Indelicacy

‘This sparse, elliptical novel finds new complexities in the familiar conflict between creative independence and the lures of traditional domesticity...Stripped of all inessential details, the narrative has the simplicity of a parable—one whose images lodge themselves uneasily in the mind.’

New Yorker

‘[Amina Cain’s] bone-clean prose creates a sense of immersion in a story that feels both mythic and true…A woman’s search for creativity is not a new subject, yet Cain has made it so.’

Guardian

‘A thing of real delicacy, with a fine, distilled quality to the writing, every word precisely chosen, precisely placed…There’s a slyness to Cain’s writing that cuts through, and makes the tale increasingly engrossing. By the end, you walk in step with her heroine as she finds her own path towards freedom.’

Observer

‘Cain works with insight and finely crafted writing, making Indelicacy perfect for fans of Virginia Woolf and Michael Cunningham.’

Shelf Awareness

'A sort of arthouse Cinderella story…Each detail haunts with the way it solidly exists in the midst of a conjured dream world.’

LA Review of Books

'Indelicacy has a timeless and slippery quality that keeps the reader hovering on a precipice...This book made a quiet impact on me at first, but it is one I keep coming back to as the year draws to an end.’

Readings

‘Indelicacy is a novel like the tolling of a great bell. It will move your heart. Amina Cain's writing is the rarest kind: it creates not only new scenes and characters, but new feelings.’

Sofia Samatar, author of Winged Histories

‘Cain’s prose vibrates with fear and wonder. This is a novel I read three times slowly, basking in each phrase.’

Literary Hub

‘A taut, tender evocation of the power of art in an existence driven by work…A novel of smooth surfaces and engulfing depths.’

Australian

‘I loved Cain’s precise and stylish account of the social structures that tear us apart, and intimacies that—like a shared meal—hold us together.’

Rebecca May Johnson, Guardian

‘Amina Cain redefines strangeness and freedom in this beautiful and unusual novel, which resembles fairy tales and ghost stories but feels intensely contemporary.’

Alejandro Zambra, author of Ways of Going Home

‘A serious, humorous and wildly beautiful novel.’

Better Read Than Dead