Praise for How to Read an Unwritten Language
“From storywriter Graham, an exceptional first novel about the unveiling of secret lives and hidden stories … a poignant, multifaceted debut novel about the obscured treasures of the ordinary.”
–Kirkus Reviews
“I was utterly entranced by the keen and idiosyncratic vision of How to Read an Unwritten Language. Philip Graham has created a fable for our time, of a family torn apart by tragedy, and the son who sets out into the world to redeem his life by a series of trials. A truly original novel, tough-minded and compassionate, and above all beautifully written.”
–Lynne Sharon Schwartz
“Evocative, lyrical prose and a keen eye for unexpected detail hold the reader spellbound through this odd, poignant tale of a sensitive man’s quest to understand himself and his loved ones by cracking the code of their lives’ elusive symbolism … Through Michael’s gentle voice, first-novelist Graham (author of a short-story collection, The Art of the Knock, and two other books) fashions a resonant narrative that explores the value of storytelling to make life bearable and the unending struggle to make sense of those closest to us.”
–Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)
“Philip Graham has long been, with his remarkable short stories, one of the most original and ravishing voices in American fiction. Now he has brought his prodigious skills to a novel and—how rare this is—he has produced work of equal brilliance in both forms. How to Read an Unwritten Language is a book full of passion and poetry and profound insight into one of the great and eternal themes of art, the formation of self. I come away from the novel seeing the things of the everyday world quite differently. The shape of a tree, the scuff on a stranger’s shoe, the put-on face of a troubled child: these are the words of the language that Graham teaches us how to read, and what is written here always matters in the way our very identities are shaped and revealed.”
–Robert Olen Butler
“An exceptional first novel, by a midwestern writer with a highly original, mystical vision. As he did in his short story collection, The Art of the Knock, Graham layers psychological realism with surreal comedy in this story of a son burdened with the crippling eccentricities of his parents.”
–John Blades, Lit, New City’s Literary Supplement
“A fascinating collage … rife with raw emotion from unexpected sources.”
-Liam Callanan, The New York Times Book Review
“Powerful … moving … Graham’s heartwarming subject is empathy between human beings and the cost to our lives of deaf ears and barricaded hearts.”
-Carey Harrison, San Francisco Chronicle.
“No matter that many disasters appear ‘in the form of car collisions or flooded basements, they more often appear from some secret place inside us.’ So says this book’s narrator, Michael Kirby, who has learned to intuit the dark secrets of the heart, to hear what people don’t say … to all these relationships, Michael brings a sixth sense that is both hard-won and unnerving to those involved. And just as the character of Michael operates always on two levels–the seen and the unseen–the author himself writes on more than one plane. Beneath his deft execution of the narrative runs a dreamy, subconscious state that effectively places the reader deep into the thought (and unthought) processes of Michael’s mind, plummeting the subterranean currents that run through us all.”
–Colleen Kelly Warren, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“Touching, comic, and heartbreaking … The special strengths of this novel are its clarity of prose and its alert sensitivity.”
–William O’Rourke, Chicago Tribune
“Highly recommended … With great skill and control, Graham describes the sorrows of a family in disintegration.”
–Choice
“Graham began by writing prose poems, graduated to short stories and has now produced a novel. It’s a special sort of a novel-mystical, philosophical and respectful of the language of inanimate objects.”
–Michael Silverblatt, KCRW’s Bookworm