Leave Society Tao Lin by Tao Lin 9781101974483, 1101974486 instant download after payment.

In his most recent work, Tao Lin delivers an engrossing and hopeful novel about life, fiction, and where the two blur together that builds toward a stunning, if unexpected, romance.

“Stylistically, the book is artful, even radical... [Lin shows] the work of seeking. There is something brave in leaving a character [like Li] so undefended.”  -  Christine Smallwood, The New York Times Book Review

In 2014, a novelist named Li leaves Manhattan to visit his parents in Taipei for ten weeks. He doesn't know it yet, but his life will begin to deepen and complexity on this trip. As he flies between these two worlds - year by year, over four years - he will flit in and out of optimism, despair, loneliness, sanity, bouts of chronic pain, and drafts of a new book. He will incite and temper arguments, uncover secrets about nature and history, and try to understand how to live a meaningful life as an artist and a son. 

But how to fit these pieces of his life together? Where to begin? Or should he leave society altogether? Exploring everyday events and scenes - waiting rooms, dog walks, family meals - while investigatively venturing to the edges of society, where culture dissolves into mystery, Tao Lin shows what it is to write a novel in real-time. 

illuminating and deeply felt, as it builds toward a stunning, if unexpected, romance, Leave Society is a masterly story about life and art at the end of history. 

“Lin introduces a radical shift in outlook, a change from a posture of boredom to one of awe... On the second reading, when I was better accustomed to Lin’s humour and his delight in multiplicity, [the final sentence] seemed to me both metaphorical and literal, playful and quite serious, a brilliant, almost perfect ending.”   -  Lamorna Ash, Los Angeles Review of Books