Description: Inside Ball Lightning is a book-length memoir in verse that follows the growing distance between poet, Rainie Oet, and their brother Mark over the course of several years around the time of their grandmother's death. It traces a childhood full of competitive chess, Gameboys, ghosts, ESP, and ball lightning. Here, parents' childhoods merge with the poet's in a book that looks back across generations, and looks forward into the continuing implications of the family's immigration experience. Through its masterful craft and stunning attention to detail, Inside Ball Lightning attempts to reconcile terror and love, nostalgia and pain.
Review Quotes: "Rainie Oet hits poetry's stage with Inside Ball Lightning--a stunning debut collection. Oet has it all. They're smart without over-intellectualizing and lyrical though never at the expense of dramatic reach and psychological depth. Plus their humor will knock you down, and their tenderness will float you genie-like above your seat. An extraordinary display of poetic power, and this year's must-read new voice." --Mary Karr