The Exquisite

Written by Laird Hunt

Narrated by Patrick Zeller

Henry, a New Yorker left destitute by circumstance and obsession, is plucked from vagrancy by a shadowy outfit whose primary business is arranging for staged murders of anxiety-ridden clients unhinged by the “events downtown” and seeking to experience — and live through — their own carefully executed assassinations. When Henry joins this nefarious crew, which includes a beautiful blonde tattooist named Tulip, contortionist twins, and a woman referred to only as “the knockout,” he becomes inextricably linked to its ringleader, the mysterious herring connoisseur Mr. Kindt, whose identity can be traced through twists and turns all the way back to the corpse depicted in Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson. Substantive, stylish, and darkly comic, The Exquisite is a skillful dissection of reality, human connection, and the very nature of existence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Everand Productions
• Release date: Jan 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781094412795

Laird Hunt

Laird Hunt's most recent novel, Zorrie, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Hunt has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and won the Anisfield­-Wolf Award for Fiction, the Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine, and Italy's Bridge Award. He teaches in the Department of Literary Arts at Brown University and lives in Providence.

Reviews for The Exquisite

[Tamara Walters · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm on chapter 5 and I still have no clue what's going on!

[Leah Barton Tew · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I tried listening to this book four times before I was able to suffer through it long enough to finish it. I should’ve stopped after the first attempt. I live quirky contemporary literature and off beat characters and storylines, but this book just wore me out. It was too much and just ended up being tedious and dull.

[Jeffrey Sanfilippo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting premise. A bit all over the place and not the most engaging.

[Alex Rogers · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved it! Original and really well written. ?

[Hardy Sarah · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Aris Kindt- Aris the Kid from “The Anatomy Lesson” by Nina Siegal??
That’s an interesting coincidence.

[ternary-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I kept thinking about this book while reading Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation - which, they don't have a ton in common beyond their extremely unreliable narrators, but there's just a certain -mood- to both of them. Slow. Inevitable. Confusing, and plodding forwards in spite of the obvious confusion. Life is confusing. But I realized (as I was reading Annihilation) that I couldn't remember the plot of The Exquisite -at all-; just a strong sense of the mood and the fact that I quite liked it ten or so years ago when I first read it. Time for a re-read!So (and this is kind of embarrassing) I think the first time through I must not have picked up on much (any??) of the allusion to 9/11. It's everywhere. It's pretty blatant. It's the motivating factor for a lot of the weird. How did I not see it? Or maybe I did, and it just didn't stick in my brain. I still love the confusion, and sharing that confusion with the narrator. It's horribly ambiguous

[palaverofbirds · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reminded me a bit of David Lynch except for the fact that it wasn't bad and was meant to be understood.