May 27

May 27 We Were the Universe

About the book

Author: Kimberly King Parsons
Publisher: Knopf

More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.

Buy and support indie bookstores (+ I earn a small commission):
Bookshop.org (print) | Libro.fm (audio)

My Review

I loved Kimberly King Parsons’ National Book Award–nominated short story collection, Black Light, so I jumped at the chance to read her debut novel. I’m happy to report that she has fully done it again. We Were the Universe is just as aching and poignant, with a messy main character so fully formed she could walk off the page.

Kit is a stay-at-home mom to a handful of a toddler and still deeply grieving the loss of her sister, who died shortly before the toddler was born. She flip-flops between gratitude for her current life and nostalgia for her old life of sex, drugs, and (yes) music.

If that characterization sounds a little overdone in today’s lit fic landscape, that’s because it is — but somehow, KKP breathes enough new life into the spiraling horny mom trope that we forget how often we’ve read it lately and allow Kit to take us along for the ride.. What we get in return is a deeply felt, yet often funny, exploration of parenthood, grief, loneliness, mental illness, and more. Plus, KKP is absolutely masterful at a sentence level. I’m glad I made time for it amidst this busy, busy publishing season!

(PS: I did most of this book via audiobook, and I’m happy to report it works very well in that format!)