From the Publisher
The Everlasting explores large moral questions: How much do we owe to those we love? To ourselves? What does it mean to lead a good life? Can you do that without being religious? Smith’s eloquent storytelling shows us glimpses of certain answers, sometimes serious but just as often comic. It’s fitting that the latter tend to be provided by a fifth major character who interjects barbed commentary throughout: the Devil.” — New York Times Book Review
“The Everlasting takes place over the course of two millennia and follows the lives of four people pondering life’s greatest question. It engages with history and humanity on a grand cosmic scale.” — Entertainment Weekly
“Smith has accomplished a spectacular feat in harnessing the emotional thrust of a sweeping epic within the space of the average novel. The Everlasting spans two millennia with such strong assurance, the narrative never falters, even when it ascends to the eternal plane… This novel is a wonder, building sensual prose toward a stirring inevitability.” — Shelf Awareness
“A sparkling historical novel. Smith bounds through 2,000 years of history, following four indelible characters as they grapple with questions of faith, freedom, and transgressive love…Perhaps Smith's most appealing character is Satan, whose weary, ironic comments punctuate a narrative that shines with lyrical, translucent prose. A compelling, beautifully rendered tale of passion and pain.” — Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
“In this symphonic novel, Smith composes delicate variations on faith, love, and human transience in the eternal city…The further Smith digs into Rome’s layered past, the more captivating the story becomes. This is an ambitious novel whose characters must choose between sensual or spiritual love, gratification or self-abnegation, principled martyrdom or survival.” — Publishers Weekly
“A rare book whose ambition is matched by its craft and emotional weight…Combining the gravity of history with the tribulations of faith and the wit and wisdom of Satan himself…An exquisite tapestry of history, religion and heartbreak that’s perfect for historical fiction and fabulism fans alike.” — BookPage
“Smith ingeniously hooks these narratives together with a relic that morphs over time, so The Everlasting becomes a symphonic and timeless story.” — National Book Review
“A lush, intellectually challenging, and sensuous pleasure…Through the pen of Smith it is engrossing. The characters are deep and full, suspense builds across every page, and most importantly, we care about what happens to each of them.” — Mississippi Clarion Ledger
“Only Katy Simpson Smith could have written a novel of such elegance, emotional power, and grace. The Everlasting, a quadruple love story spanning two millennia, is no less than the story of love itself—its frustrations and thrills, its blunders and transcendent glories. Meraviglioso.” — Nathaniel Rich, author of King Zeno
“It is so very rare to find a writer whose blistering ambition when it comes to bringing history alive on the page is matched by an equal ability to build and break sentences in beautiful ways. Katy Simpson Smith is that writer, and The Everlasting — a bold and ingenious novel spanning multiple time periods and characters with the ease of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas—is full of rich and brilliant ideas about Rome, home, free will, sin, sensation, and civilization. It’s an incredible achievement.” — Jonathan Lee, author of High Dive
“The Everlasting is, quite simply, a wonder: a mesmerizing quartet of stories rendered in lucid, accessible prose. This is a thrillingly modern narrative that, shifting effortlessly from voice to voice, feels like a good old-fashioned story, the story of a city, one of the world’s oldest, wildest, sexiest (and, incidentally, my favorite on earth): Rome.” — Taiye Selasi, author of Ghana Must Go
“In The Everlasting Katy Simpson Smith has magnificently re-imagined what a historical novel might be, and what our near-now might look like if we could only properly see. A child, a princess, a monk, a father—each storyline feels charged, accurate, uncanny and yet also touched by love. A distinctive and unostentatiously brilliant book.” — Rivka Galchen, author of Little Labors and Atmospheric Disturbances
“In a rare display of lyrical erudition, Katy Simpson Smith’s gorgeous novel lets us feel the depth and density of history by showing us how every life is both an echo of the past and a relic of the future.” — Hernan Diaz, author of In the Distance
“Following her wonderful and wonderfully ambitious Free Men, Katy Simpson Smith tops herself with The Everlasting, exploring the mysteries of faith displacing fear, grace given to the undeserving, and the eternal question of forgiveness. She is at the forefront of the best young American writers working today.” — Mark Richard, author of The Ice at the Bottom of the World
BookPage
A rare book whose ambition is matched by its craft and emotional weight…Combining the gravity of history with the tribulations of faith and the wit and wisdom of Satan himself…An exquisite tapestry of history, religion and heartbreak that’s perfect for historical fiction and fabulism fans alike.
Mississippi Clarion Ledger
A lush, intellectually challenging, and sensuous pleasure…Through the pen of Smith it is engrossing. The characters are deep and full, suspense builds across every page, and most importantly, we care about what happens to each of them.
National Book Review
Smith ingeniously hooks these narratives together with a relic that morphs over time, so The Everlasting becomes a symphonic and timeless story.”
Entertainment Weekly
“The Everlasting takes place over the course of two millennia and follows the lives of four people pondering life’s greatest question. It engages with history and humanity on a grand cosmic scale.
Jonathan Lee
It is so very rare to find a writer whose blistering ambition when it comes to bringing history alive on the page is matched by an equal ability to build and break sentences in beautiful ways. Katy Simpson Smith is that writer, and The Everlasting — a bold and ingenious novel spanning multiple time periods and characters with the ease of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas—is full of rich and brilliant ideas about Rome, home, free will, sin, sensation, and civilization. It’s an incredible achievement.
Shelf Awareness
Smith has accomplished a spectacular feat in harnessing the emotional thrust of a sweeping epic within the space of the average novel. The Everlasting spans two millennia with such strong assurance, the narrative never falters, even when it ascends to the eternal plane… This novel is a wonder, building sensual prose toward a stirring inevitability.
New York Times Book Review
The Everlasting explores large moral questions: How much do we owe to those we love? To ourselves? What does it mean to lead a good life? Can you do that without being religious? Smith’s eloquent storytelling shows us glimpses of certain answers, sometimes serious but just as often comic. It’s fitting that the latter tend to be provided by a fifth major character who interjects barbed commentary throughout: the Devil.”
Nathaniel Rich
Only Katy Simpson Smith could have written a novel of such elegance, emotional power, and grace. The Everlasting, a quadruple love story spanning two millennia, is no less than the story of love itself—its frustrations and thrills, its blunders and transcendent glories. Meraviglioso.
Mark Richard
Following her wonderful and wonderfully ambitious Free Men, Katy Simpson Smith tops herself with The Everlasting, exploring the mysteries of faith displacing fear, grace given to the undeserving, and the eternal question of forgiveness. She is at the forefront of the best young American writers working today.
Rivka Galchen
In The Everlasting Katy Simpson Smith has magnificently re-imagined what a historical novel might be, and what our near-now might look like if we could only properly see. A child, a princess, a monk, a father—each storyline feels charged, accurate, uncanny and yet also touched by love. A distinctive and unostentatiously brilliant book.
Taiye Selasi
The Everlasting is, quite simply, a wonder: a mesmerizing quartet of stories rendered in lucid, accessible prose. This is a thrillingly modern narrative that, shifting effortlessly from voice to voice, feels like a good old-fashioned story, the story of a city, one of the world’s oldest, wildest, sexiest (and, incidentally, my favorite on earth): Rome.”
Hernan Diaz
In a rare display of lyrical erudition, Katy Simpson Smith’s gorgeous novel lets us feel the depth and density of history by showing us how every life is both an echo of the past and a relic of the future.
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2019-12-09
Rome, past and present, serves as the setting for a sparkling historical novel.
Smith (Free Men, 2016, etc.) bounds through 2,000 years of history, following four indelible characters as they grapple with questions of faith, freedom, and transgressive love. Tom, a biologist working in contemporary Rome, is studying ostracods, tiny crustaceans that thrive in polluted, agitated environments. "Are they adapting in the face of disadvantage or are they opportunists of collapse?" Tom asks, aware that his question about ostracods could just as well apply to his own emotional agitation. The married father of a 9-year-old daughter, he has met a young woman who enchants him, impelling him to confront his desperate desire for "an unleashing" and for a love deeper than what he feels for his wife. A child playing in the water where he is investigating suddenly shrieks in pain, pierced by a piece of bent metal, "scaly with corrosion, its silver marred with patches of orange rust." It is a fishhook—maybe a castoff with no value or perhaps an ancient relic: uncanny, miraculous. The fishhook reappears as Smith leaps back to the Renaissance, where it falls into the hands of Giulia, a mixed-race princess newly married to a Medici, pregnant with another man's child. For Giulia, her fortunes embroiled in political and religious rivalries, the fishhook evokes a holier time, before corruption and hypocrisy sullied the church. In ninth-century Rome, Felix, a 60-year-old monk, is tormented by his youthful, forbidden love for Tomaso; assigned to watch over the decaying bodies in the putridarium, Felix comes into possession of the fishhook, guessing—wishing—that it belonged to the martyred St. Prisca, who perhaps "got it direct from Jesus." In the year 165, Prisca did indeed find the hook, secreting it as a precious token. Drawn to worshipping Christ rather than pagan gods, 12-year-old Prisca stands defiant against her violent tormenters. Perhaps Smith's most appealing character is Satan, whose weary, ironic comments punctuate a narrative that shines with lyrical, translucent prose.
A compelling, beautifully rendered tale of passion and pain.
