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Lisa Locascio and Kate Folk
August 17, 2018 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm UTC+0
Lisa Locascio discusses her new novel, Open Me with Kate Folk.
Praise for Open Me
“Locascio’s story of a young American abroad is unflinching in its portrayal of sex, desire, racism, and the excitement and confusion of youth. Infused with erotics and politics, this is a novel that will haunt you.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer
“Through the care of her tremendous observations and the beauty of her prose, Lisa Locascio writes a kind of love letter to the female body and all its power and visceral complexity. This is a story of many important layers, but one of the many reasons it remains distinct in my mind is because of its honesty about our complicated, yearning physical selves. A remarkable, fearless debut.”—Aimee Bender, author of The Color Master
“Captivating and darkly clever, Locascio’s debut melds self-discovery and self-abnegation with raw, muscular grace. By turns beguiling, guileless, and penetratingly felt, this book seethes with eroticism, both physical and emotional—you won’t dare to pry yourself away from it.”—Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
“An evocative and compelling remapping of Bluebeard’s Castle for our times. In Open Me, Locascio offers a daring, unapologetic, and vital exploration of female desire.”—Emily Fridlund, author of History of Wolves
“A lush, evocative novel you won’t be able to put down. Open Me is a masterful debut.”—T.C. Boyle, author of The Harder They Come
About Open Me
Roxana Olsen has always dreamed of going to Paris, and after high school graduation finally plans to travel there on a study abroad program–a welcome reprieve from the bruising fallout of her parents’ divorce. But a logistical mix-up brings Roxana to Copenhagen instead, where she’s picked up at the airport by Soren, a twenty-eight year old guide who is meant to be her steward. Instantly drawn to one another, Roxana and Soren’s relationship turns romantic, and when he asks Roxana to accompany him to a small town in the north of Denmark for the rest of the summer, she doesn’t hesitate to accept. There, Roxana’s world narrows and opens as she experiences fantasy, ritual, and the pleasures of her body, a thrilling realm of erotic and domestic bliss. But as their relationship deepens, Soren’s temperament darkens, and Roxana finds herself increasingly drawn to a mysterious local outsider whom she learns is a refugee from the Balkan War.
An erotic coming-of-age like no other, from a magnetic new voice in fiction, Open Me is a daringly original and darkly compelling portrait of a young woman discovering her power, her sex, and her voice; and an incisive examination of xenophobia, migration, and what it means to belong.