paperback and ebook

Dra—, the incompletely named anti-heroine of this brilliant novel, is trying to get a job. She isn’t sure what kind of job, or where, or what its purpose is; she only knows she must find one. She wanders through the labyrinthine corridors of some great unnamed workplace getting unsolicited advice—which sounds more like seduction or therapy than career counseling—from characters with names such as Manager and Administrator and Nurse. The quirkiness and clarity of Stacey Levine’s language, the comedy and darkness of her vision, mark her as a worthy heir of Jane Bowles.

“A quest, a comedy of manners, and a parable, Dra— is, above all else, a philosophical novel concerned with the most basic questions of living.”—Matthew Stadler, The Stranger

“Both haunting and laugh-out-loud funny . . . In the modernist tradition yet in a voice that’s entirely her own, Levine puts the emotional violence of human relations under a high-power microscope.”—Kristy Eldredge, Third Coast

“With the dreamlike pace of Alice in Wonderland, the darkly comic tones of a Kafka novel, and a landscape reminiscent of 1984 . . .”—Publishers Weekly

“Levine has made work . . . into the backdrop for a frighteningpiece of prose in which everything matters and everything is presumed and little is understood. Dra— is intoxicating.”
—Emily Hall, Seattle Weekly