THE WEAK SPOT
Published by Soft Skull (US), Prototype (UK), and Forlaget Atlanten (Denmark).
‘Dream-like’ – The New Yorker
‘Sentences brittle as twigs snapping under your feet … delightful’ – The Telegraph
‘Hallucinatory’ – Vanity Fair
‘Hypnotic’ – Buzzfeed
‘Elven successfully channels the magic and mood of Kafka’s fables.’ — Publishers’ Weekly
‘[In] Elven’s remarkable novel … there is always the feeling that everything could suddenly change, the boundaries of the fiction completely redrawn, or the central players of the novel suddenly unrecognisable.’ – The London Magazine
‘In prose reminiscent of Fleur Jaeggy, The Weak Spot is a prismatic fable spiked with dozens of elegant revelations. Lucie Elven is an extremely promising new writer, one in touch with a greater, richer world that exists just below the surface of daily life.’ – Catherine Lacey
‘This eccentric, intensely observed book – full of dry humor and sturdy, elegant sentences – examines the slippery quality of the self in relation to others and the treacherous terrain of a world governed by manipulative men. Slightly gothic, vaguely old-world, and briskly contemporary, The Weak Spot is a singular work from a writer whose fiction I’ve long admired in the pages of NOON.’ – Kathryn Scanlan
‘Recalling the mood of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain and the aesthetic of a Dario Argento film, The Weak Spot is an evocative and intriguing novel. The thrill is in the prose – vivid, expansive, perfectly controlled. I love where Lucie Elven’s sentences take me, and I adore this book.’ – Lauren Aimee Curtis
‘This novel is extraordinary.’ – Amina Cain