Stun - by Becky Wills Paperback

Book Synopsis

In the fictional Chicago suburb of New Lawn, a young woman grows up with a workaholic father and a dysfunctional mother who has a predilection for Stun--a prescription drug prone to abuse. Between Dad's business trips and Mom's affairs and overdoses, she grows self-reliant and introverted, possessed of an interior life possibly more interesting (and seemingly more safe) than the real one. Navigating the challenges of work, school, sexuality--and above all, her own feelings--she searches for her own place in the world. Until at last she finds that she, too, has a taste for Stun.

Stun is a masterpiece that lightly dances along the tightrope between prose and poetry, while also looking at the addictions society condemns, and the ones it condones. With echoes of Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red, and a novel-in-fragments approach reminiscent of Ocean Vuong, it's a sparkling debut from a fantastic new talent--Becky Wills.

Review Quotes

"In this propulsive, beautifully written novel in fragments, Becky Wills conjures a mesmerizing world of addiction, longing, and spiritual despair that is nevertheless steeped in an uncanny radiance that infuses even its darkest moments. A compelling read."

--Laurie Sheck, author of Cyborg Fever and A Monster's Notes

"Built around addiction's peripheries and ripples, Stun is an artful work of searching. Brevity belies momentous impact and a heightened, kaleidoscopic narrative span; I have not stopped thinking about it since its concluding scenes."

--Douglas A. Martin, author of Outline of My Lover and Wolf

"Becky Wills' new book Stun narrates the story of Amber, a girl who becomes Ember when she is burned by a drug called Stun. Wills' story is written in an extremely concise, pared-down form that condenses the effects of addiction on family, friends, relationships, jobs and education. Yet the sparseness of Wills' language is never austere or alienating--language here avoids the overblown clichés of the addiction memoir by telescoping us in on a huge stash of human emotion. Echoing the opioid epidemic that began in the late 1990s, Stun takes us through a world that is colder than 'the Arctic, Yukon and Mars.'"

--Peter Jaeger, author of 10,000 Hand-Drawn Questions and Selected Memoirs

About the Author

Becky Wills received a BA from DePaul University, an MFA from The New School, and a PhD from the University of Surrey, where she teaches creative writing. She is a supporter of The Forgiveness Project and founder of Own Your Life Writing, a UK-based not-for-profit organization focused on the transformative power of life writing and storytelling in community. Originally from Chicagoland, she lives in the south of England.