Laura van den Berg’s new story collection, The Isle of Youth, explores the lives of women mired in secrecy and deception. In this episode of The Monkeybicycle Podcast, she reads one of these stories, titled “Lessons.”
What reviews are saying:
“Wonder and mystery are recurring motifs. The women here are one step ahead of disaster or one step behind it, and either way they are eager to discover what’s next . . . Van den Berg, in this wonderful collection, never lets us turn away.”
—Natalie Serber, New York Times Book Review
“. . .if you like Murakami’s cool prose, that Raymond Chandler-esque aloofness in the face of strange events, have I got the book for you . . . [The Isle of Youth] is a small book, but it feels much bigger. I could have kept reading for days.”
—Rosecrans Baldwin, NPR All Things Considered
“The stories in Laura van den Berg’s dreamy The Isle of Youth are absolutely captivating.”
—Vanity Fair
“A master of the short story creates seven elaborate worlds with beautiful and haunting characters at a time when it feels like most short story collections are pretty thinly plotted.”
—Esquire
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Buy a copy of The Isle of Youth here,
and learn more about Laura van den Berg here.
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