Jennifer Clement

Clement’s latest is made memorable by the resilient Pearl, whose worldview is shaped both by the harsh, gun-saturated realities of the trailer park and by her mother’s past with its piano lessons and fine china. This unusual and impressive novel is carried by her tough, lyrical voice.

Clement’s affecting and memorable novel is also an incisive social commentary that will give readers much to ponder.

Pearl’s story takes place in a world both strange and familiar, in the fairy tale of her mother’s imagination and in an America pockmarked by gun violence and poverty. Readers will root for Pearl to—somehow—reconcile the two visions, even as fate forces her hand. Clement’s quiet tragedy is moving, unsettling, and filled with characters who will haunt you long after the story ends.

…Clement is a brilliant stylist; her figurative language is far more than fine; her metaphors and similes are superb; and together they create a haunting atmosphere—sometimes fey, occasionally whimsical, no stranger to tragedy but always heartfelt and spot-on, as are her beautifully realized, captivating characters. Though suigeneris, her work may remind some readers of Flannery O’Connor’s. Always evocative, it is an unforgettable knockout not to be missed.

Jennifer Clement is a master at creating worlds that feel like tiny dioramas —modern allegories, reflecting and responding to social issues while still feeling contained and mystical, like something you’d see inside of the world’s most ornate snow globe, or a theme park — that is, until politics invade these worlds, and these worlds become recognizable as ones that exist both on and off the page.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been so mesmerized with a novel’s each next sentence. Jennifer Clement is one of our most inventive novelists. There’s no telling what she’ll see. Whatever it is, it’s something right in front of us, but—here is the magic trick—something we have never before seen. Gun Love is an amazement: fierce, inventive, tender.

[T]hat this novel cast a deep spell on me that has yet to subside. Clement relays Pearl’s trouble-strewn story in the kind of prose that gets called “poetic”: it’s taut, spare, musical, metaphor-laden, haunting, and every so often hits you so hard in the gut that you gasp.

Though this world is harrowing, it’s also fortified with ample wit and tenderness. The sweet sorrow of doomed maternal love is at the novel’s thrumming center, as is the author’s cockeyed affection for the region. “In our part of Florida everything was puzzled,” Pearl tells us. Gun Love potently illuminates this puzzled land, and the complicated fates of those who dwell in the pockets visitors won’t find on a map.

Clement creates a weird poetry of murderous force. Chekhov’s narrative principle—that a gun hung on the wall in the first act must eventually go off—has become a metaphorical rule of storytelling. To reflect American reality, Ms Clement puts a gun on every wall in every room.

Through a memorable coming-of-age story set in America’s margins, Clement makes all of these things true at once: A gun is a valentine, a secret-bearer, a penitent, a world destroyer, an exposed belly, an insurance policy, a sudden act of God.

This book feel like a great lost murder ballad by the likes of Johnny Cash or Nick Cave…There are echoes here of other great chroniclers of violence, such as Cormac McCarthy, and this is one of those rare books that the reader might wish to be a few dozen pages longer, to spend some more time in this fully realised world.

Offer[s] a glimpse of what a poetics of gun violence might look like… In this book, the machinery of violence purchases a sense of belonging—of thrilling, life-or-death simplicity.

Prayers for the Stolen is a magnificent story, filled with a wisdom so dense and ancient as to seem almost unbearable. One wants to turn away, but cannot. It’s a mesmerizing read, illustrative of the idea that even traces of beauty, deeply felt, can help carry a traveler through the harshest landscape, or the harshest life.

The most enchanting journey I’ve taken in a long, long time, and the most important. Prayers For The Stolen is a hand-guided tour through a ruthless true corner of our century, with characters so alive they will burrow into your heart. Stunningly written, magically detailed, you see, smell and taste the action on every page, feel every foible, and miss the candor of these funny, achingly human voices long after you put them down. As the heroine herself might say: not something to read but to lick off a plate.

Highly original…[Clement’s] prose is poetic in the true sense: precise as a scalpel, lyrical without being indulgent.

Clement is more a poet than a documentarian, and the girls and women of the village she chronicles are complex individuals…Clement treats the brutal material honestly…and ultimately allows Ladydi to continue to hope.

Compelling…Just beautiful…Really, really beautiful.

With Prayers for the Stolen, Jennifer Clement has cracked open, rewired, and madly reimagined the coming-of-age narrative through the eyes and mind of an ingenious and wise young woman. This book is a glorious fever dream of honesty and love.”

The theme of Prayers for the Stolen is the wanton violence inflicted on women and the destruction of communities as a result of the drug trade in Mexico, but Clement’s eye for the revealing detail, the simple poetry of her language and the visceral authenticity of her characters turn that deadening reality into a compelling, tragically beautiful novel.

The author builds a powerful narrative whose images re-create an alarming reality that not everyone has dared to address but that everyone has definitely heard. Let’s pray for spoons.

[A] beautiful, heart-rending novel…Fiercely observed comparisons of human and inanimate life form a continuing motif throughout the story…[Clement] achieves the formidable feat of smooth, clear English that pulses with an energy and sensibility that is convincingly Latin American… So compelling…Prayers for the Stolen is a powerful read.

A brilliant account of the relationship between Basquiat and his muse and lover … a compelling book that leaves a giant sized lump in the throat … Clement hypnotises us with a vivid portrait of Basquiat, powerfully evoking his inventiveness as an artist.

An engrossing narrative… Clement offers far more clues to the cryptic symbols which litter his [Basquiat’s] paintings than any art critic could.

A beautifully evocative, poetic memoir … Basquiat was aware of the criteria with which posterity would judge him. Widow Basquiat should be part of those criteria.

Provocative…With short, episodic chapters, Clement (Prayers for the Stolen, 2014, etc.) delivers real insight into the life of the brilliant artist as well as the glittering—but ultimately chaotic—world that consumed him…Disturbing and poetic.

Magical…. Widow Basquiat conjures real characters, a real time and real place. It’s not theory – it’s representation. … The life of Basquiat … is a joyous lightning bolt when it is described in true detail, as it is in Clement’s extraordinary as-told-to poem.

Stunningly lyrical . . . Original, insightful, and engrossing. . . . While filled with pop culture anecdotes art fans might seek—Andy Warhol and Rene Ricard both make appearances, for instance—Clement’s account is an honest love story above all else