Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
A Thing Is Only Known When It Is Gone

A Thing Is Only Known When It Is Gone

Baumann, Joe

Paperback

General Fiction

ISBN10: 0299348946
ISBN13: 9780299348946
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: Mar 18 2025
Pages: 224
Weight: 0.60
Height: 0.70 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.40
Language: English
Flowers bloom from the body of a man after his lover's touch. Grieving parents find a way to communicate with their lost children. A teacher with water in his veins is held accountable when the extracurricular club he advises goes rogue. In these and other fantastical stories, Joe Baumann explores relationships, mostly queer, through the lens of the bizarre.

The stories in A Thing Is Only Known When It Is Gone are told in lyrical, often startling prose. Baumann's experimentation with the surreal avoids gimmick and easy metaphor, keeping the complexity of the characters at the center. The strange worlds of these protagonists distort and reflect our own back to us, like the funhouse mirrors in Morphology that begin to change the fabric of reality.

Ultimately, we may not want to live in a world in which our broken hearts are on display in external cages. But Baumann's sophisticated, nuanced storytelling makes us wonder, however briefly, whether such a world might be preferable to ours.

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