What We’re Reading: Bound by Antonya Nelson

Before I started to write this post, I searched for “Antonya” in my Gmail account, just to see how many times I had discussed Antonya Nelson in email conversations.

Thirteen. In the past month, I had referred to her thirteen times.

That may not seem like a large number but let’s put it in context. I typed in a few other search terms. Jonathan Franzen: seven. Amy Hempel: eight. “Mockingjay”: surprisingly, only two. James Franco? Well, I won’t reveal the number for that one.

So to have discussed Antonya Nelson’s most recent novel Bound that many times with a variety of friends demonstrates just how much I love this book. To my MFA advisor I wrote, “I read Antonya Nelson’s Bound (love her work, she makes the quietest of plots so damn loud [in the best way] with her prose).” To my dear friend Molly I gGchatted, “i just read a ton of antonya nelson/ i love her.” And to my good friend Aja, who is currently studying with Antonya in Houston’s PhD program, I wrote: “Antonya Nelson. BOUND. I die. Read it yesterday. Magical.”

I’ve been a huge fan of Nelson’s previous books (Female Trouble, In the Land of Men) and Bound doesn’t fall short. It may be a quiet narrative but that doesn’t mean Nelson’s prose lacks any power. In her novel, we follow several woven narratives: Catherine, married to a successful entrepreneur (as well as adulterer); her best friend from high school, Misty, who dies suddenly in a car accident; and Misty’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Cattie, who is left behind without any familial ties. Nelson is especially talented at portraying female characters so precisely—the novel’s tension stems from these relationships, and also from the backdrop of the headline news: the 1970s serial killer BTK.

Today, for one lucky reader, we have an autographed copy of Antonya Nelson’s beautiful book. Leave a comment here or on our Facebook page to enter.

–Megan Fishmann, Publicist

Tags: Antonya Nelson, Bound, BTK