The Box Mandysuzanne Wong by Mandy-suzanne Wong 9781644452493, 9781644452509, 1644452499, 1644452502 instant download after payment.

A stylistically dazzling novel about things, people, & the forces & seams between them.Of course, each thing has its own sides to every story.

In a dark & crooked lane in an unnamed city where it never ceases to snow, a small white box falls from a coat pocket. It is made of paper strips woven tightly together; there is no apparent way to open it without destroying it. What compels a passing witness to this event, a self-described anthrophobe not inclined to engage with other people, to pick up the box & chase after the stranger who dropped it?

The Box follows a rectangular cuboid as it changes hands in a collapsing metropolis, causing confluences, conflicts, rifts, & disasters. Different narrators, each with a distinctive voice, give accounts of decisive moments in the box’s life. From the anthrophobe to a newly hired curator of a renowned art collection to a couple who own an antiquarian bookshop to a hotel bartender hiding from a terrible past, the storytellers repeat rumors & rely on faulty memories, grasping at a thing that continually escapes them. Haunting their secondhand recollections is one mysterious woman who, convinced of the box’s good or evil powers, pursues it with deadly desperation.  

A mesmerizing, intricately constructed puzzle of a novel, The Box challenges our understanding of subjects & objects, of cause & effect. Is it only humans who have agency? What is or isn’t animate? What do we value & what do we discard?