Daphne: A Novel

by Will Boast Narrated by Tavia Gilbert

Overview

Elegantly written and profoundly moving, this spellbinding debut affirms Boast's reputation as a "new young American voice for the ages" (Tom Franklin). Born with a rare (and real) condition in which she suffers degrees of paralysis when faced with intense emotion, Daphne has few close friends and even fewer lovers. Like her mythic namesake, even one touch can freeze her. But when Daphne meets shy, charming Ollie, her well-honed defenses falter, and she's faced with an impossible choice: cling to her pristine, manicured isolation or risk the recklessness of real intimacy. Set against the vivid backdrop of a San Francisco flush with money and pulsing with protest, Daphne is a gripping and tender modern fable that explores both self-determination and the perpetual fight between love and safety.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

11/20/2017
Boast’s supple debut novel plays with the myth of Daphne, placing a version of the Greek nymph into contemporary San Francisco. Rather than transforming into a tree, the title character suffers a condition that leaves her literally paralyzed whenever she feels strong emotion, able to think and feel but unable to support or move her body. She is pursued by construction worker Ollie, a down-to-earth Apollo, and their love affair suffers predictable complications. Though the romance plot prunes the novel into a restricted shape, and late revelations about the heroine’s father offer too-pat explanations for some of her experiences, memoirist Boast (Epilogue) precisely depicts Daphne’s emotional states, with brief, sensorily rich passages when she is on the brink of overload, and more relaxed, mundane ones when she is comfortably at her computer or engaging in less charged relationships. While Ollie may be a standard-issue hero, Boast surrounds Daphne with a full range of other friends, relatives, and medical research coworkers, including an anxious mother, a partying best friend, and the various members of the support group for those who share her malady. The novel offers a striking metaphor for the ways emotion is experienced in the body. (Feb.)

The Guardian

"[An] engaging debut…[Daphne] appeals not only to the heart but also to the head."

NewYorker.com

"Boast’s novel is an amiable exploration of how humans might come to manage their raucous hearts."

Natalie Serber

"Boast seems to have captured today’s cultural zeitgeist…Watching Ollie and Daphne fall in love is both sweet and fraught…[Daphne’s] plight is universal; risk losing control over one’s own life by embracing human intimacy, or remain in the safe isolation of a hermetically sealed existence."

Laura van den Berg

"Richly meditative and quietly suspenseful, Daphne breathes fresh vigor into timeless questions about love and risk—the unknowable cost of fully opening one’s heart to another. Will Boast writes beautifully about life’s daily moral gambles, and Daphne is an outright marvelous debut."

Starred Review Booklist

"In his stunning first novel, Boast turns the myth of Daphne and Apollo into a modern love story about social anxiety and physical debilitation…Sharply observant, both of the limits of human longing and of the fear of feeling trapped inside one’s body, Boast’s understated tale is at once tragic and enchanting."

San Francisco Chronicle - Chelsea Leu

"An elegant meditation on modern-day emotion. . . . Boast is interested in the ways we handle the unwieldy welter of emotions that defines human existence (“We’re absolutely pickled in it,” Daphne notes), how we protect ourselves from the pain of others and fail to express our own. . . . Even the most hard-hearted reader will find Boast’s deep awe of “what it is to feel” catching."

Antonya Nelson

"Will Boast has written a novel that exquisitely marries ancient mythology and au courant medicine to tell our favorite tale, the love story, with insights both age-old and brand-spanking new. It's a fine, fine ride."

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2017-11-13
Psychology and myth twist into each other in this debut novel about vulnerability and fear.Boast (Epilogue, 2014, etc.) writes about Daphne, who isolates herself from most other people by choice and strict routine. While her mythical namesake turns into a Laurel tree to avoid Apollo's pursuit, this Daphne "explode[s] into lush forest," freezing when she feels anything too intense. Her rare, unnamed condition means she absorbs powerful emotions around her, and her own feelings are paralytic: "I couldn't move at all," she says, recounting her first episode. Doctors postulate that her "immune system [is] blasting away at receptors in that mysterious part of the brain where muscle control, emotion, and sleep intersect." Daphne's adult life becomes about "at least, surviving," avoiding feelings and seizurelike episodes. Romance is dangerous. Even books and movies can send her into a trance. In clipped sentences, Daphne narrates her daily routine: support group; work at a research center that tests medical devices on dogs; public transportation; and isolation. When she meets Ollie, an empathetic could-be suitor, she's forced to confront her own idea that life would be easier "if only we could all stay a mystery to one another." Ollie's attention tests the lengths to which she'll allow herself to get hurt. Boast leads Daphne—and the reader—through many of the Bay Area's corners of art and culture. Daphne's "fluttering and slumping" that result from emotion are one thing, but her real fear? "I'd twisted and twined and bound myself up inside," she says, "to avoid death." "When you insulate yourself against disaster, you're always waiting for it to arrive."Boast's story is rooted in myth. But it's his perceptive take on the risks of emotion that the reader will remember.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170184965
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	02/06/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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