Sleight

A daring novel about families, artistic responsibility, and tragedy.

Sisters Lark and Clef have spent their lives honing their bodies for sleight, an interdisciplinary art form that combines elements of dance, architecture, acrobatics, and spoken word. After being estranged for several years, the sisters are reunited by a deceptive and ambitious sleight troupe director named West who needs the sisters’ opposing approaches to the form—Lark is tormented and fragile, frightened by the art she is compelled to make; Clef is driven to excel.

But when a disturbing mass murder makes national headlines, West seizes on the event as inspiration for his new performance, one that threatens to destroy the very artists performing it.

In language that is at once unsettling and hypnotic, Sleight explores ideas of performance, gender, and family to ask the question: what is the role of art in the face of unthinkable tragedy?

Publication date: September 20, 2011

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 6 x 9

Page count: 330 pages

ISBN: 9781566892759

Kirsten Kaschock has earned degrees from Yale University, the University of Iowa, Syracuse University, and the University of Georgia. The author of two collections of poetry, Unfathoms and A Beautiful Name for a Girl, she resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she is currently a doctoral fellow in dance at Temple University.

“Sleight is a disgorged dream, painstakingly crystallized; when it ends, you’ll want tickets to the show.”

—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Kaschock is a sensitive writer, with an uncanny empathy for her characters—particularly when dealing with the limits of the body.”

—Barnes & Noble Review

“Always disorienting yet fascinating to watch unfold, Sleight provides a deep examination of art and those who engage with its ever-shifting presence.”

—NewPages

“Absorbing. . . . The book is not be taken lightly, but is worthy of being taken up.”

—The Cedar Rapids Gazette

“There isn’t anyone like any single one of us, but the way there is no one like Kirsten Kaschock is a different thing.” 

—Cheryl Strayed,The Rumpus

“It’s increasingly rare for any book to really surprise you. Sleight does more: it astonishes. A rigorous, unsentimental, strange and beautiful work.”

—China Miéville

“Sleight is either disturbingly enjoyable or enjoyably disturbing—I can't decide which. What’s certain is that Kirsten Kaschock is a wildly talented writer.”

—Adam Levin

“With grace and whip-smart wit, Kirsten Kaschock is a gift from the gods of young talent.”

—Mary Karr

“Kaschock accurately replicates our societal anxieties, our inexpressible longings, our blind spots, our terrors, both holy and profane, and even, thank God, our joys.”

—Reginald McKnight