Praise for The Last Language
duBois expertly unspools Angela's journey to the dock, as the unreliable narrator's mental state comes increasingly into question [. . .] A sharp, beguiling tale of madness, this is metafiction done right.-Kirkus Reviews, starred review
A thematic companion to Zoe Heller's Notes on a Scandal and Francine Prose's Blue Angel, author duBois (The Spectators, 2019) tackles questions of communication, consent, and humanity head-on. [ . . .] Tautly paced, tackling both grandiose theories of linguistics and the everyday realities of caretaking, The Last Language is hard to put down.-Booklist, starred review
duBois walks the high wire with Angela's audacious and unreliable narration, leaving room for readers to wonder how much of Angela's telling is true and to what degree she's manipulated Sam. This clever novel lingers long after the final page.-Publishers Weekly
[Jennifer duBois] deftly applies her own fictional spin to the wheel of culture. [. . .] The Last Language, follows a linguistics expert as she forms a relationship with a nonspeaking patient using technology. A master of words writing about language and what it means for relationships and humanity? Count me in.-Kathy Blackwell, Texas Monthly
The Last Language is an utterly compelling puzzle of linguistics, perspective, and some version of love. [. . .] a smart intellectual riddle and a mystery with the highest of stakes. Readers will find it unforgettable.-Julia Kastner, Shelf Awareness
An absolute master class from Jennifer duBois. I could not put this novel down-I read it all in one day-and was transfixed by her narrator's voice. This is a difficult read but a fascinating and complex one, raising issues of ethics and consent while the narrowness of Angela's perspective cleverly parallels what we learn of her communication with Sam. A brilliant book that I will be recommending to all readers who love challenging and complex, voice-driven literary fiction.-Kimberly Knight, Knight Books, Morristown, AL
I loved every moment of reading this book-the breathtaking, carefully-crafted tension made it so I never wanted to put it down. The narrator, a former PhD candidate, attempts to find meaning in linguistic philosophy while penning her story from behind bars. She recounts the events that led to her incarceration-becoming employed to facilitate written communication for nonverbal people with motor impairments (using early 2000s technology) and falling in love with her client. This book provocatively explores disabled personhood and sexuality alongside language and thought. It is intriguing and heart-wrenching, and I'll be thinking about it for a long time.-Mary Wahlmeier Bracciano, Raven Book Store, Lawrence, KS
The Last Language's opening sets us up so that we already catch a glimpse of how the story plays out; it's our job to decide whether the narrator is an unrealistic or a believable one. By the end you'll be questioning which version of events rings true, and either possibility thuds with tragedy. Extremely provocative.-Beth Shapiro, Skylark Bookshop, Columbia, MO
When Angela is asked to leave her graduate level linguistics program-and its stipend-after a series of personal tragedies, she finds a new job as a therapist working with a twenty-eight-year-old, profoundly disabled man. As she 'facilitates' his communication with a controversial technology, she falls in love with his intellect and the relationship turns physical. An unsettling, unforgettable story about protection versus autonomy, consent versus abuse, and the nature of communication.-Lori Hench, Baltimore County Public Library, Townson, MD
In her brilliant novel The Last Language, Jennifer duBois deftly examines the very foundation of consciousness while rendering an exquisitely multilayered love story. Equal parts grace and wit, compassion and erudition, this marvel of a book frequently astonishes with its piercing insight. A provocative, devastating masterpiece.-James Han Mattson, author of Reprieve
The Last Language explores how language can both create our reality and utterly fail to capture it. As we fall deeply into the mind of the narrator, with her brilliance, humor, and humanity, duBois masterfully allows us to live in the ambiguities that the characters fiercely reject. A hauntingly beautiful, darkly comic, and unforgettable novel.-Stacey Swann, author of Olympus, Texas
The Last Language left me heartbroken and shaken-adjectives that I reserve for some of my favorite novels. In an emotionally fraught narrative with a solid nod to Humbert Humbert, Angela, our imprisoned narrator, tells the tale of her facilitated communication work with twenty-eight-year-old Sam, with detours and asides that bring forth the book's many complex ethical, philosophical, and linguistic questions. I will be thinking about this book for a long, long time.- Esme Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias
A novel of razor-sharp intelligence and devastating emotional power, The Last Language asks how and whether we can ever truly understand each other. DuBois's fierce and witty writing illuminates every page as her characters explore the possibilities and limits of human communication, empathy, and love.-Anna North, author of Outlawed
The Last Language is, depending on how you read it, a tragic romance, a manic chronicle of self-deception, or a knife fight with Nabokov-in any case it's a masterpiece. No one writes with more care and less pity than Jennifer duBois, whose depth of knowledge and insight into other people's minds is boundless.-Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens
The Last Language is an absorbing, propulsive, compelling read, a breathless confession full of nuanced complexities surrounding morality and communication and power and love. I was drawn immediately into this book and raced through it, completely absorbed in Angela and Sam's story, right to the finish line. I mourned it when it was over. Another stunner from Jennifer duBois.-Lydia Conklin, author of Rainbow Rainbow
Praise for The Spectators
This contemporary tragedy, shot through with comic energy and a quiet, radical hope, has arrived at precisely the right moment. DuBois is a brilliant writer, and I could read her sentences forever.-Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!
Jennifer DuBois is one of a handful of living American novelists who can comprehend both the long arc of history and the minute details that animate it. The Spectators is yet another triumph in an impressive oeuvre: a brave and painfully vivid excavation of the AIDS crisis in New York that, with its fine prose, breathes life back into an era of death.-Karan Mahajan, author of The Association of Small Bombs: A Novel
Jennifer duBois is a wonderful writer-funny and humane, generous and wise-and The Spectators is a searing and moving examination of our culture's obsession with celebrity and the public persona. With penetrating wit and psychological acuity, duBois has created one of the most complicated and memorable characters I've read in years. A brilliant and propulsive book-I loved it.-Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans: Stories
Another breathtaking novel from one of our most brilliant writers. No on writes about the contradictions of American society and the foibles of the human heart with such incisive wit and sensitivity. The Spectators is a tense and propulsive exploration of how easily we can let our best intentions slip away. As secrets are uncovered, Jennifer duBois reminds us that to truly see, without apology or artifice, is itself an act of compassion. This novel pulses with intelligence and heart.-Kirstin Valdez Quade, author of The Five Wounds
The Spectators is Jennifer duBois's ambitious and assured novel that strives to answer the question: What tragedies deserve to be told? Each sentence is more beautiful than the last, every line of dialogue sharper and funnier. I savored it all.-Mandy Berman, author of The Learning Curve: A Novel
Only a writer with the easy, exquisite intellect of Jennifer duBois could render the slow debasement of individuals and the groups they comprise with such authenticity and compassion, and make the experience of reading it all such a pleasure. I was awed and humbled by every page.-Xhenet Aliu, author of Brass: A Novel
A masterpiece, The Spectators is a thrilling high-wire act. Combining a symphonic structure with unflinching psychological insight, this gorgeous novel explores the ways in which we betray and redeem one another-how we tell each other's stories and, in doing so, discover our own. Jennifer duBois is one of this generation's singular talents.-Mary Helen Specht, author of Migratory Animals: A Novel
Every page is so brilliant, and every character so irreverent, that you'll hardly realize what you have in your hands is a passionate love story unfolding against the backdrop of a lost world. As you weave among ghosts, the witticisms turn into laments, then prayers, and through it all the writing is so damn good.-Deb Olin Unferth, author of Happy Green Family
Praise for Cartwheel
Named One of the Best Books of the Year by
Slate, Cosmopolitan, Salon, BookPage, Buzzfeed, and Guernica
Like its namesake, Cartwheel will upend you; rarely does a novel this engaging ring so true. Inscribed with the emotional intimacy of memory, this is one story you will not soon forget.-T. Geronimo Johnson, author of The Vain Conversation: A Novel
Cartwheel is so gripping, so fantastically evocative, that I could not, would not, put it down. Jennifer duBois is a writer of thrilling psychological precision. She dares to pause a moment, digging into the mess of crime and accusation, culture and personality, the known and unknown, and coming up with a sensational novel of profound depth.-Justin Torres, author of We the Animals
Psychologically astute and dangerously funny . . . The writing in Cartwheel is a pleasure: electric, fine-tuned, intelligent, conflicted.-New York Times
[T]he emotional intelligence in Cartwheel is so sharp it's almost ruthless-a tabloid tragedy elevated to high art. A-.-Entertainment Weekly
Provocative, meaningful, and suspenseful. [A] page-turner.-Chicago Tribune
Cartwheel can only be read at a manic, stay-up-all-night kind of pace. . .Utterly engrossing.-Austin Review
With Cartwheel, Ms. duBois makes herself heir to the great novelists of the past.-Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
From the first page, duBois' intelligent, penetrating writing makes this sad story captivating.-Dallas Morning News
Sure-footed and psychologically calibrated. . .Reviewers of duBois' first novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes, called it brainy and beautiful, a verdict that fits this successor.-Newsday
Masterful. . .A compelling, carefully crafted, and, most importantly, satisfying novel.-Bustle.com
Praise for A Partial History of Lost Causes
Named by the National Book Foundation as a 5 Under 35 Author
Finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Prize for Debut Fiction
Winner of the California Book Award Gold Medal for First Fiction
Winner of the Northern California Book Award for Fiction
Hilarious and heartbreaking and a triumph of the imagination. Jennifer duBois is too young to be this talented. I wish I were her.-Gary Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends: A Novel
Astonishingly beautiful and brainy . . . [a] stunning novel.-O: Oprah Magazine
I can't remember reading another novel-at least not recently-that's both incredibly intelligent and also emotionally engaging.-Nancy Pearl, National Public Radio
Precise and unsentimental...Spinning an ambitious plot, unpredictable but never improbable, [duBois] moves with a magician's control between points of view, continents, histories, and sympathies.-New Yorker
A terrific debut.-Publisher's Weekly (starred review)
Gorgeous. DuBois writes with haunting richness and fierce intelligence. A Partial History of Lost Causes is a thrilling debut by a young writer who evidently shares the uncanny brilliance of her protagonists.-Elle
Tender but sharp-edged. . .Irina's voice possesses a grim humor and quiet determination that is nothing short of charismatic.-Daily Beast
An ambitious and remarkably assured work. . .That its characters remain humane, funny, and relatable throughout a thorny tale of Eastern bloc politics is a tribute to the author's exciting, formidable talent.-TimeOut New York
A Partial History of Lost Causes seems to assert that everything we strive for in life is likely to be, ultimately, a lost cause. But then why is the book so beautiful, so hopeful, so full of life? The beauty, hope, and vitality are all conveyed in the telling of this gorgeous story, rather than in the outcome. Such an important book coming from such a young writer should give us all hope in the glorious lost cause of American fiction.-David Mallmann at Next Chapter Bookshop in Mequon, WI
[A] mesmerizing debut. A tour de force.-Bookreporter.com
