We are excited to make Semiotic Love [Stories] available for pre-sales.
Go here to place your order.
Purchase now at a 20% discount with free shipping. Orders will be shipped in early February.
About the Book:
SEMIOTIC LOVE [STORIES] draws upon symbols and objects to explore the loss of relationships. In these pages, Brian Phillip Whalen reaches deep into the throat of anxiety with a graceful hand and understated humor as he confronts mothers and best friends dying slow or sudden deaths, disappointing vacations, and vanishing sisters. While loss of all kinds permeates these compact stories, it is the tenderness and longing that attaches itself to the reader and propels them to turn the page. This book reminds us that for better or for worse, we're all a little rougher with the people we love the most.
Early Praise:
With the heart of Denis Johnson, the mind of a Zen master, and a deep, generous soul all his own, Brian Phillip Whalen has written a captivating, transcendent book. Whalen's shimmering sentences will make you laugh and cry and marvel and feel lucky to be alive. Smart money says you’ll start rereading this extraordinary collection moments after you reach its final page.
—Edward Schwarzschild, author of In Security and Responsible Men
Semiotic Love bears the sign of a remarkable talent. Whalen is that rare writer who knows when to step aside and let his readers “watch the sky fall apart.” With light and mercury, he exposes images of unprecedented potency––how better to speak of all our unspeakable loves?
––JoAnna Novak, author of I Must Have You
Whalen is a master of the deadpan landing. His pith packs a punch. These fictions are our new wig and wag semaphores, transmitting, in bits and bytes, our encrypted and buried grammars of the heart. The [stories] that annotate and detonate Semiotic Love are like Hemingway’s “chapter” hint fictions that grout together the stories of In Our Time. They mine a muted telegraphy that scales up, in Whalen’s hands, to the cumulonimbus diction and syntax of skywriting. I loved these mean little meanings.
—Michael Martone, author of Brooding and The Moon Over Wapakoneta
