Overview

A mortally funny debut novel of a mother's love that defies all odds, including death A mortally funny story of a mother's quest to save her son against all odds 'Transcendent and dazzlingly weird' New York Times 'Amie Barrodale is the most important writer of my generation' Ottessa Moshfegh Sandra dies unexpectedly at a conference in Nepal. Across the world in a desert in New Mexico, her teenage son, Trip, has run away from a centre for troubled youth. But Sandra soon discovers that a mother's work is never done, not even when you're dead. It turns out limbo is a great place from which to keep an eye on your errant son. When Trip is picked up on the side of the road by a strange man, Sandra is the only one who knows where he is. As Trip ventures further south towards the coast and directly into the eye of a hurricane, Sandra's struggle to save him from the other realm begins. From Florida's Gulf Stream to the raging seas, through Munich-bound aeroplanes and from one body to another, Trip takes us on an absurd, profound and irresistibly entertaining odyssey - a story of childhood and motherhood, life and death, and everything in between. 'Beautifully crafted, hard-boiled fun' Nell Zink 'I was captivated and charmed for its entirety' Adelaide Faith 'An extraordinary novel' Akhil Sharma

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9781787335943

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Reviews

Raw and funny, yet graceful and astonishingly precise, Trip is a book with the power to resonate in the most intimate ways for any reader. I read it in awe, as if Barrodale had written it just for me -- Ottessa Moshfegh Amie Barrodale’s Trip is an extraordinary novel. It is as if Kurt Vonnegut and Hunter S. Thompson have joined together to write a tender story of a recently dead mom who wanders the bardo but is always drawn back to her imperiled son, an autistic teenager who is on a boat with a stranger, lost at sea -- Akhil Sharma Trip is an extraordinary novel. I’ve read nothing like it. It is crazy, wise, sensitive, funny, and terrifying — all those things put together so fluidly you can’t pick one apart from the other. Like all the best physical, chemical, emotional, and existential trips I’ve taken, this one blows the mind and shocks the heart -- Christopher Bollen The wild and quirky debut novel from Barrodale ranges across two continents and the afterlife to tell the story of a mother and son’s failure to connect . . . Trip’s adventure story is great fun, and Barrodale’s depiction of the afterlife is amusing and wonderfully surreal. It’s a hoot * Publishers Weekly * Blending humor and Buddhism, Barrodale’s debut novel will resonate with fans of afterlife fiction * Booklist * A rather unstoppable read . . . Barrodale is incredibly skillful at evoking a wide range of emotions in a limited span of pages. Though dark, the novel is packed with wit and humor, and comes to a surprising conclusion that will especially satisfy parents who have attempted to impart a life lesson to a child. Trip is as absurd, tender and moving as life itself * BookPage * A transcendent and dazzling weird novel about disconnection and difference * New York Times * Hilarious and intelligent . . . Through the warmth and intensity of the mother-son bond in Trip, Amie Barrodale illustrates why it takes most of us thousands of lifetimes to let go * Chicago Review of Books * Much of the novel’s emotional heft comes from Barrodale’s portrait of Sandra as a mother trying, from beyond the veil, to resume the role she inhabited in life. Her memories of Trip—his innocent questions, his tiny rebellions, his larger eruptions of anger—are precisely drawn, and the neurodivergent child is rendered with loving clarity . . . Trip doesn’t tug its protagonist into the afterlife; it loops her back and back into the bewilderment of living * Washington Post *

Amie Barrodale is the most important writer of my generation. Her stories should be studied and worshipped. She is a savant and a genius both. I think human consciousness might actually need 100 years to catch up to her brilliance. -- Ottessa Moshfegh Barrodale is witty, soulful, and sharp all at once -- Mary Gaitskill

Author Information

Amie Barrodale is the author of the short story collection You Are Having a Good Time. She received the Plimpton Prize in 2012. A teaching-writing fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she received the Maytag Fellowship from them in 2014. Her writing has appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review and other publications. She is a former staff writer for The Onion and a former Fiction Editor at Vice.

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