What They Took Away

by Dennis James Sweeney

"Dennis James Sweeney's 'What They Took Away' is an epic apocalypse of the minutiae, an apocalypse of life stripped of tedium, of obtrusiveness. Sweeney's magical miniature world showcases the terror of erasure and the wreckage of return. This is a book of oracular providence."

—Lily Hoang

Genres: Fiction, Poetry

46 pages, Paperback

First published January 23, 2014

About the author

Dennis James Sweeney is the author of You're the Woods Too and In the Antarctic Circle, as well as several chapbooks of poetry and prose, including Ghost/Home: A Beginner’s Guide to Being Haunted. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in Ecotone, Ninth Letter, The New York Times, The Southern Review, and Witness, among others. A former Small Press Editor at Entropy and Assistant Editor at Denver Quarterly, he has an MFA from Oregon State University and a PhD from the University of Denver. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he teaches at Amherst College.

Reviews

[Caylin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creepy, funny, & lovely, then horrifying, but still funny, then lovely again. Recommended to apocalypse aficionados, zoo-goers, & slatherers of sunscreen. & people, in general, too.

[Amelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A subtle, spare piece that aches from page one to page last. This is the kind of work that should be underlined, dog-eared, annotated, and returned to again. And it's funny. How great is that?

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this book on Goodreads. This book is a little "out there". Some of it made sense and some of it didn't. I did enjoy reading it though. If you want to read something that makes you think, this is your book.