Genre Fiction
![Clare Pollard - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_clare_pollard.jpg)
Delphi: A Novel
For readers of Jenny Offill, Deborah Levy, and Olivia Laing, an exquisite debut novel about a classics academic researching prophecy in the ancient world, just as the pandemic descends and all visions of her own family's future begin to blur.
Covid-19 has arrived in London, and the entire world quickly succumbs to the surreal, chaotic mundanity of screens, isolation, and the disasters small and large that have plagued recent history. As our unnamed narrator-a classics academic immersed in her studies of ancient prophecies-navigates the tightening grip of lockdown, a marriage in crisis, and a ten-year-old son who seems increasingly unreachable, she becomes obsessed with predicting the future. Shifting her focus from chiromancy (prophecy by palm reading) to zoomancy (prophecy by animal behavior) to oenomancy (prophecy by wine), she fails to notice the future creeping into the heart of her very own home, and when she finally does, the threat has already breached the gates.
Brainy and ominous, funny and sharp, Delphi is a snapshot and a time capsule-it both demythologizes our current moment and places our reality in the context of myth. Clare Pollard has delivered one of our first great novels of this terrible moment, a mesmerizing story of our pasts, our presents, and our futures, and how we keep on living in a world that is ever-more uncertain and absurd.
Covid-19 has arrived in London, and the entire world quickly succumbs to the surreal, chaotic mundanity of screens, isolation, and the disasters small and large that have plagued recent history. As our unnamed narrator-a classics academic immersed in her studies of ancient prophecies-navigates the tightening grip of lockdown, a marriage in crisis, and a ten-year-old son who seems increasingly unreachable, she becomes obsessed with predicting the future. Shifting her focus from chiromancy (prophecy by palm reading) to zoomancy (prophecy by animal behavior) to oenomancy (prophecy by wine), she fails to notice the future creeping into the heart of her very own home, and when she finally does, the threat has already breached the gates.
Brainy and ominous, funny and sharp, Delphi is a snapshot and a time capsule-it both demythologizes our current moment and places our reality in the context of myth. Clare Pollard has delivered one of our first great novels of this terrible moment, a mesmerizing story of our pasts, our presents, and our futures, and how we keep on living in a world that is ever-more uncertain and absurd.
Editorial Reviews
"Finally, a brilliantly funny and sad look into the heart of the pandemic lockdown... [that] manages to avoid cliches and tired complaints while being reassuringly familiar at the same time… Characters, settings and even whole scenes are drawn in quick, exquisite precision full of wit and pathos. Its intimacy reminded me of Sally Rooney and its subtle, sly humor of Miriam Toews' All My Puny Sorrows… a reassuring reflection in the darkness." -San Francisco Chronicle
"Ingenious." -The Millions
"A powerful fable about life in an ever-more unpredicatable world." -Harper's Bazaar
"[An] exquisitively painful debut... Pollard's deft inclusion of all the pandemic's practical and political challenges-masks, vaccines, social distancing, the strain on shared home WiFi networks, long separations from aging parents, the 2020 U.S. presidential election, and January 6-is wrapped in the inventive framework of prophecies. Irresistible and also oddly reassuring for all who have come through (so far) to the other side of COVID's miseries." -Library Journal
"We need the ancients to explain today to us, and we need Clare Pollard. In brief, brilliant passages, Pollard confronts the shadow-play of our screen-entranced lives, and offers this simultaneous comfort and curse: we are not the first to live these griefs and these bewilderments. Delphi is the strangest, best thing I've read in ages." -Rachel Kadish, author of The Weight of Ink
"Clare Pollard's Delphi delivers an urgency unlike any I've experienced. I loved this book so much; the language, the humor, the style, which reminded me of both Patricia Lockwood and Sheila Heti. A brilliant novel born of searing eloquence and sinister wit." -Jackie Polzin, author of Brood
"A compact miracle of a book." -Evie Wyld, author of All the Birds, Singing
"Vivid as fireworks, the brief chapters of Delphi explode with the ambivalence, rage and dread of middle years lived within a world of p...
"Ingenious." -The Millions
"A powerful fable about life in an ever-more unpredicatable world." -Harper's Bazaar
"[An] exquisitively painful debut... Pollard's deft inclusion of all the pandemic's practical and political challenges-masks, vaccines, social distancing, the strain on shared home WiFi networks, long separations from aging parents, the 2020 U.S. presidential election, and January 6-is wrapped in the inventive framework of prophecies. Irresistible and also oddly reassuring for all who have come through (so far) to the other side of COVID's miseries." -Library Journal
"We need the ancients to explain today to us, and we need Clare Pollard. In brief, brilliant passages, Pollard confronts the shadow-play of our screen-entranced lives, and offers this simultaneous comfort and curse: we are not the first to live these griefs and these bewilderments. Delphi is the strangest, best thing I've read in ages." -Rachel Kadish, author of The Weight of Ink
"Clare Pollard's Delphi delivers an urgency unlike any I've experienced. I loved this book so much; the language, the humor, the style, which reminded me of both Patricia Lockwood and Sheila Heti. A brilliant novel born of searing eloquence and sinister wit." -Jackie Polzin, author of Brood
"A compact miracle of a book." -Evie Wyld, author of All the Birds, Singing
"Vivid as fireworks, the brief chapters of Delphi explode with the ambivalence, rage and dread of middle years lived within a world of p...
