Valerie Werder, "Thieves: A Novel" (Fence Books, 2023)

New Books in Literature · Oct 27, 2023 · 1h 8m

Thieves (Fence Books, 2023) is an autofictional account of a gallery girl named Valerie – an art worker in the big city, a product of an American childhood in a small place where she learned to value objects and their promise. The magic of being, thinking, speaking, and writing is all bound up for Valerie, a self-conscious creature, in the ways she can acquire and be acquired. She lives and works in a storm of things, many of which are commodities, including herself. In whip-smart, sharply humorous prose, the consumption and reflectivity of a white American young-womanhood lived in a…