Ray of the Star

An atmospherically intense love story and a thrilling, fantastical tale of lost souls in peril.

Set in a dream-like European city reminiscent of Barcelona, along a boulevard teeming with artists who perform as living statues, comes the beautiful and frightening story of a man running from his past, a woman consumed by grief, and the forces that pursue them both. As the protagonists reckon with seers offering answers to insoluble questions, neighbors who take evening strolls with the dearly departed, critics who control more than artistic fate, and shoes determined to lead their wearers astray, they come to understand the price of survival and what it means to travel along the ray of the star.

A love story related in the dark, stylish noir of continental cinema and overlaid with a patina of surrealism, this is a novel where friends are also informers, street theater is the lifeblood of culture, and refuge can be found in the belly of a yellow, papier mâché submarine.

Publication date: September 1, 2009

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 5 x 7.5

Page count: 192 pages

ISBN: 9781566892322

Thanks to a 2013 ADA Access Improvement Grant administered by VSA Minnesota for the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, this title is also formatted for screen readers which make text accessible to the blind and visually impaired. To purchase this title for use with a screen reader please email us at info@coffeehousepress.org.

Called “one of the most talented young writers on the American scene today” by Paul Auster, Laird Hunt is the author of five genre-bending novels: The Impossibly, The Exquisite, Indiana, Indiana, Ray of the Star, and Kind One. His books have been translated and released in France, Italy, and Japan, and The Impossibly is available as an audio book through Iambik Audio. His work has also appeared in several recent anthologies including Noise: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth, in which the Village Voice says “Laird Hunt’s ‘Kissability,’ in its distillation of inchoate teenage longing, is . . . as lovely a passage as anything in pop music.”

Born in Singapore and educated at Indiana University and The Sorbonne in Paris, Hunt has also lived in Tokyo, London, The Hague, New York City, and on an Indiana farm. A former press officer at the United Nations and current faculty member at the University of Denver, he now lives in Boulder, Colorado.

“Fans of writers like Paul Auster will find much here to like. . . . This is a wild walk through Hunt’s haunted fun house.”

—Time Out New York

“Hunt, even when on a mad sprint, has what it takes to create timeless efforts.”

—Time Out Chicago

“Elegant. . . . Scenes of intricate pursuit are orchestrated with the attention and care of a spy thriller.”

—Bookforum

“Shut the windows, turn off electronic media, ignore the kids—Ray of the Star demands, and deserves, that kind of attention.”

—The Los Angeles Review

“Ray of the Star is another strong work from one of our most creative writers.”

—Quarterly Conversation 

“Mesmerizing. . . . There’s something here for almost all devotees of the dark and mysterious in life.”

—The Denver Post

“The world Hunt creates here seems to vibrate with warmth and light.”

—January Magazine

“Ray of the Star is a dark love story and a mystery of disloyal friends, using street theater as a living metaphor of human culture where every expression’s an act.”

—Denver Books Examiner

“Insanely good.”

—Minnesota Reads

“[Ray of the Star] grows steadily more sinister with each passing page. By the end, it is razor-sharp, and fast. It cuts. . . . For as the gears of the story’s clockwork catch, the novel becomes, at once, an oddly charming love story and something else entirely.”

—Darby Dixon, Identity Theory

“Arguably the most moving of Hunt’s novels.”

—Tobias Carroll, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“Like The Impossibly, The Exquisite, and Indiana, Indiana before it, Ray of the Star is pure, wonderful writing.”

—Samuel R. Delany