A House Is a Body

by Shruti Swamy

Overview

A Most Anticipated Book of 2020 from The Millions * Bustle * BuzzFeed * Electric Literature
Finalist for the 2021 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction

“Swamy’s A House Is a Body will not simply be talked about as one of the greatest short story collections of the 2020s; it will change the way all stories—short and long—are told, written, and consumed. There is nothing, no emotion, no tiny morsel of memory, no touch, that this book does not take seriously.  Yet, A House Is a Body might be the most fun I’ve ever had in a short story collection.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy
 
Dreams collide with reality, modernity with antiquity, and myth with identity in the twelve arresting stories of A House Is a Body. In “Earthly Pleasures,” a young painter living alone in San Francisco begins a secret romance with one of India’s biggest celebrities, and desire and ego are laid bare. In “A Simple Composition,” a husband’s professional crisis leads to his wife’s discovery of a dark, ecstatic joy. And in the title story, an exhausted mother watches, hypnotized by fear, as a California wildfire approaches her home. Immersive and assured, provocative and probing, these are stories written with the edge and precision of a knife blade. Set in the United States and India, they reveal small but intense moments of beauty, pain, and power that contain the world.

A House Is a Body introduces a bold and original voice in fiction, from a writer at the start of a stellar career.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781616209896
Publisher:	Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Publication date:	08/11/2020
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Shruti Swamy is the author of the story collection A House Is a Body, which was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and was longlisted for the Story Prize. Her work has been published by the Paris Review and McSweeney’s and anthologized in the O. Henry Prize Stories. Her debut novel, The Archer, was published by Algonquin Books in September 2021 and has been longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She lives in San Francisco.

Editorial Reviews

06/01/2020

Swamy writes with a cool precision that draws the reader into her debut collection. Eleven of the 12 stories have simple descriptive titles—“Wedding Season,” “Night Garden,” “Mourners,” “The Neighbors”—that belie the works’ complexity, and the plots unspool in lovely lucid prose that has a poetic omniscience. “The Siege” begins with this attention-getting hook: “It was the priest who smothered the horse.” The first line of “Blindness”—“Sudha and Vinod had a modest wedding”—is shadowed by the meaning of the story’s title. The story’s heroine struggles secretly with disaffection, paranoia and nightmares despite the serene surface of her married life. “The Siege” is set in an unnamed country with regressive attitudes toward women. As the female protagonist becomes increasingly introverted and fearful, her husband gains a bravura swagger. In the long and whimsical “Earthly Pleasures,” arguably the centerpiece of the book, a young woman’s intimate relationship with the god Krishna leads her to a sensual awakening and a heightened sense of the world’s beauty. The lone stylistic exception is the title story, written in a splintered, urgent voice that amplifies the plight of the agoraphobic mother at the center; trapped with her young daughter as a raging fire encroaches from the hillside. Swamy is off to a strong start. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

A Electric Lit Favorite Short Story Collection of 2020

"Shruti Swamy's A House Is A Body will not simply be talked about as one of the greatest short story collections of the 2020s; it will change the way the all stories—short and long—are told, written and consumed. There is nothing, no emotion, nor tiny morsel of memory, no touch, that this book does not take seriously. Yet, A House Is A Body might be the most fun I've ever had in a short story collection."
—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

"The characters in A House Is a Body navigate disasters on small and large scales: in one story a man wrestles with grief over his wife’s death as he continues to raise their child, in another a woman is trapped in her home as a nearby wildfire picks up speed . . . Throughout, Swamy connects the narratives through her clean prose, punctuating moments both surreal and eerily realistic." —Time (Here Are the 12 New Books You Should Read in August)

"In this story collection that hops back and forth between India and the U.S., Shruti Swamy delivers a meticulous investigation of the pleasures, pains, and confusions that bodies afford—especially when those bodies belong to people of color. In the hypnotic, almost Lynchian title story (which previously appeared in The Paris Review), a Californian woman watches as a wildfire steadily advances on her home. These are closely observed stories that often turn into provocative studies about the absurdity of our entanglement with others."
—The Millions

“Swamy’s debut short story collection is rich, mesmeric, and often mournful, blurring the boundaries between dreams and reality, and making time less linear and more pliable . . . These are nuanced and quietly powerful stories about our most urgent and deeply felt experiences—grief, love, and desire.”
—BuzzFeed (29 Summer Books You Won't Be Able to Put Down)

"Swamy’s pulsating prose produces riveting narratives. Her stories twist in subtle yet unexpected ways . . . The fallible characters in Swamy’s ravishing book are always falling into something and bravely grasping what they can on their way down in a frenetic attempt to pull themselves back up. A dazzling and exquisitely crafted collection."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Spanning the geographical and social distance between India and the U.S., Swamy’s 12 tales illuminate her characters’ imperfections and struggles, ultimately forming an attuned and mystical exploration into the enigmas of being human.”
—Booklist

“The winner of two O. Henry Prizes, Shruti Swamy will publish her first short-story collection this summer, and you won't want to miss out on reading it. The 12 stories in A House Is a Body move between India and the U.S., focusing on women's interior lives and the ways in which their identities differ from the perceptions and presumptions of those around them.”
—Bustle (The Most Anticipated Books of Summer 2020)

"Swamy writes with a cool precision that draws the reader into her debut collection . .  the plots unspool in lovely lucid prose that has a poetic omniscience . . .  Swamy is off to a strong start."
—Publishers Weekly

“This is one of the books I'll turn to again and again, to study the tapestry of the prose, which is so beautiful and original.  And there is such a deep curiosity at work here.  I couldn't stop reading once I'd begun, couldn't part with this clear, exquisite, intelligent mind, contemplating an endlessly troubled and intimate world.  It made me love reading all over again.”
—Rebecca Lee, author of Bobcat and Other Stories

“I’ve been reading Shruti Swamy’s stories for a long time and so for me to have them here together is cause for great celebration. These stories are written with such rare patience and a restraint that they are at times, almost unbearably tense. That’s a story writer. Not a book to read in a hurry. Take your time, as Swamy did. No need for hyperbole, either. The beauty and timeless grace of these stories will always speak for themselves.”
—Peter Orner, author of Maggie Brown Others: Stories

"Shruti Swamy writes with a confidence and rich understanding that recalls such renowned storytellers as Katherine Anne Porter and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Her collection A House is a Body is the perfect book for lovers of the short story and for all those willing to lose themselves in Swamy’s thoroughly developed fictional worlds. Shruti Swamy is a rare talent and A House is a Body is a gorgeous debut."
—Laura Furman, author of The Mother Who Stayed and former series editor of The O'Henry Prize Stories

"Powered by intense imagery and jolts of frank sexuality, Shruti Swamy’s A House Is a Body blurs the line between fantastical and naturalistic storytelling with its tales of love, loss, and life lived across cultures . . . mesmerizing."
—Foreword Reviews, starred review

From the Publisher

★ 2020-05-18
Fear of loneliness, abandonment, and death propel these 12 stories set in the U.S. and India.

In this debut collection, time is temperamental. Reality bleeds into dreams, and these dreams later shape reality. In the first entry, the sublime “Blindness,” Sudha, an architect and newlywed, struggles with a husband who can’t (and won’t) understand her depression. A dream of an alternate life may be the only cure for her persistent “black feeling.” Disaster looms large, and quirky characters find themselves trapped in hamster wheels, spinning futures they have little control over. In the stirring “Mourners,” Mark’s wife, Chariya, has died. His cousin Reggie as well as Chariya’s sister Maya help him parent his infant daughter while he stumbles through the cruelty of grief. “He holds his breath. He is so close to it, to feeling joy, the joy of the body. But it is moving away from him. He cannot reach it.” Swamy’s pulsating prose produces riveting narratives. Her stories twist in subtle yet unexpected ways, and crucial revelations appear buried in the middles of paragraphs. This is certainly the case in the haunting “The Neighbors,” in which a play date takes a dark turn when a mother of two small children reveals a disturbing truth to another mother she’s only just met. In other stories, art serves as a space for solace and refuge amid chaos. “Earthly Pleasures” finds Radika visiting a museum’s Rothko painting whenever she feels alone. “It had a way of getting into me, the painting. The room filled and emptied several times. There were moments I felt as though I was falling in.” The fallible characters in Swamy’s ravishing book are always falling into something and bravely grasping what they can on their way down in a frenetic attempt to pull themselves back up.

A dazzling and exquisitely crafted collection.

Kirkus Reviews