A daring debut that captures “elegant depictions of lives and places…full of the quiet power…of a fever dream” (The Los Angeles Times Book Review)
Mary Caponegro’s The Star Café is a bold and original collection that explores how we experience the world through language, through the body, and through our relationships with others.
Across three stories and a novella, Caponegro examines the unstable terrain of sexuality and identity. In “Materia Prima,” a young girl navigates her first encounters with speech and desire; the title story follows Carol, drawn into a disorienting sexual encounter in a mirrored space where her own body is endlessly reflected back to her, forcing a confrontation with the strange, often absurd logic of desire; the collection culminates in “Sebastian,” a novella that traces a single unsettled day in the life of a man in a mercurial romantic relationship that disrupts his need for order to devastating effects.
At once intimate and formally adventurous, The Star Café transforms familiar experiences into something newly strange and electric, marking the emergence of a singular and fearless literary voice.
