Revenge of the Scapegoat

Powell's Midyear Roundup

The Best Books of 2022 (So Far)

By far the weirdest book I've ever read! Let go of reality, open your mind, and let Beilin take you along for a wild ride!  Recommended By Carrie K., Powells.com

This hallucinatory, macabre, and surprisingly jubilant book about breaking free from cycles of family trauma had me laughing in the laundromat and weeping in the back of the bus. I'm certain Beilin's revenge will feel like a gift to many, but especially to the truth-tellers, the survivors, the exilic by nature; truly to anyone who has learned, at great risk, how to stay alive in spite/despite. Viva the scapegoats. Recommended By Alexa W., Powells.com

From the author of Blackfishing the IUD, a darkly hilarious novel about familial trauma, chronic illness, academic labor, and contemporary art.

In the tradition of Rabelais, Swift, and Fran Ross--the tradition of biting satire that joyfully embraces the strange and fantastical — and drawing upon documentary strategies from Sheila Heti, Caren Beilin offers a tale of familial trauma that is also a broadly inclusive skewering of academia, the medical industry, and the contemporary art scene.

One day Iris, an adjunct at a city arts college, receives a terrible package: recently unearthed letters that her father had written to her in her teens, in which he blames her for their family's crises. Driven by the raw fact of receiving these devastating letters not once but twice in a lifetime, and in a panic of chronic pain brought on by rheumatoid arthritis, Iris escapes to the countryside — or some absurdist version of it. Nazi cows, Picassos used as tampons, and a pair of arthritic feet that speak in the voices of Flaubert's Bouvard and Pécuchet are standard fare in this beguiling novel of odd characters, surprising circumstances, and intuitive leaps, all brought together in profoundly serious ways.

“Caren Beilin's slim novels are marked by a distinctive dizzying logic — as if she had invented her own variation on realism — that allows the narrators' imaginations, feelings, locations on earth, and personal symbologies to stretch and twist the plot.” — Sheila Heti, Paris Review Daily

“The author lands on an infectious and perfect blend of cultural criticism, wry writing advice…and magnificently weird storytelling. Belin's account of reemergence manages to be both hilarious and deeply moving.” — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"This wide-ranging, idea-driven novel leaves the reader with much to think about, deftly provoking questions about the nature and ethics of trauma and contemporary art. A fresh, funny, and striking experimental work with surprises at every turn." — Kirkus

Caren Beilin is the author most recently of a nonfiction book, Blackfishing the IUD, and a memoir, Spain. She teaches creative writing at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and lives close by, in Vermont.