ISBN: 978-1-56689-617-7 | Coffee House Press | Full Press Release here.
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Search History oscillates between a wild cyberdog chase and lunch-date monologues as Eugene Lim deconstructs grieving and storytelling with uncanny juxtapositions and subversive satire.
Frank Exit is dead—or is he? While eavesdropping on two women discussing a dog-sitting gig over lunch, a bereft friend comes to a shocking realization: Frank has been reincarnated as a dog! This epiphany launches a series of adventures—interlaced with digressions about AI-generated fiction, virtual reality, Asian American identity in the arts, and lost parents—as an unlikely cast of accomplices and enemies pursues the mysterious canine. In elliptical, propulsive prose, Search History plumbs the depths of personal and collective consciousness, questioning what we consume, how we grieve, and the stories we tell ourselves.
PRAISE FOR SEARCH HISTORY
Literary Hub, “Novels You Need to Read This Fall”
The Millions, “Most Anticipated of 2021”
Entropy, “2020-2021: Best Fiction Books”
Dennis Cooper’s blog, “Mine for Yours, 2021 Favorites”
Jacob Wren’s A Radical Cut in the Texture of Reality , 2021 Favorites
Big Other, Winner of the Big Other 2021 Award for Fiction
Big Other, Winner of Big Other’s 2021 Award for Fiction
AAAS, Association of Asian American Studies 2023 Book Award
“A post-human manifesto on loss, identity, and the transfigurative potential of art. . . . This brilliant sui generis takes storytelling to new heights.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“As befits a book dealing with death and rebirth, the novel oscillates between the uncanny and the philosophical. . . . Lim brings together the mundane and the extraordinary to powerful effect.”
—Kirkus, starred review
“[S]ometimes new works arrive, such as Eugene Lim’s strange, sinuous, highly memorable novel “Search History” that seem to herald some dawning technological epoch… [A] work of eerie and lasting power.”
—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“[A] humorous philosophical novel, which entertains questions about the nature of narrative and the aesthetic implications of technology. Subversions of the conventional structure of the novel abound… Lim evokes the disorienting idiosyncrasy of an Internet search history.”
—The New Yorker
“[T]hese stories have shattered preconceived notions about novels and recast the bits into fresh forms… This bricolage surprisingly coheres by the novel’s end into an authentic expression of a mind striving to comprehend the inexplicable cruelties of the universe and humanity’s most proper response… Fans of Haruki Murakami’s melancholy, oneiric tales will also delight in Lim’s assault upon consensus reality. He encourages the reader to “stop making sense,” in the Talking Heads manner, and experience the universe as a magical tapestry of events whose overall pattern is perceivable only by God — or maybe after one’s own death.”
—Paul De Fillipo, Washington Post
“This novel is very funny… Search History is a living, breathing novel. Its fascinations and enthusiasms are important yet ambivalent… mature, without being self-serious or fatalistic. An Ode to Joy in Autotune.”
—Joseph Houlihan, Chicago Review of Books
“The construction of self and identity and the transformative nature of art underpin a work that, despite being clothed in clever satire and searing humour, is a tender exploration of how we love and what we consequently risk losing, of death and its aftermath, grief.”
—Justine Hyde, The Saturday Paper
“Often simultaneously hilarious and devastating, Search History is an adventure story that offers profound insight into grief and grieving in the contemporary era…”
—Spencer Quong, Poets & Writers
“A rabbit hole of grief and humor in equal measure. . . . Eugene Lim collages it all together masterfully. Suffice to say, it’s hard to describe to you exactly what happens in these gleefully experimental pages, but I will say this: It sort of feels like Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler and Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein had a baby that inherited its parents’ obsessions with storytelling and technology and their penchant for playfulness.”
—Katie Yee, Literary Hub
“Search History is a beautiful portrait of loss, and it is made all the more so, perhaps surprisingly, by its metafictional cleverness … [I]t’s a pleasure to draw out the parallels this book sets up: Friendship (or, by another name, conversation), grieving, art-making (referred to as “a commitment… a relationship with the world”), and understanding one’s identity—all processes without end, but ones that, without vigilance, may fade in importance over time, until they are eventually forgotten.”
—Chloe Pfeiffer, The Rumpus
“Search History is as ceaselessly shapeshifting in its form as it is in its content. Throughout, Lim tirelessly pursues technical creativity, arriving at structures that feel both wonderfully surprising and perfectly suited for the material.”
—Jefferson Lee, Vagabond City
“[I]t would take no more than to watch the news or check the weather to understand the scope of our ongoing losses. Lim’s goal is more ambitious: not to be a cataloguer but to ask what genre of grief could ever serve as an adequate response.”
—Sohum Pal, Full Stop
“This experimental novel throws traditional structure out the window and what remains is a kind of magic.”
—Lauren Williams, WBUR
“This is the sort of book that proves that the novel will never truly die, as long as there are writers like Lim venturing into new narrative territory.”
—Michael J. Seidlinger, The Lineup
“The most pleasant of Search History’s many surprises is the fact that it’s really a story about grief, and is poignant and cogent in extolling this pain. The artifice of genre is everywhere, but it never stops the characters from working through their feelings.”
—Nolan Kelly, Hyperallergic
“Each of Eugene Lim’s previous novels has occupied a distinct space, from nested narratives to Oulipo-esque surrealism. His latest novel Search History shares some qualities with its excellent predecessor Dear Cyborgs, but pushes ahead into a very different realm, arranging motifs and dispatches heightened realities in unexpected and compelling ways.”
—Vol1. Brooklyn
“Lim’s ability to craft a cohesive narrative with disparate parts…can expand our idea of the shapes novels can or cannot take… SEARCH HISTORY[‘s] defining characteristic is that it is a genuinely fun read.”
—Michael Wong, Heavy Feather Review
“[E]xperimental, freewheeling exploration of grief and capitalism… Fans of Lim’s previous novels and Borges’ obvious influence won’t be disappointed.”
—Buzzfeed
“Eugene Lim’s inventive narrative gathers a dysthymic AI scientist, a drone aficionado, a reincarnated pianist-gamer-now-dog, and a prodigious adoptee for an epic chase through multiple surrealities.”
—Shelf Awareness
“[A] writer with big ideas… Search History solidifies his work as wry, playful, and deserving of more attention.”
—AV Club
“A delightfully strange little book…”
—Bustle
“‘Pure Art’ is the theme, plot, and struggle of the haunted characters in Eugene Lim’s novels. But book after book, pure art is what Eugene Lim makes. Every time I see a new Eugene Lim book on the shelves, I’m grateful. Looking for hope amid our capitalist doom, I read Search History with that exhilarating comfort I’ve felt in the best artists of their times, Petronius to Perec, Rabelais to Rizal—all of whom demonstrate a bracing commitment to challenging our ideological norms by testing without fear our art’s forms. Surveying our planetary wreck on Eugene Lim’s craft is to see our survival more clearly—through friendship’s grief, through love’s quest, through the bereaved trust that survivors must sustain in art.”
—Gina Apostol
“Search History, Eugene Lim’s new masterpiece, is a novel of such richness, inventiveness, and strangeness that it rewards multiple readings. Lim has found a way to capture both the pointed specificity of the internet and its Borgesian infiniteness, in order to tell a picaresque tale about race and American culture, artificial intelligence, artmaking, storytelling, and so much more. Oh, and then this is also a novel about a dog! Search History is utterly original, from its opening pages to its final sentences.”
—John Keene
“Eugene Lim’s forthcoming Search History is a thoroughly unconventional novel that explores the depths of human emotion with ingenuity and style. Readers will be kept on their toes by its disconcerting narrative structure. The story alternates conversations between the narrator and friends that delve deep into the terrain of the philosophical—specifically questioning the subject position of artists of color—with a hijinks-filled quest to reclaim a dog believed to be the reincarnated form of a dead loved one. Lim’s devilish satire lends the story a sheen of humor and playfulness that does not detract from its vulnerability and profound meditations on the continuous processes of grieving and contending with one’s identity. Search History is a luminous, peerless work that establishes Lim as one of the best-suited authors to write about our distinct moment of environmental decay amidst technological advancement. A heartfelt delight from start to finish.”
—Meghana Kandlur
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