{"product_id":"deep-breath-9781646222681","title":"Deep Breath","description":"\u003cb\u003eA visceral and stirring novel exploring free will, memory, faith, and constructions of reality and the self, following a woman faced with the question of whether her marriage is abusive, and the life-altering decision of ending it\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhen we meet Vera, her body and mind are on a precipice. She's just left her marital home to live with her father after her husband's violent outbursts reach a breaking point. She's experiencing sudden losses of consciousness, spells of insomnia and difficulty eating. Over the course of the year that follows, she reignites a high school romance, looks to her divorced parents for guidance, attempts couples therapy, struggles to mother two young daughters, develops a brief cocaine dependency, and tries to rekindle her artistic practice--all while questioning, in Hal?sz's immediate, intimate prose, the infinite number of choices that led her to this difficult moment. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTowards the end of the novel, we follow Vera into a surreal funhouse mirror of a courtroom scene, equally comical and horrifying, where she must confront the many conflicting narratives of her marriage and separation and decide which one rings true. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWith the emotional precision and formal elegance reminiscent of Natalia Ginzburg and Elena Ferrante, Hal?sz offers a meditation on agency, subjectivity, motherhood, and the artistic vocation with an ultimately optimistic conclusion: life consists of forward movement, in which the biggest challenge--and privilege--is choice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRITA HAL?SZ\u003c\/b\u003e is a Hungarian writer and art historian. \u003ci\u003eDeep Breath\u003c\/i\u003e, her debut novel, won the 2021 Marg? Prize and was shortlisted for the Libri Literary Prize. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eKRIS HERBERT\u003c\/b\u003e, who also uses Kristen Herbert professionally, is a fiction writer and translator from the Chicagoland area. After living several years in Budapest, she completed an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of California-Riverside. She is a 2024-25 Fulbright grantee doing research in Hungarian crime literature at the University of Szeged. Her own work of crime literature is a long-coming work-in-progress.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Catapult","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51298647900434,"sku":"9781646222681","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_b69c7fd8-ad9b-4731-b10e-df916718c14f.jpg?v=1747831219","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/deep-breath-9781646222681","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}