{"product_id":"the-oldest-bitch-alive-isbn-9781662603372","title":"The Oldest Bitch Alive","description":"\u003cb\u003e“Captivating . . . A work of quiet and yet spirited exhilaration.” —Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of \u003ci\u003eThe Known World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eA polyphonic debut following an aging French bulldog and the parasitic worms that send her toward death — a singular, sly novel about form, freedom, interiors, and the matter by which we are composed and consumed.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGelsomina is a French Bulldog who leads a routine life in a glass house. One day, she ingests an orb of parasitic worms who make an imperfect home inside her. Approaching death, yet filled with new life, she begins to see everything differently: her attachment to the designer-architect couple with whom she lives; the naive preoccupations of their younger French Bulldog, Zampanò; her feelings for an elusive fox; and the voids within and beyond her. The worms propel Gelsomina to plumb the meaning of her domestic existence and ask if her rebirth lies in the wild unknown outside the panes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Oldest Bitch Alive\u003c\/i\u003e is a polyphonic story of containment refracting across scales. Revolving perspectives meditate on consciousness, theories of everything, multispecies narratives, philosophies of form and the immaterial, and other ways in which matter is composed and consumed. Gelsomina’s introspections culminate in an ecstatic sprint through a natural world she’s never seen, awakening the French Bulldog to the depths of love, reverence, death, and the bound self in dichromatic color.“Day explores the nature of parasitic and symbiotic relationships in her wondrous debut, which largely follows the deterioration of a couple’s beloved French bulldog . . . This unique novel invites the reader to see the world anew.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This is an ambitious, freewheeling novel that plays with a great deal of philosophical material, but the painstaking specificity in which Day packages these musings, along with the visceral suffering and ecstasy of the book’s tragic heroine, protect it from opacity. An uncommonly commanding debut.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Only a few pages into Morgan Day’s captivating \u003ci\u003eThe Oldest Bitch Alive\u003c\/i\u003e, her reader is already comfortably seated in what will become a ride of quiet and yet spirited exhilaration. We sit back and begin to admire what we are presented. Make no mistake—Day’s splendid work can be challenging, but what are minds for if not to be challenged by a writer who is in control of the ride and her landscape? Along the way, there is language to admire (‘seasons dress and undress the trees’) and there are ‘meditations’ (and I mean that in the best way) on everything from the meaning of cosmic to whether animals can commit suicide. At the core of this ride is the moving story of Gelsomina (and the few in her orbit), a French Bulldog making her bumpety-bump way in the lower part of a glass house, making her swollen belly way toward an end even though ‘much of life has never happened to her.’ It is a story we should tip our hats to.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eEdward P. Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of \u003ci\u003eThe Known World\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Oldest Bitch Alive \u003c\/i\u003eis an iridescent reminder of literature’s unique power. Morgan Day’s genius unfurls across each page, microcosm by microcosm, discovering immense depth in the gut of this small dog. Sensational, unnerving, and true.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eHenry Hoke, author of \u003ci\u003eOpen Throat\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Days after I’d finished reading \u003ci\u003eThe Oldest Bitch Alive\u003c\/i\u003e, phrases and images from the novel were still sounding in my head. It is entirely and utterly unique, meditative, philosophical, and entertaining—it wraps you in pulsing rhythms of strange, elliptical prose, yet ultimately deposits you on entirely solid ground. A masterpiece!” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eAlbertine Clarke, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Body Builders\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“New writing I immediately love comes along only every few years. Morgan Day's \u003ci\u003eThe Oldest Bitch Alive\u003c\/i\u003e is my find of the year: philosophically expansive, linguistically dexterous, formally adventurous, surprising, moving and very funny.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eJoanna Walsh, author of \u003ci\u003eVertigo \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eMy Life as a Godard Movie\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Weirdly immersive and irresistible, written in exquisite, palpable prose, \u003ci\u003eThe Oldest Bitch Alive\u003c\/i\u003e is a stunning, speculative achievement. The novel plunges us into a place where worms are wise, dogs desire, and humans overlook the multispecies worlds they inhabit. Rich with biological marvels, philosophical ruminations, and poetic revelations, this novel lures the reader into a vivid sense of what it means to exist as a being enmeshed in relations with other beings, the material world, and the cosmos, ‘vermillion margins extending into vermillion margins.’ I will be reflecting on this mesmerizing novel for a very long time!” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eStacy Alaimo, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Abyss Stares Back: Encounters with Deep Sea Life\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The very first vermiform novel! \u003ci\u003eThe Oldest Bitch Alive \u003c\/i\u003ewill worm its way into the vitreous jelly of your eyes, the hot red meat of your heart, and hatch. A manifold and manifestly astonishing debut.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eJoanna Ruocco, author of \u003ci\u003eDan\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eMorgan Day\u003c\/b\u003e is a fiction and architecture writer. Her short fiction has appeared in \u003ci\u003eEcotone Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eGulf Coast Journal\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eWorms Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e, and elsewhere. \u003ci\u003eThe Oldest Bitch Alive\u003c\/i\u003e is her first novel.","brand":"Astra House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233723789541,"sku":"NP9781662603372","price":28.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781662603372.jpg?v=1767740787","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-oldest-bitch-alive-isbn-9781662603372","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}