Publishers Weekly
★ 10/10/2022
A new widow raises her child in a surveillance state where wrongdoers are given an extra shadow for every transgression in Crane’s astonishing and deeply felt debut. When Kris’s wife, Beau, dies in childbirth, their newborn child, known only as “the kid” until the very end, is immediately given a second shadow by the Department of Balance for causing Beau’s death. This makes the kid a Shadester—a second-class citizen who will be ostracized and surveilled for life, presumed to have behavioral problems by teachers, and overtaxed as an adult. Kris, who has grappled for years with shame over her own second shadow, must now navigate her fears about single parenthood and come to terms with her overwhelming grief. A poetic sensibility shines through Kris’s narration, which is all directed toward Beau (“I want to swallow the moment and keep it in my burning belly, but I have my wrong mouth on—I am wearing the mouth that speaks without thinking”). Crane brings their impressive imagination to the speculative details, which convey a great deal of thoughtfulness about how the second shadows affect people differently depending on their intersecting identities. They also treat their diverse cast with complexity and compassion. As the kid grows from infancy to grade school age and deals with bullies at school, Crane poignantly shows how public shaming often has more to do with cruelty and control than justice, and the rebellious, headstrong, and searching child protagonist emerges as one to remember. The author’s profound maturity shines as they interrogate the creation of family, criminalization, and queer resistance. Readers will be moved and electrified. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
Finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards
Finalist for the Libby Book Awards
Goodreads, A Buzziest Debut Novel of the Year
Named a Best Book of the Year by Esquire, Debutiful, Independent Book Review, Library Journal, Chicago Review of Books, Washington Independent Review of Books
Named a Most Anticipated Book by Autostraddle, Lambda Literary, Ms., Independent Book Review, LGBTQReads, and more
"What would 1984 be like if Winston Smith had an endearing personality? Crane’s book gives us a disarming model for life under surveillance. Kris’s voice is everything in this novel—she’s a morose, prickly, paranoid yet lovable narrator with exquisite comic timing . . . I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself is a meditation on those precious acts through which Kris finds her way: the joy of queer parenting and chosen family, the beauty of forgiveness and the resistance inherent in expansive love." —Lydia Kiesling, The New York Times Book Review
"A proponent of prison abolition, the author couldn’t help diving into its potential aftermath under a system that might never shake the impulse to punish and banish . . . Equally central to the novel is an exploration of how grief changes people—the way it can become a personal apocalypse, irrevocably separating 'before and after.'" —Lorraine Berry, Los Angeles Times
"There’s a lot going on in Crane’s hard-to-classify, hard-to-put down debut novel, but at its heart, beneath the gorgeous sentences and gallows humor and speculative-fiction machinations, it’s a survival story." —Patrick Rapa, The Philadelphia Inquirer
"[An] electric debut . . . This book is as sexy as it is dystopic, which is saying a lot." —Emma Specter, Vogue
"Fans of Black Mirror will enjoy this novel set in a world where those charged with a crime won't face incarceration, but instead gain shadows which follow them around as a constant reminder of their wrongdoing, while also serving as a warning to others." —Milan Polk, Men's Health
"Sharply-rendered . . . Interspersed with humor, warmth and lodve . . . Deeply hopeful . . . A reminder that no matter how dire the circumstances, we still have each other." —Kendra Sitton, San Diego Magazine
"This singular debut offers a fresh peek at our dystopian future, one in which wrongdoers carry around extra shadows as reminders and warnings of their misdeeds." —Karla Strand, Ms.
“Crane’s debut is like a macabre yet endearing 1984 for the modern age, supplemented by the author’s disarming humor in what is otherwise a heavy book.” —Emily Bond, A HuffPost Best Book of the Year
"A force . . . A journey of rage, healing, friendship, family, love, and in many ways, coming of age . . . An immersive and propulsive story with characters who are deeply human in their vulnerabilities and their resilience." —Sarah Neilson, Shondaland
"A thought-provoking, inventive examination of queer motherhood, forgiveness, redemption, punishment, surveillance, and so much more . . . It’s a brilliant, disturbing read, yet full of heart, love, and found family." —Margaret Kingsbury, BuzzFeed
"Engrossing . . . Like much of the finest near-future science fiction—including George Orwell’s 1984 and Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report—Crane’s novel shows how disenfranchised individuals can resist and subvert authoritarian powers . . . By centering the novel on a touching, intimate story of a queer family searching for freedom and happiness against all odds, Crane uses speculative fiction to ask how we, too, can create new, more liberatory futures in our present moment." —Daniel Spielberger, them
"A hall-of-famer . . . I’ll ride for this book forever. It’s not just that I want all of you to read it; it’s that I want all of you to have read it already, so that I’m not so alone with the enormity of my feelings about it and you’ll already know exactly what I mean."—Yashwina Canter, Autostraddle
"Elegant . . . The novel stands out in its poetic reporting on the everyday experience of living under incessant observation and enforcement." —Aram Mrjoian, Chicago Review of Books
"I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself contains multitudes: dry humor, vibrant characters, unapologetic queerness and eroticism, the political manipulation of safety and respectability, the push and pull of mother-daughter relationships, and the questioning of what one says (and doesn’t say) to those one loves most. It is, in sum, a book about guilt, grief, and forgiveness—the hard kind you have to give yourself." —Tara Campbell, Washington Independent Review of Books
"This speculative novel about crimes, motherhood, and loss is truly unlike anything else you’re read this year. Marissa (Mac) Crane deftly navigates the darkness our future can hold with breathtaking and engrossing prose. There is no doubt this book should be taught throughout the education system as a new classic to high school students as well to those in writing seminars." —Debutiful
"A stunning book. It is staggering how many things it manages to be at once. It’s poetic and experimental, dystopian and tender, kinky and queer. It is about grief and loss but also about love and hope, community in the face of adversity and, perhaps above all, the love between a mother and her daughter . . . [A] joy to read. Crane is a poet in addition to a novelist, and their prosody shines through every page. And, in response to every darkness, there felt like there was some light . . . I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself would work on its own without the speculative dimension as a beautiful meditative reflection on various kinds of love and loss. And it it would work equally as well as an exploration of a surveillance society interested in creatively punishing its citizens, and the pockets of resistance such a society might inspire. Luckily for us, Crane has somehow written both."—Sam Paul, Feminist Book Club
"The book is speculative in the way that Octavia Butler’s Kindred is speculative: the premise pushes on the limits of reality only to bring us closer to understanding our own relationships . . . In a fragmented and intimate style that evokes writers like Sheila Heti and Jenny Offill, Crane allows Kris to explore all the corners of grief, love, desire and hope as she finds a way to forgive herself and reinvent her family’s form." —Rebecca Ackermann, Electric Literature
"Mesmerizing . . . I was highlighting sentences in this book before I was ten pages deep . . . Reading can sometimes be an unexpectedly physical experience, and reading I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself was one of those times for me . . . One hell of a debut." —Molly Templeton, Tor
"There’s a deep intimacy to the way Crane tells this story . . . Reading I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself feels like paging through a beautifully rendered therapy exercise that was designed to remain in the closed-door confines of the psychiatrist’s room . . . Gorgeous, heartbreaking prose . . . This novel is so full of sharply observed gut-punches and painfully human truths (about love, loss, desire, bureaucracy, fear mongering in the media, loneliness, kink, queerness, and new motherhood) that you’ll be thinking about Crane’s magnificent, evocative phrases for a while . . . Equal parts queer, devastating, precious, and thought-provoking, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself is an unforgettable experience, exploring what it means to be human and illuminating the healing significance of finding community in the depths of your despair." —Andrea Marks-Joseph, Independent Book Review (starred review)
"The beautiful, spare narration from Kris as she struggles with grief and motherhood delivers a deep emotional punch, lightened by dry humor and the hope in human connection. For fans of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven and Veronica Roth’s Poster Girl." —Library Journal (starred review)
"The author’s profound maturity shines as they interrogate the creation of family, criminalization, and queer resistance. Readers will be moved and electrified." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
author of The Fact of a Body Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
Instantly one of my favorite books…Marisa Crane has written a masterpiece: mordantly funny, brilliantly queer, large-hearted. Moving and wise, it rises to meet our current sociopolitical moment with prose that glitters sharp as broken glass. This is the book I didn’t know I was waiting for.”
author of I Hold a Wolf by the Ears Laura van den Berg
Marisa Crane writes with immense beauty and ferocity about surveillance and injustice, grief and love. Kris is an unforgettable guide through the novel’s speculative world, at once hilarious and heart-sick, and her furiously lyric voice will haunt you long after the final page. I loved this powerfully original debut.”
author of The President and the Frog Carolina De Robertis
With a voice as innovative as it is boldly honest, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself offers us a speculative world that refracts, mirrors, and expands our own.”
author of The Atmospherians Isle McElroy
A captivating portrait of queerness, grief, and redemption that challenges assumptions about parenting and justice. Crane’s sharp and funny dystopian novel explores how easy it is to become our worst selves, and how hard it is to recover from life-changing mistakes.”
Daily Kos
Phenomenal.”
author of The Women Could Fly Megan Giddings
I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself is a delicious novel of ideas…Crane’s blend of grief, humor, and imagination is fearless. They have a roller coaster of an imagination—this is an exciting debut and the start of a promising career.”
Booklist
"A soft yet fierce narrative of queer resistance and abolitionist feeling.”
MAY 2023 - AudioFile
Bailey Carr gently narrates this dystopian audiobook. The corrupt U.S. Department of Balance carries out a form of law enforcement that endows people who commit crimes with extra shadows that warn people they encounter of their past transgressions. Kris is one such person, and so is her newborn daughter, whose birth mother, Kris's wife, died in childbirth. Kris feels unprepared to be a widowed parent facing a world full of prejudice. Carr voices Kris's grief with realism and depth, and expresses her pride in her daughter as she grows. Carr's voice for Kris's daughter is adorably youthful and strong; she never lets a cruel world dampen her spirit. Caught between grieving and trying to find joy despite a government that is watching their every move, these characters will resonate with listeners. A.K.R. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2022-10-26
An intimate, poetic debut that explores the complexities of grief and parenting set against the backdrop of an American surveillance state.
In the near future, prisons have been abolished, but a governmental entity known as the Department of Balance has installed surveillance cameras in every home, and a tyrannical president recently instituted a policy that punishes wrongdoers by giving them additional shadows, ostensibly to keep them accountable for their crimes by serving as constant reminders of their mistakes. These Shadesters are forced to live as second-class citizens, stripped of their civil rights and freedoms. Once a school social worker, the narrator, Kris, now sells self-help programs called mindcasts while trying to distract herself from the grief of her wife's death through watching reality television, drinking, and listing all the creatures she can think of with exoskeletons. The only thing that gives Kris the will to live through her devastation is her determination to raise her daughter, the precocious and imaginative Bear, who was born with a second shadow. Driven by Kris’ internal monologue, which is often addressed to the imagined presence of her wife, the novel candidly explores the anguish of grief while remaining deeply insightful and often bitingly funny, at times making asides in the form of wry pop quizzes and word searches. Reminiscent of the tenderly ironic confessional voice of Melissa Broder’s novels and the rendering of an eclectic community's search for connection and survival in Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven (2014), this novel skillfully probes the complexities of loss, love, and injustice. Writing fiction that convincingly leans toward hope is a challenging task, but Crane does so with self-assured, muscular grace.
An anthem for queer love and solidarity that rises above the dystopian cacophony.
