Elysium, or The World After

by Jennifer Marie Brissett

Overview

A computer program etched into the atmosphere has a story to tell, the story of two people, of a city lost to chaos, of survival and love. The program’s data, however, has been corrupted. As the novel's characters struggle to survive apocalypse, they are sustained and challenged by the demands of love in a shattered world both haunted and dangerous.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619760530
Publisher:	Pathway Book Service
Publication date:	12/01/2014
Pages:	199
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

A Jamaican-British American with an MFA from The University of Southern Maine at Stonecoast, Jennifer Marie Brissett’s short fiction has appeared in Morpheus Tales, Warrior Wisewoman 2, The Future Fire, Thaumatrope, and Halfway Down the Stairs<\i>, where her work was nominated for the Dzanc Best of the Web Series and included in The Best of Halfway Down the Stairs, 2005-2010, and a finalist for the 2013 storySouth Million Writers Award. She was a software engineer and web developer for many years before she moved to Brooklyn, NY to build the indie bookstore, Indigo Café & Books which she ran for three and a half years. Her website can be found at www.jennbrissett.com..

Editorial Reviews

10/06/2014
Adrianne/Adrian moves back and forth through recent time, switching sexes and situations—always with the same people, albeit in different roles—with each life interrupted and restarted by a mysterious computer code that he/she is occasionally vaguely aware of. The one love in her/his life is Antoine/Antoinette, who appears in a variety of roles such as lover, sibling, and friend. But sooner or later, Antoine/Antoinette is always lost. As the fragments of story grow larger and more complex, Adrianne/Adrian continues changing, but Earth remains the same dark place, haunted by an event that alters or kills most of the population. Gradually the protagonist comes to understand what’s happening and step into the role of savior for the mysterious Elysium. Brissett’s punch of a debut is bewildering at first, but never so confusing as to frustrate the reader, and repeating elements and symbols help tie everything together—not neatly, for so much of the world is broken, but enough. Brissett deftly handles the challenge of a multitude of characters all being the same people in a multitude of places that are the same place, while exploring complicated questions about identity. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

12/01/2014
The main character of this first novel is Adrianne, except when it is Adrian. She/he moves through life with the same people around her/him, although they also randomly change gender and roles in her world. She/he loves and loses Antoine/Antoinette, is friends or lovers with Hector/Helen, lives in a modern city or a dystopian wasteland. And there is a mysterious computer code that interrupts her/his life, resetting the players and changing the setting, with each permutation of the world growing darker and more in need of saving. VERDICT The novel's unsettling and unusual structure works because Brissett skillfully seeds symbols and repeats elements to carry the reader through each version of the world. Just as the heroine/hero slowly comes to realize what is happening to the world, so, too, does the reader. It will inevitably bring the movie The Matrix to mind; this is a weird, however, original play on reality.

Library Journal

...follows the lives of two characters as they switch genders and lives in this haunting, surreal story about surviving at all costs...In a desperate attempt to save their loved ones from madness, decay and invaders who live in the fourth dimension, humans build underground cities, even growing wings and flying in this rich exploration of identity and memory.

The Washington Post - Nancy Hightower

This is a complex, dense book, and reminds me of the best parts of Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. Brissett’s novel, her first, is as ambitious and experimental as those works, and I hope it receives similar attention...

The Future Fire - Cait Coker

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