Floater by Kate Bernheimer

Description

With taut and lucid prose, we are taken through a day in Mike’s life, from dreamless sleep to phone calls with no one on the other end to the usual booth in the diner. Noah Saterstrom’s illustrations perfectly complement the quiet melancholy of the story: his frenetic images seem incomplete, unfinished, with conflicting lines and smudges that leave you wondering what might be there, beneath the surface.

In honor of the beautiful collaboration between Kate and Noah, Origami Zoo Press decided to have each chapbook hand-sewn to make this book a particularly gorgeous artifact.  Bull City Press is proud to continue to offer this hand-sewn edition.

“Kate Bernheimer is a magician on the page. In her latest gem, Floater, her evocation of Mike, the titular ‘floater,’ is unforgettably eerie and exquisite. As the reader watches Mike navigate ‘that lonely beyond,’ we are awash in empathy for her quiet battle against sadness and solitude, and awash in admiration for Bernheimer’s gorgeous, impeccably-observed, and surprising prose.”
– Laura van den Berg, author of The Isle of Youth

“What magic is Bernheimer’s ability to capture the radiant ache of loneliness in a way that comforts instead of injures! Here the stone gravity of memory is made buoyant through the weightlessness of routine; it bobs meditatively in the waters of childhood with a hypnotic effect of surrender that is the most essential form of beauty. This perfect text is a hand pressed against a windowpane – reading it, we get to press our hand against the glass from the other side, to feel the warmth of undeniable connection.”
– Alissa Nutting, author of Tampa

Kate Bernheimer

Kate Bernheimer’s most recent book is Office at Night, a novella co-authored with Laird Hunt (Finalist, Shirley Jackson Awards). It was published by Coffee House Press and co-commissioned by The Walker Art Center. She also is the author of two story collections, How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales (illustrated by Catherine Eyde) and Horse, Flower, Bird (illustrated by Rikki Ducornet) both published by Coffee House Press. Her novels — The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold, The Complete Tales of Merry Gold, and The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold (sometimes referred to as “the Gold family trilogy) were published between 2001 and 2008 by Fiction Collective 2.  Maria Tatar (Chair, Program in Folklore & Mythology, Harvard University) writes, “A master of minimalist style, Kate Bernheimer taps into the poetry of fairy tales to reveal the dread that seeps into ordinary things as well as the redemptive power of language and story.”

Bernheimer has also edited four anthologies, including the bestselling and World Fantasy Award winning My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales and the World Fantasy Award nominated xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths, both published by Penguin Random House. My Mother She Killed Me has been translated into Russian and Chinese. Kate Bernheimer also writes fairy-tale criticism, with work appearing such places as The Los Angeles Times, Marvels & Tales: The Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Writing for the New York Times, bestselling author Benjamin Percy said of her work, “Anyone attracted to fairy tales and fables should check out the stories and criticism of Kate Bernheimer.”