Fiction Advocate (US edition, 2020)
Boiler House Press (UK edition, 2022)
In a series of warm and often funny letters, Kim Adrian delivers a compelling feminist critique of the 6-volume autobiographical novel My Struggle, by Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard. The letters begin as a witty and entertaining response to a seminal work and transform over time into a fierce and powerful interrogation of the darker social and cultural forces informing Knausgaard’s project. Through its careful examination of the curious operations of intimacy demanded by all great literature, Dear Knausgaard ultimately provides a heartfelt celebration of the act of reading itself.
Boiler House Press (UK edition, 2022)
An SPD (Small Press Distribution) bestseller.
"Kim Adrian's loving struggle with Knausgaard is the kind of criticism I most enjoy — personal, wonderfully engaged, intense but somehow simultaneously light-footed, and extremely intelligent. The brilliance of her feminist critique is that it acutely exposes vulnerabilities in Knausgaard's male universalism while affectionately acknowledging the scope and appeal of his inevitably gendered voice. A delight from start to finish."
—James Wood, literary critic for The New Yorker
“On display is a rigorous mind, a fiery intellect, a curious and engaged reader.”
—The Boston Globe
“Adrian ruthlessly interrogates the work and the literary world at large, especially the misogyny that she finds in both places.”
—Publisher's Weekly
“If you’re seeking a heady, thoughtful response to a heady, thoughtful multi-volume work — well, we have a recommendation for you.”
—Vol. 1 Brooklyn
"I can’t pin it down, this spirit I can’t find any prior evidence of. If she’s borrowing a form, Adrian returns it, so far as I can tell, utterly unrecognizable, either dissolved or reinvented . . . In a series of unsent letters that the writer knew from the start she’d never send, more of a procedural than anything else, Adrian somehow manages to make this plodding come alive, to hatch the experience egg of her dream bird. I don’t know how she does it."
—Essay Daily
Listen to an interview Kim did with New Books Network about writing Dear Knausgaard:
Amazon Boiler House Press
University of Nebraska Press (2018)
Clear-sighted, darkly comic, and tender, The Twenty-Seventh Letter of the Alphabet is about a daughter’s struggle to face the Medusa of generational trauma without turning to stone. Growing up in the New Jersey suburbs of the 1970s and 1980s in a family warped by mental illness, addiction, and violence, Kim Adrian spent her childhood ducking for cover from an alcoholic father prone to terrifying acts of rage and trudging through a fog of confusion with her mother, a suicidal incest survivor hooked on prescription drugs. Family memories were buried—even as they were formed—and truth was obscured by lies and fantasies.
In The Twenty-Seventh Letter of the Alphabet Adrian tries to make peace with this troubled past by cataloguing memories, anecdotes, and bits of family lore in the form of a glossary. But within this strategic reckoning of the past, the unruly present carves an unpredictable path as Adrian’s aging mother plunges into ever-deeper realms of drug-fueled paranoia.
Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist
Poets & Writers New & Noteworthy Read
Poets & Writers New & Noteworthy Read
“This ambitious memoir glints with poetry and wisdom. . . . Aching, endless, unresolved, and extremely compelling. . . . [Adrian's] glossary, in making a place for everything, has provided a way through this harrowing tale of the toll of generational trauma . . . with generosity, honesty, and insight.”
—The Los Angeles Review of Books
“Details, with precision, sensitivity, and lyricism, the specialized language of a childhood and adulthood with an alcoholic father and a mother with a catalog of emotional problems. The [glossary] form imposes a semblance of order, is an attempt at understanding, and blazes with harrowing moments. . . . An intimate and searching accumulation of the moments, tender and brutal, that heap together and create a life.”
—The Boston Globe
“Deceptively simple fragments add up to more than the sum of their parts. . . . Astonishing and inventive. [Adrian's] glossary is strangely gripping, with a momentum pulling the reader in and through. The result is whimsical, even darkly funny at times, brimming with compassion, terribly sad and deeply loving. Memoir readers should not miss this singular offering.”
—Shelf Awareness
“Adrian’s unique approach to narrating a story that resists order is to transform it into glossary entries. . . . Some of the entries are long and provide pages of narrative, others are brief like a punch.”
—Signature Reads
“Adrian uses a highly unconventional form to mirror her confusion over how to connect her wide-ranging, frequently painful memories of what she and her sister endured . . . creating deep connections between the reader and her childhood self.”
—Hippocampus
“The Twenty-Seventh Letter of the Alphabet is an unconventional, wildly disturbing, and hugely innovative book. It is an intimate portrait of family dysfunction, addiction, and mental illness that grabs the reader immediately. The story is told in razor-sharp vignettes. . . crisp and wide-eyed.”
—The Florida Review
“A remarkable rendering of a mother-daughter relationship . . . sprinkled with evocative memories, at turns hilarious, repulsive, poetic, and devastating. The form of the glossary works neatly as a conduit for cataloguing the way memory works in our consciousness, popping up unexpectedly and without a need for chronology. . . The text is challenging because of the subject matter [but] Adrian weaves pathos and humor throughout. ”
—Propeller Books
“Adrian’s writing remains hypnotic on every subject, a consuming plunge into each and every moment.”
—Tin House
Listen to an interview Kim did with Bounce Back Stronger about The Twenty-Seventh Letter of the Alphabet:
coming soon
Amazon Nebraska Bookshop
Bloomsbury Academic (2017)
Who ponders the sock? This common object is something people tug on and take off daily with hardly a thought. Unraveling the garment's history, construction, and use, Kim Adrian's Sock reintroduces us to our own bodies- vulnerable, bipedal, and flawed. Sock reminds us that extraordinary secrets live in mundane material realities, and shows how this floppy, often smelly, sometimes holey piece of clothing, whether machine-made or hand-knit, can also serve as an anatomy lesson, a physics primer, a love letter, a weapon, a fetish, and a fashion statement.
“Sock reflects on the brilliance present in the minutiae of our lives. With piercing wit, idiosyncratic humor and sharply insightful moments of personal examination, Adrian uses the most domestic of items as a lens through which to view the inelegance and wondrousness of humanity.”
—Shelf Awareness
“If a book called Sock makes you think, 'Twenty-five-thousand words on socks? Uh, no,' then you’re unclear on the concept. You’re also missing out on a thoroughly delightful discussion.”
—Washington Independent Review of Books
“An utterly engaging investigation — not so much of [the sock], per se, as of human evolution, anatomy, physics, sexuality, fashion, painting, consumerism, manufacturing, and motherhood. . . . Illuminating, erudite, deeply intelligent.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“What a treat! . . . This slim little marvel of trivia and attention to the overlooked . . . was a near-religious experience for me.”
—Pages of Julia
Listen to a radio show interview about socks that Kim did with Colin McEnroe on Connecticut Public Radio.
Barnes & Noble Amazon Bloomsbury
University of Nebraska Press (2018)
The Shell Game: Writers Play with Borrowed Forms is an anthology of intriguing essays that take their forms from ordinary, everyday sources: a recipe, a crossword puzzle, a Craig’s List ad... Edited and with an introduction by Kim Adrian, this selection of beautifully written, thought-provoking work has already become a classic in the increasingly popular genre affectionally known as "hermit crab essays."
The Shell Game lives proudly in The Millions' "Hall of Fame"
"This book is the science fiction of creative nonfiction, or better yet, the Ulysses of the modern essay . . . it makes readers feel as if they are learning what an essay is (or could be) all over again."
—New Pages
"The essays in this collection bring with them a sense of hope about literature and its capacity for evolution and change."
—The Millions
"If good creative writing sparks the instinct to write, The Shell Game provides ample embers to inspire a wide range of writers. . . Anyone from the expert essayist, lay reader, or a teacher looking for an evocative anthology will find something of value in these pages."
—Columbia Journal
"The Shell Game may serve to expand what readers think of when they think of the essay."
—Punctuate Magazine
“Kim Adrian’s introduction demonstrates the potential and beauty of the hermit crab approach as she lays out the history of the metaphor using kingdom, phyla, species, etc., to identify the literary heritage and taxonomy of the hermit crab essay itself.”
—Literary Journalism Studies
"If you were to recommend this book to others, you’d likely tell them to savor it, make it last: tell them that they should not 'binge-read' it, but rather treat themselves with a new form each day until they’ve read the last one."
—Hippocampus Magazine
"This collection can be returned to again and again, as the reading mind grows . . . The Shell Game makes a unique and significant contribution."
—Split Rock Review
Read to an interview Kim did with Hippocampus Magazine about editing The Shell Game.
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