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Act of God: A Novel
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Act of God: A Novel
Unavailable
Act of God: A Novel
Audiobook5 hours

Act of God: A Novel

Written by Jill Ciment

Narrated by Barbara Rosenblat

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

Jill Ciment's books have been hailed as "stunning," "powerful," and "provocative." Alice Sebold has called her works "beautifully written." Now the author of Heroic Measures ("Smart and funny and completely surprising . . . I loved every page." -Ann Patchett; "Brave, generous, nearly perfect." -Los Angeles Times) has given us a contemporary noir novel that starts out a comedy of errors and turns darker at every hairpin turn.

It's the summer of 2015, Brooklyn. The city is sweltering from another record-breaking heat wave, this one accompanied by biblical rains. Edith, a recently retired legal librarian, and her identical twin sister, Kat, a feckless romantic who's mistaken her own eccentricity for originality, discover something ominous in their hall closet: it seems to be phosphorescent, it's a mushroom . . . and it's sprouting from their wall.

Upstairs, their landlady, Vida Cebu, a Shakespearian actress far more famous for her TV commercials for Ziberax (the first female sexual enhancement pill) than for her stage work, discovers that a petite Russian girl, a runaway au pair, has been secretly living in her guest room closet. When the police arrest the intruder, they find a second mushroom, also glowing, under the intruder's bedding. Soon the HAZMAT squad arrives, and the four women are forced to evacuate the contaminated row house with only the clothes on their backs.

As the mold infestation spreads from row house to high-rise, and frightened, bewildered New Yorkers wait out this plague (is it an act of God?) on their city and property, the four women become caught up in a centrifugal nightmare.

Part horror story, part screwball comedy, Jill Ciment's brilliant suspense novel looks at what happens when our lives-so seemingly set and ordered yet so precariously balanced-break down in the wake of calamity. It is, as well, a novel about love (familial and profound) and how it can appear from the most unlikely circumstances.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 3, 2015
ISBN9781101913482
Unavailable
Act of God: A Novel
Author

Jill Ciment

Jill Cimentwas born in Montreal, Canada. She is the author of Small Claims, a collection of short stories and novellas; the novels The Law of Falling Bodies, Teeth of the Dog, The Tattoo Artist, and Heroic Measures; and a memoir, Half a Life. She has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, among them a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and a Guggenheim fellowship. Ciment is a professor at the University of Florida. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, and Brooklyn, New York. Pushkin will publish her latest novel Act of God in 2016.

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Reviews for Act of God

Rating: 3.422535204225352 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

71 ratings8 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    An entertaining, quirky novel following a cast of characters dealing with age and the onslaught of a toxic mushroom outbreak.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Act of God is the story of four very different women who are confronted with a `supermold' growing in a house in Brooklyn.Edith, retired law librarian, is affectionately exasperated by Kat, her deadbeat twin sister. Vida, the owner of the house, is an actor who has found fortune and notoriety in an advert for a sex enhancement pill. Ashley is a defiant but scared Siberian squatter, hiding out in Vida's apartment.When the glittering, glowing fungus is identified by the authorities, they are all forced to leave the house and their lives are thrown into chaos.The tone of the book is so light and witty you don't immediately realise how dark it is. I loved the strong, spiky characters, their sharp observations, their humour and resilience.The book asks questions about responsibility and chance, about who we are when we're stripped of what we own, about how relationships can both nurture and harm (particularly if you're spreading sparkly spores).I felt the plot did drift a little towards the end but it was such an engaging read I didn't mind too much.-I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I guess I forgot to mark that I had read this one. It's a strange story, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. For some reason I thought it was going to be some near-future catastrophe book. It wasn't that, but I think I liked it better than I would have liked that other, imaginary novel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I loved two previous books I read of Ciment's ("Heroic Measures" and "The Tattoo Artist", one of the most horrifying books I've ever read)., but this one didn't do it for me. Elderly twins find a luminescent mold growing in their apartment and can't get the landlady to deal with it. But when the landlady, who lives upstairs, calls the police to report a break-in, they find it growing in her part of the house too and all the characters are forced to evacuate. Over the next few weeks their lives change drastically as the true nature of the mold is revealed and their intertwined fates take unexpected turns. Sounds like an interesting premise, but there are just too many loose ends left hanging for my taste.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The story was not what I was expecting, and it left me feeling a bit empty, as though I couldn't figure out why someone would go to all the trouble of writing a novel if this was all they had to say.

    I'm giving it three rather than two stars, however, because my impression of the book was shaped by my expectation that it was in the realm of urban fantasy, and it isn't. It's what I'd call "contemporary fiction" for lack of a better term.

    I came across the book when I landed on a page on Scribd that featured stories with "unusual elements," so I thought I was still within the sf/fantasy genre I read in most often. But apparently not! The toxic mold is slightly unusual, in that I don't think it really exists or behaves the way it does in the story, but that most definitely does not make the story urban fantasy!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It was a semi-interesting narrative, the main characters were well developed, and the story was quite original, but the ending was sadly lacking. There was a strange lack of urgency that I have never enjoyed in books of this genre. It had the feel of a sci-fi original movie without the campy enjoyment. I have the feeling that the unsatisfying ending was a purposeful literary device the author used to highlight certain things in the book (not telling what, no spoilers), but I believe it could have been handled with a lot more grace.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Wonderfully dark!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    “Act of God,” by Jill Ciment, opens by introducing two 64-year-old identical twins who live together in a row house in present-day Brooklyn, New York. They awake to discover something inexplicable and frightening glowing in the dark of their hall closet. It’s looks like some freakish phosphorus organism. They can actually see it growing: it’s surface “roiling as if something beneath were struggling to be born.” As they gaze, transfixed, a swell rises “out of the glow until the head of whatever was fighting to get born” pushes through and “a fleshy bud” appears. Still mesmerized, the twins witness the bud burst and disperse “a puff of spores…luminous and ephemeral as glitter.” It doesn’t take long for the two to realize that they are dealing with some type of possibly very toxic fungus.This is such a perfectly delightful beginning to this remarkable and lovely little literary book. And you learn all of that on the first page! This author makes the best out of every word and page.It’s a book that captivated my heart and mind for the short few hours it took me to finish it. Most of all, I loved the four main characters, all female: Edith, the conservative, organized, responsible, legal librarian; Kat, Edith’s identical twin sister and every bit Edith’s opposite in looks, personality, and temperament; Vida, the two sisters’ beautiful but egocentric landlady—a woman made famous by her seductive role in a commercial for the world’s first female sexual enhancement pill; and Ashley (a.k.a. Anushka Sokolov), an eighteen-year-old former nanny and now homeless Russian immigrant—a girl who has been living in secret in Vida’s guest room closet for over a week by the time the book begins. The book delighted me with this madcap cast of eccentric, vulnerable, but also somewhat far-fetched set of characters. I’m sure for most of us, they represent some of the very recognizable “difficult people” who we all have had to deal with at various times in our lives: the stressful overly organized and passively controlling type; the infuriating narcissist; the I-haven’t-yet-grown-up-out-of-my-youthful-sociopathic-stage teenager; and the frustratingly disorganized and hopelessly irresponsible free spirit. In this short novel—actually little more than a long novella—these four characters must deal with a toxic super mold crisis that takes over New York City. We soon learn that the only way to obliterate this deadly mold is to burn everything: furniture, clothing, papers, photos, clothing…ultimately, the whole building. After that, the Hazmat teams must try, as best they can, to decontaminate the living victims with beach baths and fungicide. Homelessness and bankruptcy soon follow. Yes, this is quite a dark plot, but in this author’s hands, the tale is handled almost like a fable; also there is much emphasis on wit and black humor. Besides the characters, I adored this novel’s themes. It’s very much a contemporary morality story. It is about the irresponsibility of otherwise well-meaning human beings. Was the mold infestation—including the deaths and human misery caused by it—a true “act of God,” as the insurance folks demand? Or were there humans involved who could and should have been held responsible for the spread? Can good people do horrible things and still be good people? If so, can they be forgiven? Is this all just a significant part of what it means to be human?There is an obvious parallel that begs mentioning; for me, it was the invisible 800-pound gorilla trying to fight its way out from between the covers of this tiny book. The book is, of course, entirely mute on this subject, but I could not help thinking that the author might have intended us to think about it. What I’m talking about is global climate change. Did the author mean for us to bridge this gap and make that connection? If climate change is a man-made crisis and not an “act of God,” can we forgive ourselves—in essence, can we forgive humankind? Is climate change just a natural outcome of all that makes us unique, wonderful, and loveable human…like all the characters in this book? The book is brilliantly well written. It is entertaining, powerful, thought provoking, and humane. I loved it from beginning to end.