Praise

“Heartfelt . . . interweaves meditations on personal loss with deep dives into internet culture and the AIDS epidemic, providing an innovative reflection on the elusive nature of grief.”—Booklist

“A debut memoir like nothing you’ve ever read before . . . Part a reflection on HIV (the disease that killed McCalden’s parents when she was in grade school) and part commentary on the rise of the internet, this has nothing less on its mind than the task of learning how to live. ‘To survive loss you, like the virus, must “go on,”’ McCalden writes. Personally, we’d follow her anyway.”—Oprah Daily

“Fans of experimental form will find much to admire here.”—Kirkus Reviews

“[A] singular debut . . . movingly illustrates the fragmentary experience of grief.”—Publishers Weekly

“A dazzling, kaleidoscopic work of art . . . a book that is very much a survival guide for this era . . . takes your breath away.”—Brit Marling, award-winning actress, co-creator of Netflix’s The OA and FX’s A Murder at the End of the World

“Strands of obsession, contagion, and radical inquiry braid together into lyrical meaning without ever settling into moralistic conclusions or assessments. This book is explosive and profound, unusual and timeless.”—Cyrus Dunham, author of A Year Without a Name

“A masterful debut—a work of confident craft, razor wire wit, and unflinching courage.”—Jordan Kisner

“Bodies and technologies, selves and societies, histories and futures, memories and speculations—McCalden reaches far and wide, and brings it all home.”—Elvia Wilk, author of Death by Landscape

“What does it mean to lose two parents to AIDS, to inherit a load of heartbreak? Beautifully researched and achingly tender, The Observable Universe filled me with awe.”—Kyo Maclear, author of Unearthing

“An astonishing parsing of the fragments that make up that seamless whole we call a self . . . McCalden has given us a sparkling, spacious debut.”—Sarah Krasnostein, author of The Trauma Cleaner and The Believer

“An extraordinarily intimate record of grief in connected times, The Observable Universe is poetic and precise, tracing the spiraling connections but also the empty spaces, the mysteries, and the emotional complexities that the past leaves behind.”—Roisin Kiberd, author of The Disconnect: A Personal Journey Through the Internet

“It isn’t pain itself that inspires great art; it’s the frenzied avoidance of pain that pushes an artist to do something, anything, other than feel pain. This book is what arises from that practice: the artifact of one writer’s solitary, complicated grief.”—Sarah Manguso, author of 300 Arguments and Very Cold People

“Part meditation on loss, AIDS, and viral transmission, part howl of grief and fury, The Observable Universe spells out the transformative power of the internet better than anything else I’ve read.”—Gavin Francis, author of Adventures in Human Being