by Monique Schwitter
Persea Books, February 2019

One Another dazzles as Monique Schwitter deftly weaves an intricate, moving, and wonderfully eccentric portrayal of love and art―erotic, chaotic, comedic, tragic, and glorious.

When a writer googles the name of her first love and discovers he committed suicide years ago, she is deeply shaken. Memories of Petrus begin to flood into her mind, followed by the memories of other loves, one after another. What exactly is love?  How does it come and go?  She begins to search her personal history for answers. Twelve men. Twelve chapters in a novel.  Melancholy Petrus, handsome actor Jakob, Simon with his pet rat, gay Nathanael, a student, her brother. Her husband’s story is supposed to be the last.  But as story after story unfolds, the past and present entangle until her orderly search is interrupted by present-day complications of love and by a startling event overlooked at home that begins to seize the plotline of both her art and life.

Praise for One Another

'The novel’s dominant mode is a style of self-talk that plays grammatical games and painfully, nervously refines: “Petrus had betrayed me with her. Or she me with Petrus, you could also look at it that way. Doubly betrayed by lover and friend, that’s how to put it.”' Jamie Fisher, The New York Times

“A romantic bildungsroman, uneven in places but refreshingly unsentimental, narrated by a woman in the middle of a marital crisis.” Kirkus Reviews

“Schwitter’s multi-layered text is enriched with frequent allusions to the Bible and literary writings. This depiction of the trials and tribulations of love and desire gives a contemporary twist to timeless themes.” New Books in German

Excerpt in LitHub

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