Air Carnation by Guadalupe Muro

Air Carnation features an absorbing narrative that bridges nonfiction and fiction, poetry, and song, as Guadalupe Muro explores themes of independence in love and the writerly life. With sojourns in Argentina, Buenos Aires, New York, Washington, and a cross-Canada train passage from Edmonton to Toronto, Air Carnation is an affecting work that will have readers laughing, crying, and all the while, enjoying this fascinating metafiction that sings of hippiedom in Patagonia.

Praise for Air Carnation

“Guadalupe Muro has many plans and they are the world. Then all the waves of the ocean fall out of the moon, straight into her heart, and break it. And then, quite unexpectedly, Rita arrives, leaving Guadalupe feeling happier than Ringo in an Octopus’s garden. Read Guadalupe Muro’s Air Carnation. It plays at high r/min from one end to another, and leaves one joyous.” —Beth Follett

“Somewhere between the startling intimacy of Marguerite Duras and the fragmentary wit of Renata Adler lies Guadalupe Muro’s quietly luminous Air Carnation. Like a photo album brought to life, these vignettes weave personal anecdotes with meditations on poetry and art, the surreal with the banal, and wry humour with almost disarming candor. A brave, delightful, haunting book.” —Pasha Malla, author of People Park and The Withdrawl Method

“With the tender magic of Guadalupe Muro’s realism, Air Carnation is the patient portrait of a storyteller recollected and re-imagined, full of heartbreak and lightness.” —Robyn Read

Press Coverage

“Despite its artful deep down thoughtful seriousness Air Carnation is feather-light in touch and probably the funniest book you will read this year… The book is a hybrid, a true original crammed full of life as you have never yet seen it.” —All Lit Up

“The consistent voice keeps the book grounded, making it a smooth read the whole way through. Different periods of the author/character’s life, different places in which they find themselves, different loves, are bound together by the narrative’s dreamy tone and sensual writing.” —Publishers Weekly

“Madeleine Thien says that she likes to think of ‘Home’ as a verb, something to be continually re-created. This is just the kind of journey Air Carnation takes us on, the joyous and uncertain and occasionally bittersweet process of creating and recreating a place that can fit it all—big enough to contain a world of dreams and plans and loves and letters, unsent but not lost. ” —Aimee Wall, Broken Pencil

“Air Carnation is a captivating journey through human growth and the sense of self…” —The Navigator

“Funny, poignant and absorbing” —Geist Magazine

“Guadalpue Muro’s Air Carnation is a beautiful representation of how scattered, unpredictable, hurtful, and hopeful life can be” —words(on)pages

“Muro’s work is one of staggering possibilities, with Air Carnation at the forefront of a style of art where the passionate is activated. By revealing her own bad habits and infatuations, Muro breaches the division between the individual and the collective. A shocking, hilarious, and heart-wrenching work, Air Carnation constructs a canon of affection.” —Nomadic Press

“Air Carnation is lyrical and sublime.” —Atticus Review

“An Experiment on Truth”: An Interview with Guadalupe Muro —Prism Magazine

Stan Dragland’s Art of Englishing —The Puritan

Guadalupe Muro is an Argentinian writer, producer and artist. Her first collection of poems, Con quién dormías? was published in 2007. Air Carnation is her first novel. She is currently working with musicians to compose a soundtrack to the novel, a project called “Songs for Runaway Girls,” which can be heard at https://www.facebook.com/songsforrunawaygirls. Muro lives in Sc. de Bariloche, a small town in Patagonia, where she directs the collaborative literary project “Las Cartas de Guadalupe.” Follow Muro at http://facebook.com/lascartasdeguadalupe and http://lascartasdeguadalupe.com.