A Novel by Amanda Marchand

without cease the earth faintly trembles

without cease the earth faintly trembles

Equal parts fiction, poetry, autobiography and myth, these distilled stories follow a girl named June in search of her own beginning. They are coming of age stories, in which sexual and romantic underpinnings force June, both waking and dreaming, to struggle with her identity as a real person as well as a scripted character. While she sometimes appears to be no more than the sound of her own name, observant and deeply aware, she is grounded in the textured inner landscape that is her entire existence. Drawing on the irrational but evocative properties of sound and rhythm, rich in imagery, these writings employ a syntax of sensation — pleasure, desire, anguish — that graphs the nerves beneath the skin. In her small, fabled world, June’s closest friends are a man who wears a monocle and a red chair that struts about and misbehaves in a way June can only dream of.

There are moments in June’s narratives, both for June and the reader, when the whole world drops away, and one realizes suddenly what it means to fall in some obediently human way. It is from these unfixable points that June considers herself, and all that happens — or waits in constant deferral — to happen.

Critical Comment

“Precision language moving — not into the fabled ‘distancing’ of fool-the-mind prose — but closing in more sharply, palpably upon the imaginary life of feelings as they mutate necessarily page by page. Amanda Marchand is so good at this immersion. You never know where she'll go next.”

— Bill Berkson

“A truly original and engaging collection that treads lightly between short story, poetry, and memoir.”

— Melanie Brannagan, Prairie Fire, 2003

"It surprised me with its clarity and lack of pretension...precise and humorous...filled with compelling im,ages that illuminate...coming of age, anxiety, sexuality, violence, the body in innovative ways."

— NOW Magazine, December 2003

“Marchand is great at building a character interesting enough for the reader to spend so much time mulling over her intimate thoughts and interpretations.... ”

— Broken Pencil, #26

Author Amanda Marchand

Author Biography

Born in Montreal in 1968, Amanda Marchand is a writer and photographer presently living in New York. Selected writings have appeared in: You and Your Bright Ideas: New Montreal Writing, Matrix #51, Prose Poems and Sudden Fictions: Moosehead Review #6, Throat, and Index Vol.2 #6. She has published two chapbooks, This Tastiness Cannot be Carried Even by Both Hands (Glass-Eye Press), and June Makes a Friend (Conundrum Press). She holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BA from Queen’s University. She recently completed a two-year residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts while in San Francisco.