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See How Small: A Novel Audiobook
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A riveting novel about the aftermath of a brutal murder of three teenage girls, written in incantatory prose "that's as fine as any being written by an American author today" (Ben Fountain).
One late autumn evening in a Texas town, two strangers walk into an ice cream shop shortly before closing time. They bind up the three teenage girls who are working the counter, set fire to the shop, and disappear. See How Small tells the stories of the survivors -- family, witnesses, and suspects -- who must endure in the wake of atrocity. Justice remains elusive in their world, human connection tenuous.
Hovering above the aftermath of their deaths are the three girls. They watch over the town and make occasional visitations, trying to connect with and prod to life those they left behind. "See how small a thing it is that keeps us apart," they say. A master of compression and lyrical precision, Scott Blackwood has surpassed himself with this haunting, beautiful, and enormously powerful new novel.
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“Horrible deaths of the innocent, and the various means and tactics by which the living manage to go on in the aftermath of unsolved horror, form the heart of Scott Blackwood’s haunted and haunting novel, See How Small. His prose is crisp and his narrative approach is fresh and inventive, calmly pushing forward, with characters rendered so convincingly you think about sending cards of condolence or calling with advice on the investigation.”
— Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter’s Bone and The Maid’s Version
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“A genre-defying novel of powerful emotion, intrigue, and truth…Reminiscent of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones and based on a similar, still-unsolved 1991 case in Austin, Tex., Blackwood explores the effects of senseless crime on an innocent, tightly knit community, using deft prose to mine the essence of human grief and compassion.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) -
“The novel has much to say about the mysteries of the human psyche, the far-reaching effects of violence, and the disparate ways grief works on people.”
— Booklist -
"See How Small is superb. In prose that’s as fine as any being written today, Scott Blackwood plumbs the depths of a story that is alternately haunting, terrifying, and achingly tragic. Blackwood illuminates the human condition even as he breaks our hearts.”
— Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk -
“Scott Blackwood is a wizard, and in See How Small he puts his skills to dazzling use as he anatomizes a town and a crime. Best of all is the deep empathy he brings to his characters, innocent and guilty, wise and confused; all of them are given the grace of his understanding. A vivid and astonishing novel.”
— Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy -
Horrible deaths of the innocent, and the various means and tactics by which the living manage to go on in the aftermath of unsolved horror, form the heart of Scott Blackwood's haunted and haunting novel, See How Small. His prose is crisp and his narrative approach is fresh and inventive, calmly pushing forward, with characters rendered so convincingly you think about sending cards of condolence or calling with advice on the investigation.
— Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter's Bone and The Maid's Version -
See How Small is superb. In prose that's as fine as any being written today, Scott Blackwood plumbs the depths of a story that is alternately haunting, terrifying, and achingly tragic. Blackwood illuminates the human condition even as he breaks our hearts.
— Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk -
Scott Blackwood is a wizard, and in See How Small he puts his skills to dazzling use as he anatomizes a town and a crime. Best of all is the deep empathy he brings to his characters, innocent and guilty, wise and confused; all of them are given the grace of his understanding. A vivid and astonishing novel.
— Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy -
This little gem of a book puts on lush display Scott Blackwood's talent for measuring and connecting the previously un-connectable in lived experience, and making of it an entirely new whole which we immediately accept as true, natural, exhilarating, even inevitable. He is a lovely sentence writer, and this first novel sparkles with invention.
— Richard Ford (on We Agreed to Meet Just Here) -
We Agreed to Meet Just Here manages somehow to be both spare and all-encompassing, a mystery that delves into the very nature of disappearance.
— Dallas Morning News -
Powerful. Ambitious. Blackwood is especially good at making things fit in stories that don't seem to fit at first. Beautiful music, line by line.
— Andre Dubus (on In the Shadow of Our House) -
Blackwood's stories of loss and compensation are filled with surprise punches that leave the reader reeling in delight. This is a fine and exciting debut.
— Rick DeMarinis -
Acute and nimble stories...so honest as they capture the dapple of emotions and perceptions that cross the mind like sunlight and shadow on a river...an impressive, accomplished debut.
— Julie Grey, New York Times Book Review
Awards
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A New York Times Editor’s Choice
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Winner of the 2016 PEN USA Literary Award for Fiction
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About Scott Blackwood
Scott Blackwood grew up in Texas. His Austin-set novel, We Agreed to Meet Just Here, won the Associated Writing Program’s Prize for the Novel, the Texas Institute of Letters Award for best work of fiction, and was a finalist for the PEN USA Award. His short stories have appeared in the Gettysburg Review, American Short Fiction, Boston Review, Southwest Review, and Other Voices. Blackwood is a recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and a Dobie-Paisano Literary Fellowship. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Texas State University and teaches fiction writing at Southern Illinois University.
About Rengin Altay
Rengin Altay is an actress who has had performed in television, films, and many theater roles. Her television and film roles include Stranger Than Fiction, Light It Up, Crush, A Piece of Eden, E.R., Cupid, The Human Factor, and she was the voice of Yeesha in the Myst computer-game series. Her stage credits include The Merchant of Venice and Macbeth at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, The Vagina Monologues at Apollo Theater, and many other roles in regional theater productions.