{"product_id":"9781552455173-riverwork","title":"Riverwork","description":"\u003cmeta content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\" http-equiv=\"Content-Type\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA lost river, a lost aunt, a found literary life: from the cult-favourite poet and author of The Baudelaire Fractal comes a glittering and erudite new novel of Paris.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA lost river, a lost aunt, a found literary life: from the cult-favourite poet and author of\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Baudelaire Fractal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e comes a glittering and erudite new novel of Paris.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome ruins are invisible.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnder the pavements of Paris there lies buried an ancient river, the Bievre. For years, Lucy Frost has walked along these streets, unaware of the water and history under her feet, on her way to clean the apartments of Paris's academic class. As she begins to study and transcribe the inherited notebooks and papers of her great-aunt, a teacher and researcher who disappeared years earlier, she commits to continuing her aunt's youthful research on the Bievre, mining the river's documentary traces in the works of Rousseau, Rabelais, Hugo, Chateaubriand, and the like. She uncovers a history of industry: paper mills, dyeing workshops, tanneries, and textile manufacturers  and laundries.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe finds resonances of her own labour in the history of the river's laundresses. On stolen time at work, and in her insomniac hours of nightwriting, she fills notebooks with these woven stories and descriptions of obsolete sites, textiles, cosmologies, and voices, constructing her own forms of relation with the lost.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eRiverwork\u003c\/i\u003e unearths not just an urban river but also a philosophy of research and the archive, a politics of hydrology, an ontology of ageing and belatedness, and a consideration of the unrepresented labour of women, past and present. Along the way it brings to life, in pyrotechnic prose, a long-gone Paris and both its domestic workers and its writers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'[A] collection of labyrinthine acrobatic lexical maneuvers delivered with the unadulterated confidence of the unhinged.This is an extremely specific strain of fun, but we are definitely having it.'  Kerry Howley, \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Robertson is a ventriloquist of belatedness penetrating literary forebears and empathizing with underpaid laundresses in riverine sentences and reverie.'  Michael Greenstein, \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe British Columbia Review \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'There are sentences in Riverwork that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. They are now sewn onto the lining of my feminism, my metaphysics, and my most inner vocabulary.'  Audrey Wollen, \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eToronto Review \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rarewaves","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57881795395958,"sku":"9781552455173","price":15.11,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0092\/7504\/8033\/files\/stand_41265945.jpg?v=1778908022","url":"https:\/\/www.rarewaves.com\/products\/9781552455173-riverwork","provider":"Rarewaves.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}