October 21, 2019
Debut author Kisner explores the religious, emotional, and cultural underpinnings of contemporary U.S. society in a neatly poised, sympathetic, and refreshingly unpreachy collection of 13 essays. With the comforting presence of an open-minded, deeply curious narrator, Kisner attempts to come to grips with some of the stubborn mental habits of modern Americans: an inability to accept death, a penchant for piousness, and a damaging insistence on whiteness as the norm. Her essays—about medical examiners, young evangelicals, and a border-town debutante ball, among other topics—are sharpest when Kisner explores distinctions of inside and outside. Those moments stand out especially when Kisner deconstructs attitudes toward the body: “Americans’ unwillingness to prioritize how we deal with the dead... may constitute a failure of moral imagination, but it absolutely fails to imagine the way the living and the dead remain connected, no matter how the living feel about it,” Kisner writes, reflecting on the role of coroners. The prose throughout is by turns lyric and clear, meditative and reportorial—a combination that suits the equal importance she puts on search and on meaning itself. It’s that value proposition that creates the overarching pull of the book, whose essays are as entertaining as they are eye-opening. Agent: Claudia Ballard, WME.
December 15, 2019
Astute, perceptive forays into America's nooks and crannies. In her debut book's titular essay, about revolutionary deep brain stimulation for patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, Kisner writes that the barrier "between the physical world and the spiritual world wears thin and becomes porous." She continues, "the thin places I've known aren't always places, per se. Sometimes a thin place appears between people. Sometimes it happens only inside you." Combining reportage and the personal essay, the author often finds herself involved in the subjects she discusses. In "Attunement," she recounts when a "handful of kids delivered my soul to Jesus at summer camp." But when she was 12, God just "vanished. I didn't know why." The essay traces her religious pilgrimage and fascination with Kierkegaard's "tract on faith and doubt," Fear and Trembling, and her "late-breaking phantom limb syndrome of the soul." In "Jesus Raves," Kisner chronicles her up-close and personal experiences with a church's hip outreach to young people ("they could be J. Crew models, but they are pastors"). "Stitching" focuses on " 'The Bloggernacle, ' a contingent of Mormon mothers who have taken over a sizable piece of the online aspirational lifestyle industry" with their anti-Trump message. "Habitus," one of the best pieces, roams widely, from a debutante ball in Laredo, Texas, to border immigration to the TV show Say Yes to the Dress to matters concerning the author's sexuality. In "The Big Empty," Kisner explores the "enormous, hypersensory multimedia installations" of Ann Hamilton. As a good reporter, the author never judges the people she writes about, often finding common ground with them. She admires the "strange beauty" of the Shakers' buildings and the "ecstatic, cathartic" quirkiness of their worship--"they simply shook and shook, overcome." Later, Kisner joined in with a "little dance," a "wiggle, an homage but also a mini-catharsis of the fine posture and right angles of the morning." Thoughtful, engaging, and informative essays from a writer to watch.
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March 1, 2020
In her forthright first essay collection, Kisner explores a variety of topics, from adolescence to mental health, relationships, and religion. With Attunement, Kisner looks back on her involvement with conventional Christianity during her formative years as well as her departure from belief soon thereafter. Jesus Raves follows the efforts associated with a new church, led by an attractive, charismatic couple, as the congregation attempts to establish their presence during a hard-partying Montauk summer. Many of Kisner's works reverberate with the unease of the unknown, blending experiences both visceral and existential. The title piece opens with an imagined composite study of a neurosurgical procedure and further evolves into Kisner's personal struggles with OCD during her teenage years. In the standout, Habitus, Kisner travels to Laredo, a border town, for a debutante ball that unravels into a complicated exploration of both present-day cultural complexities and her family's past. Written with resilience and candor, Kisner's essays offer genuine examination of the realities of here and now and life's universal paradoxes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)