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“A breathtaking work of art … an uncompromising and unsentimental experiment weighing the value of sacrifice…. Daring, challenging, and timely.”

—Gabriel Hart, in Beyond the Last Estate, #7

“The twenty-five stories collected in Someone Should Know This Story … offer a testament to the sustained creative achievement of Merrill Joan Gerber. Not as well-known as her contemporary Cynthia Ozick (among Gerber’s admirers), this deeply moving collection showcases Gerber’s penetrating psychological portraits of Jewish family life in transition…. Gerber’s ultimate subject is women who feel suffocated…. trailed by inescapable pasts, haunted by enigmatic memories that remain unresolved…. Gerber’s stories richly map the Jewish American experience during the mid-twentieth century.”

—Donald Weber, in Jewish Book Council

“Great writers constantly swim against the tide. There’s great risk in leaving the safety of the coastline, the comfort of breaths unencumbered by sea spray, the warmth of the sunlight on skin. In between strokes, they look over their shoulder and see the shoreline get smaller and smaller, but once they reach a certain point they stop, and they float, and they realize they can see everything. From here, the coast no longer looks small. It looks complete…. In The Coast of Everything, stories are told to move people forward, to challenge notions of what stories even are, to fight against the proverbial dying of the light…. In one particular passage, a man presses an ink nib onto a sheet of paper and watches the ink spread into random patterns as it soaks into the fibrous paper. ‘To be ink is to be what is,’ he tells us. ‘To be paper is to be what is not yet, or what is not yet known.’ It is this unknown that compels us to swim against the tide.”

—Jeff Chon, in Orange Country Review of Books

“The Coast of Everything is told by Clara, a girl travelling up a mountain in a litter carried by two young friends to see what a mysterious local entrepreneur has built. The setting is reminiscent of Stitch’s first novel, Lake of Urine, a dark fairytale in which the author honed a strange, bracing wit that is balanced in The Coast of Everything with a more poetic impulse…. With its Russian doll structure, the logic of The Coast of Everything is of narrators narrating narrators narrating; it is the unreliable storyteller turned up to the max. The novel therefore requires patience and attention, some of which is tested … but is mostly rewarded, not least at the sentence level (Stitch is wonderful on colours and shades)…. [The] ambitious, provocative nature of a book happily out of step with the plain-style trend of contemporary fiction is refreshing.”

—W.J. Davies, in 3:AM Magazine

“This sprawling novel is variously dizzying, maddening, and meandering, which adds to the charm of its four interlocking tales…. ‘The Tale of the Isle of Truth’ focuses on a group of colonists who are analyzing forbidden works for a shadowy collective, the Magistracy, whose Kafkaesque edicts will feel all too familiar in a world battling antidemocratic insurgency. So will the yearnings of archivist Arenaceous Nell and his daughter, Lil, for a higher purpose beyond the busy work that still remains for them after the island closes as a surveillance station. Readers will be drawn to how their natural hunger for freedom chafes against the constraints imposed by the relentlessly creepy Stationmaster Jasper Fafl…. Stitch’s playful storytelling tricks won’t move readers who desire brevity as an end in itself. But for those who desire an antidote to our current blink-it-and-miss-it culture, this novel may well occupy a point of pride on their bedside tables. A sprawling but playful and black-humored sophomore effort that upends standard storytelling tropes.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“[O]ne of the considerable merits of The Coast of Everything is that it leaves you pondering not only the book in question but the workings of literature in general. Formally speaking, it relies on a strategy of nested stories like Russian dolls, but having said as much, the novel’s chief interest doesn’t reside in its narrative athleticism. It engages on many other levels.

“For instance, The Coast embodies a riposte against some of the didactic excesses of identity politics. In recent decades, many writers have asserted—rightly so—personal and community prerogatives to tell stories that were previously excluded from the canon. But at the same time, some writers—more debatably—have questioned the access of other authors to their imagined worlds. In her excellent essay, ‘Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction,’ Zadie Smith pinpoints a problem: ‘The old—and never especially helpful—adage write what you know has morphed into something more like a threat: Stay in your lane…. Embarrassed by the novel … many have moved swiftly on to what they perceive to be safer ground….’

“Stitch is not embarrassed by the novel. [The Coast of Everything] is a polyphonic performance, reaching beyond the particular interest of individual characters or groups, to explore the nature of narrative itself….

“Working on such an enormous canvas will inevitably run counter to the expectations of readers who, in our digital era of reduced attention spans, assume that the novel should follow suit…. The Coast of Everything rejects such circumscribed views. Though long and complicated, it remains accessible and reader-friendly, perhaps precisely because it feels unpoliced…. This is a remarkable novel by a writer who does not play safe.”

—Charles Holdefer, in Dactyl Review

“Have you ever wondered what would happen if you ate a first edition copy of A Clockwork Orange whist taking a whole buncha magic mushrooms with Aleister Crowley? Well I have and this book in my opinion is the result of that experiment. There are no other explanations for this explosion of poetry that bypasses all the rules of poem writing, there is no guide for how to read it or even which direction you take on the page…. Rosenbridge in his infinite chaos has decided we can find our own way…. things started to jump out at me, profound and humorous lines I didn’t spot at first…. Some pages have utter chaos on them, almost as if Rosenbridge is mashing the keyboard and then there are some with just a few words and you don’t realise how powerful words can be until these ones hit you….. I enjoyed taking part in the experiment. It deserves a read and a re-read and then a few more.”

—Jason Denness, in Gnome Appreciation Society

“The Coast of Everything is an intriguing unusual work of magical realism that muses on storytelling itself…. The plot’s freewheeling, nested approach, in which each distinctive part is told in a different style, is packed with momentum…. Here, stories for connoisseurs accumulate, with the manner of their telling becoming the book’s main feature.”

—Karen Rigby, in Foreword Reviews

“This is a long and layered book that would doubtless benefit from a reread. Its clever construction helps retain interest whilst avoiding overcomplication. There are slower sections but they too have a part to play in building understanding and, eventually, appreciation of what the author is doing. I harbour no conceits that I fully understood Stitch’s storytelling aims, particularly around the final ending. Nevertheless, I consider what he did worked, providing much to ponder. This is literature to challenge and entertain.”

—Jackie Law, in neverimitate

“Matryoshka dolls and James Joyce were the two thoughts that entered my head as I got deeper and deeper into this very alternative novel…. The Coast of Everything is an extraordinary piece of work wrapped around a series of nesting stories. Incorporating multiple genres, with even a cameo from Charles Dickens in one story, Stitch is a writer not afraid to take risks, jumping from the whimsical to the chaotic. Quirky, surreal, fanciful, with a definite leaning toward the avant-garde, The Coast of Everything is a very unique reading experience, an immense work of creativity and imagination, a novel that demands more from the reader.”

—Swirl and Thread