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Emerald City
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Set in Seattle, Emerald City follows Benison Behrenreich, the hearing son of deaf royalty. His father, CEO of a multimillion-dollar deaf access agency, has bribed Myriadal College officials for Benison's spot on their powerhouse basketball team, where he struggles to prove himself and compensate for his father's sins.
Julia Paolantonio has recently lost her father to a drug ...more
Julia Paolantonio has recently lost her father to a drug ...more
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Paperback, 1st Edition, 418 pages
Published
September 15th 2019
by Animal Riot Press
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This is one of those books that shocks you back into existence. Birnbaum's talents extend into nearly every "category" of writing... plot and character and language and structure and etc. But that's merely a technical observation and says nothing about how urgent each page feels, and how difficult it is to put this thing down. Benison Behrenreich, one of the book's main players (and literally a college basketball player) is one of my new favorite literary characters. He seems to embody a variety
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Just finished reading this tome for the sixth time and it just keeps getting better and better. No one writes with the muscle and cerebral force like Birnbaum. Any fans of DFW, Sergio De La Pava, Gabe Habash or Chad Harbach will love this book!
These characters are simultaneously so real you'd swear you'd met them out at a bar somewhere and larger-than-life in the situations they find themselves in. The settings--and everything else--are rendered in high definition, delicious when you want them to be and completely gut-wrenching when you don't (but you just can't help yourself from taking it all in). The language is especially well-wrought, too; every moment seems carved and polished right out of the materials of the scene it belongs t
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Every so often you encounter a book that just blows you away. For me, this summer (September is still summer), Emerald City is that book. Sure, the description sounds like any number of other books – Seattle, crime syndicate, family drama – these are common pieces – but Brian Birnbaum moves them distinctly uncommon ways.
First, there’s his use of language. It’s gritty, it’s present, it’s very, very real. I felt like his characters were people I would have run into on buses, in bistros, or in boar ...more
First, there’s his use of language. It’s gritty, it’s present, it’s very, very real. I felt like his characters were people I would have run into on buses, in bistros, or in boar ...more
I want to live in Brian Birnbaum’s head for a day to access the dark, loamy place he stores his word magic dust. But only a day. Any longer and I’d be big-pupiled and catatonic, out-cerebrumed and anti-cerebellumed. This novel is a wild ride, and will make you laugh even while you’re cold-sweating through his character’s choices. You might need a helmet. Or a flask of something. Followed by a shower. Birnbaum is as inventive with language as he is smart with story. He will put you into a world t
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In Emerald City, Brian Birnbaum circumnavigates the limits of what language can and should do, how moral characters can and should be, and how desperate the leanings of human behaviour can and should get. The prose presents a shocking aptitude for such brilliance, that at most points a re-read seems not just essential but necessary.
For fans of DFW, Delillo, David Mitchell, and more. Birnbaum's prose is like an arterial pathway through the world, tangential, accelerating, oxygen-rich. It's a thrilling, lens-widening read that sets the world ablaze.
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Sep 24, 2019
Michael Northen
added it
The publication of Emerald is an impressive event: the first by Dead Rabbits Dead Rabbits Press. Birnbaum is the founder and according to co-founder Katie Rainey,"We didn't want to make those mistakes on other people's books, so Brian generously offered for his novel to be the guinea pig."A second reason for the publication is the emphasis on giving insight into Deaf culture, which Birnbaum, a child of Deaf adults (CODA), is familiar with. Emerald can be looked at with two eyes, then – what offe
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Brian seems like a really nice guy... who needs an editor.
Mar 21, 2020
Mattia Ravasi
added it
Video review
Very DFW, with great insight into college basketball and the trappings of both priviledge and pity. ...more
Very DFW, with great insight into college basketball and the trappings of both priviledge and pity. ...more
Best for:
I cannot recommend this to anyone.
In a nutshell:
I couldn’t really tell you. I could reproduce the description from the back of the book, but I think that’s unfair to other authors whose books can be described by their readers without resorting to that. Though according to the reviews that have already seeded Good Reads it is ‘shocking.’
Worth quoting:
Here is an example of the writing that fills each page:
“He’d sooner have gotten mad at time’s perceived acceleration over life’s void of fu ...more
I cannot recommend this to anyone.
In a nutshell:
I couldn’t really tell you. I could reproduce the description from the back of the book, but I think that’s unfair to other authors whose books can be described by their readers without resorting to that. Though according to the reviews that have already seeded Good Reads it is ‘shocking.’
Worth quoting:
Here is an example of the writing that fills each page:
“He’d sooner have gotten mad at time’s perceived acceleration over life’s void of fu ...more
As Brian Birnbaum led me through the pages of Emerald City, I was left bewildered by the life that the author breathed into his many characters. Benison, ashamed of his Father’s corrupt career finds himself entangled in a web of crime families, scandal, and drug smuggling, which Peter relies on for his drug-induced downward spiral, and in which Julia is unwillingly caught up. The tendrils of the Mob hold everyone together, supporting their lifestyles at the same time as it threatens to strangle
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Birnbaum’s Emerald City is fast-paced and raucous. A contemporary Odysseus-esque journey, where each moment, each conversation, is a fight for one’s life. Time feels like a needless and foreign construction because everything that matters is happening in the now. We like to think of people, place and narrative existing within boxes and boundaries, but this is work that is unafraid to veer. One is left feeling like they’ve been eavesdropping on a conversation they’re not supposed to be listening
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Birnbaum's prose skitters and leaps like a bolt of plasma, landing on a character's memory of an awkward sexual encounter one moment then capering into the merits of capitalism or quantum mechanics the next. A colorful, but sincere, cast of characters trade the spotlight as they navigate the city, hardships, and interpersonal connections they knowingly and unknowingly share. What starts as a reflection on basketball, college parties, and budding young love, spirals into a kaleidoscope of illegal
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First, I want to thank Brian and Dead Rabbits for sending out ARCs of this for me to read. I really love getting to read new stuff. I felt like I was reading a fever dream of words with Emerald City. I feel like there was an enormous amount to take in. About half way through I started piecing it all together. Brian has a very gritty set of characters and they dont hold back on showing there faults as humans. I definitely got lost on a couple of the characters though. This book took me a few pick
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Shocking and full of amazing characters this is one book that if you are looking to leave your world behind you have found it. This book will suck you in and keep you there until the end of the book. This one was a blast!! We started and finished it in one sitting and man this book might be out there but it was a SHOCKER of a read. This was a wild ride with wonderful characters and an amazing story! Make sure to check it out! If you love mystery and basketball check this one out!
Birnbaum's prose is a steam engine. It powers along, high-pressured, devouring the tracks he lays out from page to page. On display here is his wit, humour, sense of irony and depth of thought. This novel was definitely written.
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A virtuosic debut!
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