Question: “If you had to think of a motion you’ve made more than any other in your whole life, what would it be?”
Response: “I don’t want to be a motion.”
In her debut collection of fifteen short stories, Amina Cain makes ordinary worlds strange and spare and beautiful. A woman carves invisible images onto ice, a pair of black wings appears in front of a house, and a restless teacher sits in a gallery of miniature rooms.
“I Go To Some Hollow floats and tilts, as balanced as a mobile; rather than narrative arcs we get laps, tides, and circuit, currents of clear observation and the occasional stunning insight.” — Miranda Mellis, Rain Taxi Review of Books
“In this debut collection, the dominant mood is [a] sense of wonder, shot through with nervousness. Amina Cain’s travelers view their surroundings with a curious emptiness, other times ecstasy, while adrift either abroad or in a distinctly American terrain: bodies of water, fields, or forests, the banality of a heated pool or the aisles of Home Depot.” — Kate Zambreno, The Believer
“There’s something calmly erotic about Cain’s writing, a treatment of sex as both a source of energy and a supremely unfascinating part of life.” — Jonathan Messinger, Time Out Chicago
“Don’t be surprised if you’re carrying this book around with you for a while. It has a way of wanting to accompany your own daily rituals. It has a way of expecting something from you.” — Jacquelyn Davis, Bookslut
“In these stories time is ambiguous, adding to the sensation of one voice throughout. Yet Cain’s work is not self-indulgent. From it we gain insight into the experience of being a young woman where place matters less than feeling and connecting to others is all about disconnecting from others.” — Renée E. D’Aoust, The Brooklyn Rail
“Cain’s debut demonstrates that when the clichéd expectations of traditional narrative are gently omitted, what’s left is a calming stillness, and startling language—a welcome relief from the ironic realism that characterizes so much young contemporary fiction. We need more writing like this.” — A D Jameson, The Review of Contemporary Fiction
“Ultimately these stories highlight the distance that occurs in any relationship, and how, within quiet moments, people can transcend this coldness, finding the sublime within an awkward state.” — Alice Osborn, The Pedestal Magazine
“Duras is in here, Sarraute is in here. But they both freight their worlds with symbols and angles, which is not the case in I Go To Some Hollow. Cain’s fictions mix in the seemingly unremarkable, and yet they are clearly remarkable.” — James Wagner, Esther Press
With an Introduction by Bhanu Kapil
Available now from Les Figues Press and Small Press Distribution.