
Grand Rapids
Natasha Stagg(Author)
Semiotext (E) (Publisher)
Published on 30. September 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
264 pages
978-1-63590-257-0 (ISBN)
Description
A new novel from the celebrated author of Surveys, set in the Michigan suburbs of the early 2000s.
Installed alongside the Grand River in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, Alexander Calder’s public sculpture La Grande Vitesse has come to symbolize the city. Tess moves there from Ypsilanti, Michigan in 2001—the same year that her mother dies, when everything begins to move, for her, in slow motion. Thrust into adolescence nearly rudderless, fifteen-year-old Tess is intoxicated, angsty, and sexually awake. A decade later, inspired by diary entries and TV reruns, she remembers this summer in the suburbs as the one that redefined her. Its echoes of death are frozen in time like the waves represented in the Calder sculpture or the concrete steps leading down to the churning river. She comes to see Grand Rapids as a collection of architecture and emblems, another home to which she cannot return.
Installed alongside the Grand River in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, Alexander Calder’s public sculpture La Grande Vitesse has come to symbolize the city. Tess moves there from Ypsilanti, Michigan in 2001—the same year that her mother dies, when everything begins to move, for her, in slow motion. Thrust into adolescence nearly rudderless, fifteen-year-old Tess is intoxicated, angsty, and sexually awake. A decade later, inspired by diary entries and TV reruns, she remembers this summer in the suburbs as the one that redefined her. Its echoes of death are frozen in time like the waves represented in the Calder sculpture or the concrete steps leading down to the churning river. She comes to see Grand Rapids as a collection of architecture and emblems, another home to which she cannot return.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 201 mm
Width: 136 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
272 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-63590-257-0 (9781635902570)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Person
Natasha Stagg