Publishers Weekly
09/18/2023
In Blackburn’s bold and formally inventive debut novel (after the collection How to Wrestle a Girl), a Black gay graphic novelist impersonates her dead brother. Coral has discovered her brother Jay’s body in his Long Beach, Calif., apartment, after his death by suicide. As her grief moves in its own particular way, she neglects to tell her niece Khadija or others the news, and replies to text messages meant for Jay in his voice. Blackburn’s entire novel is narrated by the mysterious chorus from Coral’s popular graphic novel Wildfire, and Blackburn alternates from chronicles of Coral’s day-to-day swiping on dating apps and concerns that Khadija will catch on to her deception to long sections from Wildfire’s AI-like chorus, which describes the detritus of humanity after an apocalypse. Also in the mix are Coral’s flashbacks to her teen years growing up in Compton in the 1990s, when she had a crush on Jay’s girlfriend, the future mom of Khadija, and later coming out to 14-year-old Khadija but not to Jay. While the excerpts from Wildfire can be dense and obscure, Blackburn is an excellent prose stylist. Coral’s sections are full of acerbic wit (an “exhausting” trip to Medieval Times for Khadija’s benefit is one of those “miserable situations” people enter into “with the belief that someone they loved would be happy there”). This ambitious effort is worth a look. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
"[Blackburn's] sentences zing with lively precision . . . as the narrative scaffolding stabilizes, we see how Coral’s grief is braced within it — held alight, too, by the disarming humor and vivacity of Blackburn’s prose. Told by machines from the future, Blackburn’s idiosyncratic grief novel is as freshly devastating as they come." —Megan Milks, The New York Times Book Review
"There are no wasted words in the fictions of Venita Blackburn. Her stories are quick as lightning; her sentences, entire lifetimes flashing by. A clause might pierce a character’s frailties, a word might tip the analysis into absurdity . . . In this enthralling story about farcical invention in the face of calamitous grief, the writing is taut as ever. " —Carolina A. Miranda, Los Angeles Times
"The authoritative and bizarre voice of the guides gives the book a playful quality that keeps it buoyant. They describe Coral’s actions, and human activity as a whole, with a bemused distance that allows Blackburn to place humor and whimsy alongside the sorrow." —Stephen Kearse, The Washington Post
"Dead in Long Beach, California deploys Blackburn’s signature, crystalline, time-bending sentences to heart-stopping, stay-up-all-night-reading effect." —Rita Bullwinkle, Interview Magazine
"A masterful feat of storytelling . . . a profound and surprising demonstration of how there’s no way to fully outrun or outmaneuver or out-strategize the pain of loss." —Stef Rubino, Autostraddle
"[A] conceptually ambitious, delightfully queer novel. . . The beauty of Blackburn’s fun and complex novel, in other words, resides in its intense discernment of our species as a troubled, self-destructive, glorious one." —Anita Felicelli, Alta
"Dead in Long Beach, California examines trauma, desire, grief, hunger, loss, and our society at large in an inventive, form-shifting novel that truly no one but the singular Venita Blackburn could’ve written." —Rachel León, Electric Lit
"With her debut novel, Dead in Long Beach, California, Blackburn uses her ability to zero in on the intricacies of a minute moment and explode that attention outward, creating an inventive, arresting investigation of how a person can stall and spin out in grief."— Michael Colbert, Shondaland
"Dead in Long Beach, California is the work of a gifted writer who understands love bonds, family, death and inevitability, but also has a sense of humor about all of the above. Blackburn’s novel presents grief as memory puzzle, grief as creative license, grief as fuel for delusion and awakening." —Naomi Elias, KQED
"Venita Blackburn's prose is stunning, sensitive and that-made-me-snort funny. Richly layered and ambitiously structured, this unconventional novel about death and denial is bizarre in the best way." —Lucy Tu, Scientific American
"Despite the heavy subject matter, sensitively handled, this is frequently a deeply funny novel . . . Blackburn shares a deep intellect and odd sensibility with authors like George Saunders and Rion Amilcar Scott, but this novel is its own thing: intelligent, bizarre, and brilliantly written. An astonishing debut novel from a remarkably creative writer." —Kirkus (starred review)
"An engaging and original portrait of a woman on the verge . . . Blackburn is formidable, her writing is experimental in intriguing and meaningful ways, and this is another winner." —Booklist
"Bold and formally inventive . . . Blackburn is an excellent prose stylist. Coral’s sections are full of acerbic wit . . . This ambitious effort is worth a look." —Publishers Weekly
"Dead in Long Beach, California is somehow both tender and incredibly sharp. It's mesmerizing in its ability to twist inward on itself; a genuine ouroboros of pain and loss. Venita Blackburn's writing here is profoundly gorgeous. At every turn, I found myself split between laughter and tears. An incredible look at how we work to divert the flow of grief, only to find those tributaries suddenly rejoined without our consent, the pain we wished to avoid flowing directly back to us. This book rewired my brain; it's a bonafide knockout." —Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth
"I've been waiting for a novel like the one Venita Blackburn has just unleashed on us. Grief as a science-fiction itself, grief as a fount of absurdity and mad laughter, grief as a time travel machine locked inside a person's body. You can try bracing yourself for the ride this story takes you on, but it's best to just surrender. Your wig is going to fall off no matter what you do." —Saeed Jones, author of How We Fight for Our Lives
"Utterly original and bitingly funny, Dead in Long Beach, California is one of the most riveting compendiums of what makes us tick and ticked off. Hair, online dating, grief, ghosts, mental health, death, global warming, childrearing, and relative fame are only a handful of the topics that Venita Blackburn tackles with ease, revealing a mind that is truly one-of-a-kind. And this novel is a testament to the belief that, despite our world's madness and mayhem, we can and will do better. Blackburn's presence in this literary landscape isn't only refreshing, it's necessary." —Mateo Askaripour, author of Black Buck
"Riveting in its style and innovations of form, Venita Blackburn has given us a wholly original, moving, gorgeous novel in Dead in Long Beach, California. An education of the mind and heart alike. Chef’s kiss, pick it up." —Sarah Thankam Matthews, author of All This Could Be Different
"A spell-binding meditation on grief, loss, and familial obligation. Dead in Long Beach, California delves into the aftermath of an unexpected death to illuminate what it means to be alive." —Jonathan Escoffery, author of If I Survive You
“Wry, subversive, and gorgeously inventive. In Dead in Long Beach, California, Venita Blackburn explores disorientation, deception, and the impulse toward connection in the aftermath of grief.” —Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, author of My Monticello
"A prismatic, genre-defying novel where the past is layered over the present and where grief takes on a life of its own. With dazzling dark humor, Venita Blackburn captures the awful and wonderful strangeness of what it means to be alive in the twenty-first century. Dead in Long Beach, California is achingly honest, always surprising and unlike anything I’ve read before." —Elaine Hsieh Chou, author of Disorientation
"A luminous, propulsive reflection on grief and the love that underlies it." —Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, author of On the Rooftop
"Venita Blackburn's Dead in Long Beach, California is a remarkable novel. A profound mix of imagination, sadness, and humor that is truly unlike any other book I've ever read." —Megan Giddings, author of The Women Could Fly
Library Journal
11/01/2023
Coral lives in a world teetering on the brink of destruction. Young people have been handed problems that are impossible to fix in an unsustainable society, and resentment is their general attitude. Some opt out via suicide; others turn to superhero fiction for solace. Coral writes a superhero comic book series to answer the demand, but she is also part of the disillusioned and anxious generation, living at least partially in a fabricated mental world. Then she finds her brother Jay dead in his apartment only minutes after she spoke to him on the phone. While she deals with police, coroners, and burial, she decides to keep Jay alive in the virtual world. She responds to his phone messages as if he is alive; she creates a Facebook page and persona for him; she tells no one that he is dead, not even his daughter. After an excruciating week, she finally comes to grips with her loss. Blackburn sharply captures the longing of the younger generation for a better world, as the angst and disconnect projected via Coral is visceral. VERDICT Readers interested in the current state of the world and the consequences of living in it will find this book both difficult and fascinating.—Joanna M. Burkhardt
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-09-22
A graphic novelist grapples—or doesn't—with the suicide of her brother.
When graphic novelist Coral Brown walks into her brother’s studio apartment in Long Beach, California, she doesn’t initially realize that Jay is dead by his own hand. After his body is whisked away by EMTs, she notices a text message on his cell phone from his college-age daughter, Khadija, wondering if she can postpone a planned dinner. The message seems to break Coral, who responds to her brother’s death first with anger (“More dead shit. It never ends. For me. And sometimes it gets to be about me, okay. I am a person. I’m not some kind gay nun with a credit card. I have shit to do"), then with stunning denial—she decides to answer Jay’s messages from Khadija and other people as if she were him, later setting up social media profiles for him, refusing to admit to herself that he’s gone. She goes about her own life, brunching with friends, appearing at a comic convention, and meeting people on a dating app. She also gets sucked back into her younger days, recalling previous relationships, a custody battle Jay had with Khadija’s mother, and the deaths of her parents. The debut novel from short story author Blackburn is narrated by a mysterious “we”—perhaps characters from Coral’s book, perhaps multiple versions of herself, perhaps both. Despite the heavy subject matter, sensitively handled, this is frequently a deeply funny novel: Long Beach is “an oily, salty city nicknamed Weirdbeach by those not likely to fly a gay pride flag on their lawns anytime soon,” and Khadija “loved amusement parks the way chefs love cardamom and pretentious knives.” Blackburn shares a deep intellect and odd sensibility with authors like George Saunders and Rion Amilcar Scott, but this novel is its own thing: intelligent, bizarre, and brilliantly written.
An astonishing debut novel from a remarkably creative writer.
