Quotations on
The Folded World

“Gaige tells Charlie's story—as well as those of Alice, Opal, and a half-dozen other finely conceived characters—in a patchwork of short narratives, each told from a different vantage point. Her prose is carefully styled: rich with visual imagery, surprising metaphors, and the kind of observations that make you stop dead at the end of a sentence and reread it, thinking: This really is how we are, isn't it?”

“Amity Gaige is terrific. Once again she reveals her virtuoso ability to translate the complicated ambiguity of our most haunting feelings, and our closest relationships, into dazzling prose. For the reader who has been fortified by love's endurance, baffled by its fragility, and awestruck by the hurricane force with which it hits, The Folded World strikes deep and true.”

“One of Gaige’s triumphs is her ability to sustain narrative momentum; as the story progresses and the characters deepen… the book becomes truly gripping. The scenes are so finely crafted, the narrative movement so fluid, it becomes impossible to resist being swept into the world of Alice and Charlie… The Folded World entices one to read with both hunger and patience.”

“Gaige was honored as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 [exceptional authors] under 35” for her debut, O My Darling (2005). Her second time around again showcases a gift for capturing the simultaneous proximity and distance in a relationship… Gaige’s off-beat orientation, wit and piercing insights stand up to her first novel, this time in a more sober and less tidy narrative that offers greater breadth in exchange for sweetness.”

“I'm very grateful to the folks at Other Press for publishing Amity Gaige's The Folded World this year. In reading Charlie and Alice's story, I was struck by three things: Gaige's crystalline prose, the three-dimensionality of all of her characters, even the minor ones, and her ability to convey the darkness in the minds of Charlie's clients, who are suffering from schizophrenia or other mental illnesses. Gaige… offers us something very special indeed.”

“Gaige (one of the National Book Foundation's ‘5 under 35’) writes elegantly, and she makes the survival of this young marriage a question of grace. Grade: A-”

“More are the wonders awaiting you in Amity Gaige's The Folded World. Strands of memory and thought intersect in this sensitive tale of a social worker Charlie Shade and his wife, Alice. The similarity with Virginia Woolf's style and themes is palpable: The decipherable charge of emotion breaking into a sudden spasm of speech that marks a return to the here and now from the sharpness of sporadic thought. The inner dialogue of Opal reminds you of Septimus'' in Mrs. Dalloway.”

“The Folded World is an artfully-rendered portrait of Charlie and his wife, a meditation on love, relationships and responsibility, and an exploration of what exactly constitutes the dividing line between sanity and madness… The often-awkward (and sometimes wrenching) dance of the care provider who must know people intimately, yet simultaneously keep them at arm’s length… is portrayed here to stunning effect… The beauty of her prose and her joy in wordsmithing suggest that The Folded World might just as readily have been written by a poet.”