| Vendor | |
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Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik |
| Original language | |
| English | |
THE DOUBLE LIFE OF BENSON YU
With destabilizing narrative twists reminiscent of Susan Choi's Trust Exercise and Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown, The Double Life of Benson Yu is an original look at how narrative is used to survive abuseand how abuse warps narrative.
A twelve-year-old named Benny lives with his ailing and very traditional grandmother in a Chinatown housing project in the 1980s. Meanwhile, a burly white man named Constantine, who believes he is a medieval samurai reincarnated in the wrong body, moves into the apartment down the hall shortly after his release from a psychiatric hospital.
When Benny's grandmother is hospitalized, Benny survives on his own until a social worker begins to uncover his lies at school. Not knowing who to turn to, he is taken in reluctantly by his strange neighbour. Soon, an unlikely and poignant bond is formed as Benny and Constantine live and train together.
Or does it?
As this story progresses, its narrator, Yu, keeps interjecting from the present day, revealing glimmers of a real-life backstory that's darker than the one he's telling about Benny and Constantine. Eventually, his world intersects with Benny's, and Yu must confront the demon he's spent his adult life trying to evade or risk his own lifeand Benny's.
Kevin Chong is the author of six books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently the novel The Plague. Kevin has been a finalist for the CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize, the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award, the Hubert Evans Prize for Best Original Non-Fiction, and received Honourable mentions from the National Magazine Award, Forward Magazine Book of the Year and the Amazon First Novel Award.
When Benny's grandmother is hospitalized, Benny survives on his own until a social worker begins to uncover his lies at school. Not knowing who to turn to, he is taken in reluctantly by his strange neighbour. Soon, an unlikely and poignant bond is formed as Benny and Constantine live and train together.
Or does it?
As this story progresses, its narrator, Yu, keeps interjecting from the present day, revealing glimmers of a real-life backstory that's darker than the one he's telling about Benny and Constantine. Eventually, his world intersects with Benny's, and Yu must confront the demon he's spent his adult life trying to evade or risk his own lifeand Benny's.
Kevin Chong is the author of six books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently the novel The Plague. Kevin has been a finalist for the CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize, the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award, the Hubert Evans Prize for Best Original Non-Fiction, and received Honourable mentions from the National Magazine Award, Forward Magazine Book of the Year and the Amazon First Novel Award.
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Book
Published by Atria Books |