Gone to Pieces

Gone to Pieces is a story about a family's obsession with a tall tale about a forest fire and the horses who fled into a lake of ice to escape the flames, and how it affects their lives. It spans decades and continents, from Curzi's father's birthplace in Italy to her estranged brother's home in Stockholm and the Russian Lake Lagoda with its fabled story of the ice horses.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 96 pages
Publication date: 20 December 2023
Publisher: Anvil Press

Gone to Pieces is a novel that explores the impact of a single story on an entire family's life. The story revolves around a tall tale about a forest fire and the horses who fled into a lake of ice to escape the flames. The family's lives are consumed by this story, and everything they do, watch, and speak about revolves around it. Curzi, the protagonist, grows up feeling resentful and beholden to her father's story, but when she learns that he is on his deathbed, she is determined to wade through the tale just as he would have wanted. However, Gone to Pieces is not just about this one thing; it is about the habits we form, the complexities of family, and the complicated histories that we escape and revisit. The story spans decades and continents, from Curzi's father's birthplace in Italy to the butcher-shop-filled Chicago of her childhood, to her estranged brother's home in Stockholm and the Russian Lake Lagoda with its fabled story of the ice horses from Italian writer Curzio Malaparte's 1944 novel, Kaputt. The novel is poetically told, and it explores the pain of the past and what it takes to move on from it.

ISBN-13: 9781772142174