“Megan Martin’s muscular, gleaming prose contends with how we as humans cope with the itchy banality of reality. Stuffed with imaginary men, future bathtub deaths, sick black jellies, meteor lettuce, and vaginas full of Jesus light, Nevers emerges from the tension between what is real, what is perceived, what is felt and what is completely imagined. What makes Martin such an amazing writer is that it’s hard to discern the differences—and it doesn’t even matter.”
Melissa Broder, author of Scarecrone
“Megan Martin’s Nevers is my favorite kind of book. Its stories are familiar and distant, one never existing without the other. It’s that feeling you get when you are suddenly inside yourself, looking around, going, Hey, that’s my coffee mug. That’s my pen. I am me. It’s like standing in your childhood home as the walls are replaced with snapshots of the same walls. This is a book, only it has a mouth.”
Lindsay Hunter, author of Don’t Kiss Me
“In Megan Martin’s fantastic Nevers, we encounter the situation of a book that is conscious of itself. This seems right, because the life in its pages is conscious of itself, too—all at once, from a dozen slip-sliding angles, the whole a shimmering phantasm held aloft by an act of voice so clean and real it can squash your heart. Here’s me as I was reading: big stupid openmouthed grin and the thought, You’re reading this awesomeness right now, before others get to.”
Scott Garson, author of Is That You, John Wayne?
“This book could breastfeed a twelve-year-old boy. This book could have an adulterous affair with an undiscovered marsupial species. This book could write online dating profiles for Wyoming’s vast population of robot foxes who have been widowed by hit-and-run crimes. This book aborted the love child of that obnoxiously prolific novelist whose oeuvre eradicated oil spills and the lesbian poetess whose shiny hair and perfectly metered vagina forged a solar eclipse. This book is not about the apocalypse, but it has that I-got-sick-of-my-boyfriend’s-nose-hair-and-Sartre’s-giving-me-cramps-and-the-only-way-I-can-think-to-stall-the-imminent-threat-of-mass-extinction-is-by-adopting-a-feral-cat-and-aren’t-we-useless-and-fucked type of apocalyptic glee about it.”
Tessa Mellas, author of Lungs Full of Noise
About the Author
Megan Martin is the author of Sparrow & Other Eulogies (Gold Wake, 2011). She lives in Cincinnati with her boyfriend and a bunch of cats.
Acknowledgments
Cover art “The Sisters Zénaïde and Charlotte Bonaparte” (1821) by Jacques-Louis David. Courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program. Thank you to the following journals where pieces from this collection have appeared: Ampersand Review, Compost, Fanzine, Heavy Feather Review, Hobart, Kill Author, Wigleaf, Black Warrior Review, The Collagist, Housefire, La Petite Zine, MAKE: A Chicago Literary Magazine, and The Offending Adam. Text © 2014 Megan Martin.