. I’ve been haunted by its characters and ideas ever since I reluctantly finished it.”―Elizabeth McCracken, author of Thunderstruck & Other Stories and Bowlaway
“An elegant and untamed novel that illuminates the soft edges between love, madness, idealism, and the narrative power of the unconscious mind.”―Catherine Lacey, author of The Answers and Certain American States
“Unique and brilliant, I tore through The Heavens and I loved it. It is a house made of trapdoors, where dreams are real and reality a dream. Through this strange labyrinth of 21st century New York and Renaissance England, it is love which deftly, movingly, finds the way.”―Adam Foulds, author of The Quickening Maze
“The Heavens, shifting restlessly between worlds, gently encouraging Elizabethan England into eccentric New York, rolling everything into a dreamy, desperate new reality, is everything we expect from Sandra Newman. It’s strange but focused, beautifully written and put together, dangerously benign, comic and clever, bright as a knife.”―M. John Harrison, author of Light and You Should Come With Me Now
Praise for The Country of Ice Cream Star:
Longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Folio Prize
Washington Post Notable Fiction Books of the Year
NPR Best Books of the Year
“The latest novel to imagine the Earth undone by illness is Sandra Newman’s epic, The Country of Ice Cream Star. And it is an epic, with all that connotes: It’s a big, sweeping saga set in Western Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., with ferocious battles, a desperate romance and an against-all-odds quest for a cure . . . what makes the novel so fascinating―and, yes, so challenging―is the language Newman has created for Ice Cream and the way we see this disease-ravaged world through her eyes . . . I worried about Ice Cream, and I rooted for Ice Cream. And when I was done with her story, I was very glad that I had gotten my flu shot.”―Washington Post