KALI'S DAY excerpt

"Candice hears the sounds of birds. The last traces of light stain the cave’s entrance far from where she sits in full lotus covered only in the ashes of the dead. She drifts in and out, sometimes jolted from a vast emptiness by the grumbling of her stomach. So far she can silence hunger by simply focusing and re-focusing on her breath. But the stomach is a dumb animal and its indifference to “mind over matter” is becoming more apparent in the increasing volume of its complaint. It clenches itself like a fist and it’s all she can do to keep her eye closed, though she hears something scratching along the ground somewhere to her left. She’s conquered fear, never feared the dark until right before she conquered it. In another lifetime, there was a longing that she barely remembers. So it’s not fear or need that distracts her now. It’s the knowledge that, other than herself, something animate, something alive is within reach. Most likely it’s one of those large succulent beetles, thickly armored against what she is now in most danger of becoming—a predator, since she hasn’t really conquered appetite, has only concealed it, and despite having risen above the desire for even the simplest bowl of rice, is about to succumb to defeat for the taste of something that until now has been far from tempting or even remotely relevant to the satisfaction of any desire, let alone hunger—especially hunger.

She doesn’t open her eye. But she imagines it crawling heavily over the various obstacles in its way: pebbles and clumps of damp earth, a random search for whatever nourishment, dirt, dead insects, bits of excrement, it might stumble upon."


KALI'S DAY available from

Amazon U.S.:http://www.amazon.com/Kalis-Day-BonnyFinberg/dp/1570272816

UK, NZ, Australia & Europe:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kalis-Day-Bonny-Finberg/dp/1570272816

SAINT MARK’S BOOKS (signed copies) 31 3rd Avenue NY, NY

UNNAMEABLE BOOKS 600 Vanderbilt Ave. Brooklyn, NY

BOOK CULTURE (signed copies) 536 W 112th St, NY

BLUESTOCKINGS 172 Allen St. NY, NY

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Come celebrate the publication of Bonny Finberg's new novel, 

KALI'S DAY 
(Autonomedia/Unbearable Books)

Friday, January 17, 2014 @ 7PM

Unnameable Books


From Manhattan By Train: (About 1/2 hour from Union Sq. or 14th st. @ 7th Ave.)
#2,3 or 4 to GRAND ARMY PLAZA
Q train to 7th Ave. (bklyn)

Inline image 1

This is a beautiful novel populated with characters that have nothing more to give of themselves than everything, and at all times. Kali’s Day travels exquisitely through (desperate) straits of violence, sex, sensuality, addiction, depravity, transcendental awakenings and physical transformations. The writing is passionate and precise. Bonny Finberg has crafted a pulsating and vibrantly alive place for all of us to dwell.  
--
Donald Breckenridge, Fiction Editor, The Brooklyn  Rail


When it comes to characters, Finberg has a way of dangling the most enticing before our eyes—eccentric originals we’ve only glimpsed on the street. Androgynous, drug-taking, bohemian or transient—their lives are lived beyond the reach of us mere mortals, beguiling our imaginations but depressing us with the thought that we’ll never be interesting enough to know them. Then, suddenly, in prose full of natural vitality and sly narrative strategies, whether at home or in Nepal, these characters disrobe for us, revealing the desires, fantasies, jealousies, illnesses, dreams and experiments in pleasure that have sculpted their freaky personae; and even more surprisingly, some even achieve a certain spirituality, as others spiral into madness. Kali’s Day is rich with unpredictable adventure in exotic localities, concocted by a writer at the top of her craft.
--Bruce Benderson, author of The Romanian: Story of an Obsession 
(Snowbooks Ltd/Penguin)


Kali's Day arrived during a jam packed work/family week. I glanced at the opening lines and, despite heavy obligations, could not put it down. Finberg takes the reader on a riveting voyage. What’s astonishing is the way she weaves ideas, spirit, subterfuge, passions, dependence, humor, frailty and transcendence so beautifully into her text. Kali’s Day is timeless and current at once.
--Lynn Crawford, author of Simple Separate PeopleTwo, (Black Square Editions.)


Reading Bonny Finberg's novel is like riding off with the Wizard in his hot air balloon -- down below may be the scorched earth of Kansas, but somehow her eyes make it Oz. A breath of fresh air that whips up a tornado. --Bob Holman is a poet and founder of the Bowery Poetry Club

"Bonny Finberg has been one of my favorite erotic and bohemian voices since I first published her in Best American Erotica. 
--Susie Bright, Editor of Best American Erotica series. (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster)