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“Lonely, understated, and heartbreaking, Once You Go Back will haunt you like a familiar face that has emerged and then fallen back into a dream.” —Mary Gaitskill Praise for Douglas A. Martin: “There is a reverence in Douglas Martin’s writing composed of equal parts language and love. Outline of My Lover strips away the dross, leaving you with the pure mood of youth.” —Dale Peck “Douglas Martin has a very beautiful voice. It’s a thing of grace.” —Dennis Cooper “[Outline of My Lover] is full of hard-won, fraught, unsparing emotional truth. It is a love story between a raw and damaged boy-narrator and a famously mysterious rock star. But more than that, it is a piece of stylish and ferociously sharp prose. I love its fierce concentration and levels of obsession.” —Colm Tóibín “How sentences that look so unassuming could still agitate and exhilarate and break my fucking heart, I do not know. What I’ve learned from Douglas A. Martin is that the sentence is an essay.” — John D’Agata
DOUGLAS A. MARTIN burst onto the American literary scene in 2000 with his sexy debut novel, Outline of My Lover, which would go on to be selected by Colm Tóibín as International Book of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement. He is also the author of Branwell, a novel of the Brontë brother; They Change the Subject, a book of stories; In the Time of Assignments, a book of poetry; and Your Body Figured, an experimental narrative. Born in Virginia in 1973, and raised in Georgia, he now lives in New York City.
Douglas A. Martin
Douglas A. Martin’s distinctive American voice finds its stride in his new semi-autobiographical novel. Once You Go Back describes growing up in a strained working-class household transplanted to the South. In his elliptical and evocative style, Martin skillfully expresses the curiosity of children on the verge of becoming sexual, and their confusion in the midst of family violence.
ONCE YOU GO BACK
“In Once You Go Back, Douglas A. Martin lays out the details of childhood, vibrant and fearing, with a sure hand and a big heart, inside a family nuanced by both love and violence.” —Darcey Steinke
“Lonely, understated, and heartbreaking.” —Mary Gaitskill
ONCE YOU GO BACK a novel
Seven Stories Press www.sevenstories.com Cover design by Tae Won Yu Author photo © Bobby Abate
Logo for use at smaller sizes. Type is heavier by .3 of a point.
isbn 9 78-1-5 83 22-878-4 Logo for use at smaller sizes. Type is heavier by .3 of a point.
Douglas A. Martin