Anne de Marcken

Co-winner of the 2022 Novel Prize, this incredible life-after-death novel asks us to consider how much of our memory, of our bodies, of the world as we know it -- how much of what we love can we lose before we are lost? And then what happens?

It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over

It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over asks how much of yourself can you lose before you are lost…and then what happens? The heroine of this haunting, spare novel is voraciously alive in the afterlife. Adrift yet keenly aware, our undead narrator notes every bizarre detail of her new reality. She has forgotten even her name, but she remembers with unbearable longing the place where she knew herself and was known — where she loved and was loved. She heads west and into mind-boggling adventures, carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest. The joint winner of The Novel Prize, It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over is a sharp and funny tale for our dispossessed times. ‘Astounding, inventive, and utterly original, Anne de Marcken has written a freakish classic with wisdom to spare about life, death, and the eerily vast space between. I was absolute putty in this book’s hands.’ — Alexandra Kleeman ‘Anne de Marcken must write in a charmed ink that first erases the line between the living and the dead, and then — with prose as elegant as it is spooked — tells the story of what lies underneath. I have never read anything like this brilliant debut.’ — Sabrina Orah Mark

It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over

Co-winner of the 2022 Novel Prize, this incredible life-after-death novel asks us to consider how much of our memory, of our bodies, of the world as we know it — how much of what we love can we lose before we are lost? And then what happens? CO-WINNER OF THE NOVEL PRIZE WINNER OF THE URSULA K. LE GUIN PRIZE WINNER OF A PACIFIC NORTHWEST BOOK AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD This third perspective on myself is disconcerting. The heroine of the spare and haunting It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over is voraciously alive in the afterlife. Adrift yet keenly aware, she notes every bizarre detail of her new reality. And even if she has forgotten her name and much of what connects her to her humanity, she remembers with an implacable and nearly unbearable longing the place where she knew herself and was known—where she loved and was loved. Traveling across the landscapes of time and of space, heading always west, and carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest, our undead narrator encounters and loses parts of her body and her self in one terrifying, hilarious, and heartbreaking situation after another. A bracing writer of great nerve and verve, Anne de Marcken bends reality (and the reader’s mind) with throwaway assurance. It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over plumbs mortality and how it changes everything, except possibly love. Delivering a near-Beckettian whopping to the reader’s imagination, this is one of the sharpest and funniest novels of recent years, a tale for our dispossessed times.

Anne de Marcken

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