Simply Separate People, Two by Lynn Crawford

Simply Separate People, Two is a magical machine whose innards are in plain view but whose operating principles remain profoundly mysterious. A dazzling feat of collage and reverse-engineering, Crawford writes in a deceptively easy-going style that’s both critical of and generous to all our sad and beautiful scurrying around.

 

Lynn Crawford is a dead-on inventor of human dislocation. Her people, separated as they are from both themselves and the rest of the world, are skinlessly rendered by a writer who reminds us of who we are inside our own skins. At the center of the world stands Bry, a sort of unseen/unheard Everywoman. It is through her eyes and through her attempts at invention and singularity that we follow along and feel through the struggle and interplay between the binds of domestic reality and the desire to find and tell a story richer and taller and ultimately more mysterious than one’s own birthright. This novel is more than just a story, more than just a book; it is a world entire unto itself, and the people in it become more like real people, like made out of flesh neighbors, than simply characters made out of ink.

-Peter Markus, author of Bob, or Man on Boat