Description
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Biographical Note: "Williams's second novel is as brilliant as it is dark, full of unsettling, revelatory allegory, and frankly unlike anything I've read before." --Jasmine Vojdani, Vulture "Missouri Williams is good. She is exceptionally good. Astonishingly good . . . a propulsive, insightful, and ultimately moving novel . . . If you take a chance on the things that Missouri Williams has to say--if you believe in something beyond subjectivity--you might just reaffirm why we like fiction in the first place." --James Webster, Defector "The Vivisectors is incisive, tirelessly inspecting the structural imperfections of the grand but crumbling ivory towers atop its foundation . . . The adjective kaleidoscopic is rarely warranted in a book review, but it certainly comes to mind. Williams is rotating the glass prism in her hand so we can watch the patterns in the chamber collide." -- Stephen Piccarella, The Baffler "Williams writes with a singular brand of Ballardian ferocity - she revels in the wretched and the craven . . . If The Vivisectors is a love story, it is also about love stories - what counts as one, the form it should take, how it might come to be believed by its participants." --Ian Maleney, The Guardian "Missouri Williams' debut novel, The Doloriad, announced the writer as a provocative storyteller unafraid of the grotesque. While a campus novel may not seem like the most logical follow-up, Williams' latest . . . is another pitch-black allegory told in gothic, obliterative prose." --Laura Adamczyk, Entertainment Weekly"A compelling exploration of love, whether with another person or with God." --Hannah Williams, Financial Times "Williams' sentences feel like the thrill of tossing a blow dryer into a hot, sudsy bathtub . . . A sense of dread and porous despair coils itself around the novel's characters like hot glue, binding them not through affection but through psychological malice . . . Williams' sentences are smooth yet calibrated to crack open the psychological tantrums of outsiders. Her prose folds itself into the literary legacy of writers such as Clarice Lispector, Anna Kavan, Rachel Kushner and Ottessa Moshfegh." --Filip Jakab, Our Culture " The Vivisectors tells two stories at once about one person. The suspenseful tension between them pulses at the heart of the novel's poignance, humor, and winning personality . . . The form of the book is an apt mould for its crucial contradictions." --Max Winter, On the Sea Wall "This sly, unconventional romance strips modern society down to its bare essentials, revealing them to be grotesque and full of contradiction. The fine brush of Williams's prose paints every aspect of this novel, from its characters to its setting to its conflict, with illuminating detail. . . Fans of Ottessa Moshfegh and Agustina Bazterrica will relish Williams's fascinating, disturbing, and shockingly tender writing." --Library Journal "In the hypnotic sophomore outing from Williams, a professor's personal assistant gets drawn into a strange triangle with her boss and a male student . . . Williams is an accomplished stylist, and her writing accrues a magnetic rhythm, calling to mind Clarice Lispector or Marie Redonnet... It's a singular and arresting work." --Publishers Weekly "Williams is an heir to writers like Ottessa Moshfegh, whose female protagonists often possess a passivity and an icy detestation of society that teeters on the brink of nihilism... A flinty, withholding novel . . . full of dark intelligence." --Kirkus "This is the modern rupture -- our crisis of meaning and spiritual malaise shaped into a novel unlike any other. It's part philosophical allegory, part depth psychology, within a cosmos marked by a profound alienation. Missouri Williams writes with a gothic angularity that puts her in a category of one. She swims in deep waters and surfaces now as a major writer for our age." --Paul Lynch, author of Prophet Song, winner of the Booker Prize " The Vivisectors is a novel to marvel at - intricate, utterly precise, unfurling with the same lushness and strange menace of the greenery that creeps over the decaying city of its setting. An original and ingenious work." --Sophie Mackintosh, author of Cursed Bread and The Water Cure "As I read The Vivisectors, I thought of the dark strangeness of Bruno Schulz and Shirley Jackson, all while experiencing the singular, unbroken, and extraordinary imagination of Missouri Williams." --Amina Cain, author of Indelicacy "Missouri Williams has paired the remote and mysterious style of the gothic novel with a narrator who you want to know everything about. When she does show her hand it's like a gift--fun, biting, and wise." --Zoe Dubno, author of Happiness and Love "Missouri Williams's stark, suis generis voice returns with another delightfully grotesque, muddy landscape populated by utterly deranged characters who are perfect in the eyes of a freak like me. The anti-feel good hit of the year." --Fernando A. Flores, author of Brother Brontë and Tears of the Trufflepig " The Vivisectors is an astonishing novel by an astonishing writer. Playful, digressive, and pulsating with existential energy, Missouri Williams' newest contribution harkens back to the roots of the novel, the realms of boundless freedom that characterise the greatest works of eighteenth century literature, and drags them forth to the contemporary moment. It's exhilarating, transcendent even, and speaks to the deep and profound malaise characterising the modern human experience. I am in awe." --Michael Magee, author of Close to Home "A wicked and beguiling novel, written with the kind of precision other writers can only dream of." --Amy Twigg, author of Spoilt Creatures "I read The Vivisectors in a state of rapture, drawn so deeply into a dark, fecund world that holds up a sharp-edged mirror to our own. Exquisitely crafted and phenomenally clever, this novel left me awestruck by its terrifying beauty. I can't stop thinking about it." --Hannah Murray, author of The Make-Believe Publisher Marketing: One of Vulture's Most Anticipated Books of 2026 Review Citations:
Contributor Bio:Williams, Missouri |
The Vivisectors
$33.60