JESSICA CHIARELLA reads from her debut novel AND AGAIN with KAROLINA WACLAWIAK

And Again (Touchstone)

Jessica Chiarella’s inventive debut novel And Again marks the launch of a bold new literary voice. In the spirit of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker, And Again follows four present-day terminally ill patients who are granted the opportunity to abandon their diseased bodies and adopt healthy replicas through a revolutionary pilot program: “SUBlife.” 

Free of scars, blemishes, and any trace of their diseases, the bodies themselves are perfect, but patients Hannah, David, Connie, and Linda soon discover that the fresh start they’ve been given has its flaws. Without their old bodies, they’ve lost their physical identities—muscle memory, mature taste buds, impulse control. 

Hannah, an artistic prodigy, has to relearn how to hold a brush; David, a Congressman, grapples with his controlling old destructive habits; Connie, an actress whose stunning looks are restored after a protracted illness, tries to navigate an industry obsessed with physical beauty; and Linda, who spent eight years paralyzed after a car accident, now struggles to reconnect with a family that seems to have built a new life without her. The four meet weekly in a Chicago hospital to discuss the challenges of reentering their old lives, careers, and relationships. But when SUBlife comes up for FDA approval, they must all confront the implications their new lives now hold for the future of medicine.

Told in alternating perspectives, And Again deftly combines realist and speculative fiction to explore what it means to start life afresh and to ask the question: how much of our identities rest not just in our minds, but in our hearts and bodies?

Praise for And Again

“In Chiarella’s contemplative first novel, four protagonists give astonishing first-person accounts of their participation in a medical experiment called SUBlife, wherein their disease-ridden bodies have been swapped for freshly minted clones…Chiarella’s entrancing prose and fully fleshed characters should garner widespread, enthusiastic praise.”—Booklist

“Chiarella's engaging writing creates so many haunting moments that readers will find themselves moving quickly through the story, as well as awaiting her next work. This is a novel about what it means to be human, with all the flaws and vulnerabilities that implies, and whether we can ever truly begin again.”—Kirkus 

“And Again was continually haunting me…Jessica Chiarella has so much talent.” —National Book Award Finalist Susan Straight

Jessica Chiarella grew up in the Chicago area and has a master’s in writing and publishing from DePaul University. She is currently a student in the University of California, Riverside’s Creative Writing MFA program.

Karolina Waclawiak received her BFA in Screenwriting from USC School of Cinematic Arts and her MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. Her first novel, How To Get Into The Twin Palms, was published by Two Dollar Radio in 2012. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Rumpus, and The Believer (where she is also an editor). She lives in Los Angeles.