Afterglow, Eileen Myles
Afterglow, Eileen Myles
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

Afterglow
A Dog Memoir

Author: Eileen Myles

Narrator: Eileen Myles

Unabridged: 5 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/05/2017

Synopsis

Prolific and widely renowned, Eileen Myles is a trailblazer whose decades of literary and artistic work “set a bar for openness, frankness, and variability few lives could ever match” (New York Review of Books). This newest book paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of a beloved confidant: the pit bull called Rosie.In 1990, Myles chose Rosie from a litter on the street, and their connection instantly became central to the writer’s life and work. During the course of their sixteen years together, Myles was madly devoted to the dog’s well-being, especially in her final days. Starting from the emptiness following Rosie’s death, Afterglow launches a heartfelt and fabulist investigation into the true nature of the bond between pet and pet owner. Through this lens, we witness Myles’ experiences with intimacy and spirituality, celebrity and politics, alcoholism and recovery, fathers and family history, as well as the fantastical myths we spin to get to the heart of grief.Moving from an imaginary talk show where Rosie is interviewed by Myles’ childhood puppet to a critical reenactment of the night Rosie mated with another pit bull, from lyrical transcriptions of their walks to Rosie’s enlightened narration from the afterlife, Afterglow illuminates all that it can mean when we dedicate our existence to a dog.

About Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles is the author of more than twenty books, including Chelsea Girls, Cool for You, and most recently, I Must Be Living Twice: New & Selected Poems 1975–2014. Their many honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction, four Lambda Literary Awards, the Clark Prize for Excellence in Art Writing, the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and their poems were featured in seasons two and three of the Emmy-winning show Transparent. They live in Marfa, Texas, and New York City.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Cat

I'm conflicted about this book. Parts of it just seem heartless... I've lost beloved pets through the years and my heart still aches when I really think about them. The grief just doesn't seem to be in this book for me. I don't mean to say the author didn't grieve her pet, I am sure she did (I cried......more

Goodreads review by Megan

4.5! Loved much of this, a lot. The essay on Foam as a concept/metaphor for thinking about knowledge/writing is my favorite, I think, but many of the doggo pieces are glorious and sui generis. Many adopt a style that is a kind of frothy walk / flaneur avec dog; and then there's Rosie (the dog) speak......more

Goodreads review by Valerity (Val)

I went into this with a very open mind. Having finished it, I'm left with very mixed feelings. The author certainly has a wonderful way with words and her affinity for poetry is obvious throughout. I just had some trouble at times keeping up with where she was going and who she was speaking as. Perh......more

Quotes

“A ravishingly strange and gorgeous book about a dog that’s really about life and everything there is.” Helen Macdonald, New York Times bestselling author

“Part elegy, part meditation, part performance art…poignant, sweeping.” O, The Oprah Magazine

“A punk devotional, shot through with a sort of divine attention to material reality and a poet’s associative leaps.” New Yorker

“Unflinching but also irrepressibly humorous…Myles possesses, in abundance, two qualities of the highest value for a writer, irreverence and relentless curiosity, and here both are on full display…By turns playful, heartfelt, wise, compassionate, fantastical, and audaciously confessional.” New York Times Book Review

“Wry, far-flung, and wonderfully loving.” Boston Globe

“Fantastical…wrenching….obsession becomes a way to process grief.” Rolling Stone

“A mutt elegy in a million…Myles gets at…the sense of wordless connection and spiritual expansion you feel when you love and are loved by a creature who’s not human.” NPR

“A poetic and very personal recount of all a dog can offer in companionship…This is not for the casual prose-appreciator. Myles has a style weaving in and out of traditional poetry, forcing you to take a step and re-evaluate. Pretty apt for 2018.” BookRiot

“Myles works to bridge the power discrepancies between owner and dog, author and subject.” Los Angeles Review of Books

“Gets inside the glorious, edifying perversity of the human-canine relationship like no other book I’ve ever seen…with none of the corn syrup you might expect from the words ‘dog memoir.’” Stranger (Seattle), a Top Book of 2017

Awards

  • Elle Magazine Pick
  • BuzzFeed Books Pick
  • Literary Hub Pick
  • BookRiot Pick
  • Lambda Literary Award
  • Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
  • New York Times Pick
Add to Cart
Add to Wish List