The Curator

Fri 10 Mar 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Posted by: Gavin

Owen King expanded his story “The Curator” — first published in LCRW 31 — into a novel which came out this week. He’ll be at Book Moon next week, Thursday, March 16, on his way to his in-person reading and then Q&A with Kelly at 7 pm at the Odyssey. Maybe we can get him to sign some LCRWs, too.

Here’s part of The CuratorDexter Palmer’s review of The Curator in the NYT and then Kelly’s comments:

“[The Curator] has its own smooth lyricism and evocative imagery, helping the book’s pages turn quickly. King has a knack for colorful metaphors and thoughtfully considered perspective. This novel is richly imagined, its surface pleasures deliberately subverted by the bleak suggestion at its core: that a successful organized attempt to reduce inequity will have to overcome not just the inertia of a nation’s politics, but human nature.” —The New York Times

“The Curator feels a little like Owen King somehow brought a curiosity cabinet to life. There are terrors here, but also marvels and delights, and a set of the most interesting characters I’ve met in some time. Put The Curator on the same shelf as other classics of the uncanny and uncategorizable, like Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi and Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast. I loved it.” —Kelly Link, bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Get in Trouble