Ether

"How coolly poised, Evgenia Ciktowitz's prose! And how elegantly and richly detailed her fictional worlds! It's something of a shock then to realize that in this debut collection the young author is depicting individuals devastated by emotion, if not decorticated, numbed . . . sharply observed, resolutely unsentimental, and wholly engaging."—Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books

"Citkowitz flouts expectations . . . She doesn't sound like anyone else you'll have read in a very long while."—The New York Times
"Although Citkowitz trawls familiar territory, what she does with this material is unexpected and often startling . . . The kind of imaginative leap you expect in a poem, it gives an otherwise slight story a small radiance . . . Citkowitz has an impressive literary pedigree: her mother was the novelist Lady Caroline Blackwood, her stepfather the poet Robert Lowell. But her voice, particularly her rhythm—half staccato, half headlong rush—is wholly her own. She doesn't sound like anyone else you'll have read in a very long while."—Ligaya Mishan, The New York Times Book Review

"Comprised of seven stories and a novella . . . [Citkowitz] emerges as a master of both forms."—Hilton Als, The New Yorker

"Evgenia Citkowitz's Ether moves from Hollywood to estates in Long Island and London in pursuit of characters who inhabit glamour's shadow—a novelist married to a starlet, a famous fashion editor's daughter—but are compelled to stray outside socially acceptable margins."—Megan O'Grady, Vogue.com

"A striking debut collection of stories . . . Citkowitz's strength is social criticism, and she captures tensions and pretensions with killer details . . . Richly nuanced."—The Christian Science Monitor


"Try approaching the stories by asking, is this one the ghost story? In the eerie fictions of Ether, a character's disorientation—whether due to supernatural causes, mental illness, or bad choices—serves as a metaphor for the unsettled times in which we all live."—Karen Laws, The Rumpus.net


"These stories are totally unique: they're at once strange and graceful, macabre and funny. Evgenia Citkowitz burrows so deep inside her characters' heads, she evokes feelings and impulses that become impossible to distinguish from our own. She understands that deep down, even in our own homes, we all feel like outsiders."—Noah Baumbach

"These stories are so funny and electric and honest, so beautifully and artfully done, you barely notice, until you feel that slow pain in your throat, that they're absolutely breaking your heart."—Katherine Taylor, author of Rules for Saying Goodbye
"This engaging debut collection looks at diverse characters on the edge, as they struggle with vulnerability and the conflicts in their choices, large and small . . . Citkowitz deftly balances the rawer emotions of life—resentment, desire, humiliation—with a crafted, clever tone."—Leah Strauss, Booklist

"Screenwriter Citkowitz maps the territory where false starts and disappointment sometimes lead to unexpected opportunities in her debut collection of capricious stories and a disturbing novella. The title novella follows William, a frustrated writer who abandons New York for L.A. and falls in love with gorgeous actress Madeline. Their quick marriage inspires him to begin work on an autobiographical novel, but when Madeline develops a mysterious illness and befriends a strange young man (William calls him the Psycho), his attraction to her sours and his writing takes a dark turn. In 'The Bachelor's Table,' Jonathan Edel, a new father, buys an unwieldy antique table on a nostalgic whim, and its presence through an uncomfortable Christmas with his alcoholic mother-in-law forces him to confront old regrets and feelings of inadequacy. An aging actress adopts a troubled boy in 'Sunday's Child,' and the challenges they both encounter—at school, at home—come to an unexpected head when a young homeless woman is found sleeping in the boy's backyard playhouse. For all the uncomfortable situations and prickly emotion, the pieces are remarkably easy to digest."—Publishers Weekly