The Story of My Teeth

Author:   Valeria Luiselli ,  Christina MacSweeney
Publisher:   Coffee House Press
ISBN:  

9781566894104


Publication Date:   07 September 2015
Format:   Electronic book text
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable   Availability explained
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The Story of My Teeth


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Overview

Bon vivant, world traveler, auctioneer--the story of Highway and his teeth is like Johnny Cash meets Robert Walser in Mexico.

Full Product Details

Author:   Valeria Luiselli ,  Christina MacSweeney
Publisher:   Coffee House Press
Imprint:   Coffee House Press
ISBN:  

9781566894104


ISBN 10:   1566894107
Publication Date:   07 September 2015
Audience:   General/trade ,  General ,  General
Format:   Electronic book text
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable   Availability explained
The supplier advises that this item is temporarily unavailable. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out to you.

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Reviews

One of the most unforgettable images in any book this year is that of Gustavo Highway Sanchez Sanchez, the protagonist of Luiselli s delightfully unclassifiable novel, walking around the streets of Mexico City, smiling at people with the teeth of Marilyn Monroe installed in his mouth . . . surprising and charming . . . It s difficult not to follow wherever it takes you. Publishers Weekly, starred and boxed review A lively, loopy experimental novel rich with musings on language, art, and, yes, teeth. . .the whole book is a kind of extended commentary on how possessions acquire value largely through the stories we tell about them. . . A clever philosophical novel that, as the author puts it, has "less to do with lying than surpassing the truth. Kirkus Starred Review Luiselli follows in the imaginative tradition of writers like Borges and Marquez, but her style and concerns are unmistakably her own. This deeply playful novel is about the passion and obsession of collecting, the nature of storytelling, the value of objects, and the complicated bonds of family. . . Luiselli has become a writer to watch, in part because it s truly hard to know (but exciting to wonder about) where she will go next. The New York Times "Come for the absurdist comedy, stay for the references to great writers and philosophers and see how in on the joke you really are." Vulture "Q: Whom would you want to write your life story? A: Valeria Luiselli The New York Times This highly inventive novel is narrated by a garrulous auctioneer who invents hypertrue stories for the objects he sells. . . . a work of immense charm and originality, written in vivid, witty prose. The New Yorker [The Story of My Teeth is] proof that Valeria Luiselli is one of the most exciting new writers working today. Los Angeles Times [Luiselli] has. . .conjured one of the most remarkable novels of 2015, a novel that illuminates the familiar problems of identity and selfhood by re-presenting them in a bracingly defamiliarized light. Kenyon Review This giddy, witty, idiosyncratic novel . . . is a jubilant celebration of the act of storytelling. . . Ms. Luiselli persuasively suggests that our lives would be empty vessels, hardly worth bidding on, without the stories that give them value and meaning. Wall Street Journal The Story of My Teeth is a playful, philosophical funhouse of a read that demonstrates that not only isn t experimental fiction dead, it needn t be deadly, either. NPR Although buoyant, Luiselli's work never seems flippant, perhaps because of her precise prose style . . . Linear at first glance, it soon opens out into a world of stories, like a mouth with one tooth from every artist in the world. Chicago Tribune The Story of My Teeth s playful re-contextualizations and detours are bound to leave you puzzled at some pointperhaps even many. . . . the book is a delightfully weird meander into art, salesmanship, Mexican culture, and experimental dentistry. Beijing Bookworm "What Highway (and Luiselli) is really hawking is fantasy, a sort of shared experience of faith in the improbable the art of storytelling, essentially, to which The Story of My Teeth pays manic veneration."The Globe and Mail (Canada) This boggling and enchanting collaborative novel about a man who believes he has had Marilyn Monroe s literal teeth implanted into his mouth began as a bit of art gallery catalog copy sponsored by a large juice company. National Post(Canada) This charmingly slippery slip of a book, packed with fantastical allusions, reminds us that the world s great stories can be ours for a very reasonable price."The San Francisco Chronicle "In a delicately layered, wryly funny fashion, Luiselli is exploring the actual value of telling made-up stories. Huffington Post The Story of My Teeth is a great read. The writing is equal parts elegant and chatty, with a great sense of humor. The Millions Luiselli offers a bright new voice in fiction, exploring the role of story in art through her quirky protagonist, Gustavo Sanchez Sanchez . . . . Playing with different ways to tell story, The Story of My Teeth is sly, endearing, refreshing, and ever broadening. Bookshop Santa Cruz Wonderful and strange, The Story of My Teeth transgresses against straightforward storytelling by witnessing and remixing to make something so fresh and new that it defies easy description. Just know that it dazzles on every page. Brazos Bookstore [The Story of My Teeth] reminds us of the power and sway of great stories, especially those we tell ourselves that, by sheer persistence, we come to believe! Green Apple Books on Park It s easy to see why Valeria Luiselli was chosen by the National Book Foundation as one of the 5 Under 35 Honorees. Within just a few paragraphs of her new novel, The Story of My Teeth, you ll be completely drawn into the weird and wonderful world of Gustavo Highway Sanchez Sanchez. This captivating story is filled with memorable characters and situations, but what is even more intriguing is the background story of how this work was written in collaboration with workers at a Jumex juice factory in Mexico City. Shawn Donley, Powell's Books Valeria Luiselli s THE STORY OF MY TEETH is the most likable book this year. Don t misunderstand: likeable doesn t mean it isn t brilliant or original or genre-defying or any of those other great things because, indeed, it is all of those things. But it s also Luiselli s inventiveness, the pure joy she takes in the act of storytelling, that makes this novel so exuberant. Brazos Bookstore "This kind of writingdirect and gentle, affectionate and satirical, precise and imaginative, memorable and efficientappears throughout, and the character of Gustavo is brought to life with exquisite imaginative power and beautifully judged tics and cadences. . . . It is a sad, beautiful and brilliant book. It will endure."The National (UK) " Valeria Luiselli's new novel The Story of My Teeth explores the meaning of home through the antics of an auctioneer, told in his own hyperbolic fashion, who has decided views on the meaning of value and worth in life and art."BBC The Story of My Teeth is a rich, provocative meditation on authenticity, heritage and personality. Publisher's Weekly Though playful and unruly, her fiction feels surprisingly warm and old-fashioned. Kirkus, cover feature Training as an auctioneer, Highway hopes these and other skills will help him find the perfect set of teeth. If that sounds like an odd plot, I can only promise you that things get delightfully odder. . . Luiselli s novel arrives in the United States from tiny Coffee House Press with considerable momentum behind it. The Guardian Besides its engaging characters and plot, there s the equally compelling backstory of this book, which Luiselli wrote in collaboration with employees of Mexico s Jumex, an industrial giant that produces and distributes juice. The Guardian Prefigured by her excellent book of essays, Sidewalks, The Story of My Teeth is playful, attentive and very smart without being for a minute pretentious. It s Walter Benjamin without tearssunnier, more casual and more nimble. The New York Times Sunday Book Review The story of Luiselli s teeth is positively constructive, even warm. Instead of collapsing and decomposing fragments, The Story of My Teeth reaches toward a world composed of fragments, the creative process which Highway calls in a moment of clarity a postcapitalist, radical recycling . . . that would save the world from its existential condition as the garbage can of history. Los Angeles Review of Books A perfectly defined universe."Clash The Story of My Teeth defies classification, and underscores the power of storytelling and the importance of reading. Virginia Quarterly Review When reading it, I had no idea of where it was going, in the best possible way. I mean I felt like it encompassed such a wide shift in tone. There were comic moments; there were incredibly tragic moments; there were surreal moments. Vol. 1 Brooklyn Luiselli has proven in both her novels that she s willing to break novelistic conventions to simultaneously tell and deconstruct her stories. If you don t mind some post-postmodernism with your misadventures, The Story of My Teeth is well worth bidding on. PANK The following exchange, which typifies Luiselli s willingness to lay bare artifice and to expose the many layers of its making, captures the spirit of her work and the charm of the writer herself. The White Review The Story of My Teeth ends up containing the truths and delusions of a fabulist, elements of the picaresque, unresolved preoccupations, wonderful asides, and a whole house of mirrors constructed with so much mirth and skill that it seems to avoid the glumly highbrow label of postmodernism. Words without Borders Shuttling between the quotidian and the transcendent, between the earthly and the intellectual, all the while disrupting those very tenuous categories, is precisely what makes The Story of My Teeth so engaging. Slant Magazine "Playfully brilliant."BuzzFeed "Luiselli s experiment pays off handsomely here as she shares her stories and involves her audience in creating them, and her imagination and intelligence make them a delight for readers. For those readers who may wonder where a form like the novel can go next and how much it can change without losing its way, Valeria Luiselli s latest effort shows one way."Mary Whipple Reviews The language seldom draws attention to itself, yet occasionally bursts into pyrotechnics. . . Highway emerges as an unexpectedly persuasive character, one who lingers in the reader s imagination."Necessary Fiction The Story of My Teeth is an intelligent and highly funny experiment of a novel. . . . With its manifold textures, a structure reminiscent of early Michael Ondaatje, and a thoroughly entertaining, Walser-esque protagonist in Highway Sanchez, The Story of My Teeth marks another leap forward in Luiselli s already stunning career. 3: AM Magazine [The Story of My Teeth is] hotly anticipated and promises to be playful, sharp, profound, and utterly unusual. Huffington Post "As strange and beautiful as the novel itself is the backstory to its creation a tale that involves a juice factory, a world-class art collection, and a rather unlikely collaboration. Studio 360 Unlike anything in contemporary US fiction, The Story of My Teeth as the unforgettable protagonist Highway explains is composed of hyperbolics, parabolics, circulars, allegorics, and elliptics. Flavorwire Readers hungry for more from Luiselli will be happy with this clever variation on her style. Library Journal Like her previous books, the novel Faces in the Crowd and the essay collection Sidewalks, this is a rich, eccentric, innovative work, and is sure to add to the author s swiftly growing list of accolades. Rain Taxi Forms and genres collide in this often hilarious experimental fiction from one of our most consistent young writers. Flavorwire A lovely, spare and playful voice . . . The Story of My Teeth is guided by an exceptional, memorable intelligence. The Rumpus The ever inventive, always incisive Valeria Luiselli presents a mosaic of fable, comedy, drama, and essay. Largehearted Boy The Story of My Teeth is unlike anything you ve ever read. With this brilliant, weird, zany second novel, Luiselli has solidified her place as one of the most interesting and imaginative minds putting words on paper today. Porter Square Books "The Story of My Teeth is a testament to eccentricity, to the willed inclusion of a discourse that Highway considers to be 'infinite' in its permutation sand "illuminated" in the resplendence of its references. If eccentricity is deviation from a known curve, then Luiselli has created an exceptional 'novel-essay' that irradiates beyond the orthodoxies of literary genre."Frieze I am so very excited about this book. Luiselli s Faces in the Crowd was one of my favorites last year. Legend has it, Luiselli wrote The Story of My Teeth with help from workers at a Jumex juice factory in Mexico. BookRiot "[Luiselli writes: ] "Something in me resists the ground. It is precisely this resistance which means Luiselli s work remains airborne, impossible to categorize and ultimately so refreshing.Lit Hub With this brilliant, weird, zany second novel, Luiselli has solidified her place as one of the most interesting and imaginative minds putting words on paper today. Lit Hub Wonderful and strange, The Story of My Teeth transgresses against straightforward storytelling by witnessing and remixing to make something so fresh and new that it defies easy description. Just know that it dazzles on every page. Lit Hub" "[The Story of My Teeth] is brilliant, and has a great story; it began as a commissioned work written in collaboration with workers at a Jumex juice factory in Mexcio."--"Publisher's Weekly" "The Story of My Teet is an elegant, witty romp through the industrial suburbs of Mexico City and Luiselli's own literary influences."--"Shelf Awareness"


Author Information

Valeria Luiselli: Valeria Luiselli was born Mexico City and 1983 and grew up in South Africa. A novelist (Faces in the Crowd) and essayist (Sidewalks), her work has been translated into many languages and has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the New Yorker, Granta, and McSweeney's. In 2014, Faces in the Crowd was the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 award. Her forthcoming novel, The Story of My Teeth, will be available from Coffee House Press in fall 2015.

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