Daphne, Will Boast
Daphne, Will Boast
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
Club: $14.99

Daphne
A Novel

Author: Will Boast

Narrator: Tavia Gilbert

Unabridged: 7 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/06/2018

Synopsis

Elegantly written and profoundly moving, this spellbinding debut affirms Boast's reputation as a "new young American voice for the ages" (Tom Franklin). Born with a rare (and real) condition in which she suffers degrees of paralysis when faced with intense emotion, Daphne has few close friends and even fewer lovers. Like her mythic namesake, even one touch can freeze her. But when Daphne meets shy, charming Ollie, her well-honed defenses falter, and she's faced with an impossible choice: cling to her pristine, manicured isolation or risk the recklessness of real intimacy. Set against the vivid backdrop of a San Francisco flush with money and pulsing with protest, Daphne is a gripping and tender modern fable that explores both self-determination and the perpetual fight between love and safety.

About Will Boast

Will Boast was born in England and grew up in Ireland and Wisconsin. He won the Iowa Short Fiction Award for his story collection, Power Ballads, and the Rome Prize for his memoir, Epilogue. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow, his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, Best New American Voices, and elsewhere. He divides his time between Chicago and Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

Goodreads review by lucky little cat on May 26, 2019

Overachiever Daphne Irvine has an inconvenient disability: any strong emotion makes her keel over like a fainting goat.Sometimes you get what you need. (Mild emotion makes her stutter and twitch.) Perhaps inevitably for an overachiever, she exerts enormous self-discipline to try to control or at l......more

Goodreads review by Nancy on December 02, 2017

When thirteen-year-old Daphne was reading The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy she was overcome with the wild passion of teenage imagination; first a buzzing sensation lit her body and then she dropped the book and was unable to move. It happened, too, with sudden noises, fear, or strong emotio......more

Goodreads review by Mel on November 30, 2017

***I received an ARC of this book from a librarian event.*** Definitely intriguing but far less than it could've been. This book fits squarely under the header of "okay" with mainly mediocre moments and the occasional exception one (like Daphne realizing that her calming memory was actually the memor......more

Goodreads review by Emma on January 20, 2018

SPOILERSSSSSSS From the outset, this book was mesmerizing. I was surprised to drop into a world that looked so familiar, but also very different from my own life. My only complaint is that because of the cover design, I kept thinking the title of the book was "Daphne will Boast," not "Daphne" by Wil......more

Goodreads review by Jenny on February 08, 2018

Daphne, in myth, transforms into a laurel tree when pursued by Apollo, while Daphne in Will Boast's arresting new novel similarly freezes when overcome by emotion. Boast's Daphne suffers from cataplexy, a rare condition that causes strong emotions to paralyze her muscles. She's forged a life in bust......more

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