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Out of Which Came Nothing
by Laurie Blauner
Order directly from the publisher or from Amazon.
To read an excerpt from the book, click here.
To hear Laurie read from the book, click here.
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On rare occasions, like once every ten years or so, if
you are lucky, a book crosses your path that is in a league of its own. Laurie
Blauner’s latest novel, Out of Which Came Nothing, is one of those
rare books.
--Reviewed by Alan Catlin, Misfit Magazine (number 33, Fall 2021)
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Meet Aaron, a
boy who does not see or speak, whose limbs do not support him, kept bedbound by
THEM, a religious cult/sect; Jimmy, his elderly caretaker; and Carly, the
homeless vagabond whose violently imagistic inner music washes over us in a
hallucinatory rush of the senses. Light
was burning me to a crisp. The floor was all milk. Everything in Laurie Blauner’s magnificent Out of Which Came Nothing feels as if
it exists in another dimension, a parallel universe where people are flesh and
the tangible goods of our world endure but the interior emotional fabric has
faded to a monochrome. I was in a city
full of houses that resembled pink and blue bakery boxes and it was snowing
outside my window. Dystopic, perhaps, hyper-realistic, maybe, or most
disquieting of all, the real world we inhabit where what is missing reflects our
essence. A visionary writer like Ernesto Sabato, we enter Blauner’s realm through
her seer’s eye, the velocity of her pacing, and her exquisitely-wrought prose.
In this diminished human landscape, the pages mesmerize and turn effortlessly.
--Stephanie Dickinson, author of Razor Wire Wilderness
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With the sure hand of a
writer of great power, Laurie Blauner gives us a novel of our time – a novel in
which the world has evolved from the real into the suprareal. In this book
everything constellates around an idiosyncratic old man named Jimmy and the
mysterious adolescent boy, Aaron, he takes care of, who is perhaps avatar,
savant, who is blind and cannot talk, and who cannot walk or use his body in
normal ways. The precision of Blauner’s beautifully executed and deeply
imagined prose evokes the sense of dreams that are awake and stronger than
reality but are reality. We are presented with the archetypes of our age: the
challenged; the world-weary, the homeless, the hallucinators, the would-be
saviors manifesting in movements which permeate society and truth, the anxious,
the hopeful, the neglected, the lost. Blauner moves us through her novel in
linguistic lightning strikes, illuminating and penetrating, but never
lingering. Out of Which Came Nothing is a stunning book, a book not so
much about the change that is coming as the change that has come.
--Rosalind Palermo
Stevenson, author of The Absent, Insect Dreams, and Kafka at Rudolph
Steiner’s | |
Laurie Blauner's layered characters, drawn with engagingly lyrical
language, seem to move patiently in and out of themselves. Every person has a
story that has another story within itself. As the world changes, its mysteries
grow. The main character, Jimmy, is a retired man with a strong voice, and the disabled boy he cares
for (aren't we all disabled in some way?) seems to know more than we realize.
Could such a life be made real? Here is a fresh, interesting book about
stubborn loneliness and identities in a world where Jimmy transforms, as does THEM,
a religion. Kindness and need come down to us together and the thin line
between dreams is reality.
--Rich Ives, author of Tunneling to the Moon and Light
from a Small Brown Bird
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Laurie Blauner’s voice is lyrical,
her imagery surprising and perfect, her societal observations
unbiased. Her attention to detail is stunning, while the broad strokes of
the story remain subtle and mysterious. Ghostly memories waft through the pages
like fragrances. There is poignancy in the characters inhabiting the pages
of this novel. They seem resigned to their brokenness, rarely questioning
the forces directing their lives. A gentle, intriguing book about loss and
change and the fragility of human connections.
--Barbara Lindsay,
playwright, author of The Walkers and Possum.
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