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States of Emergency
In the summer of 2015, a young couple—an American and his French wife—undergo fertility treatment in Paris. They settle in to wait for the results as a heatwave paralyzes the city.
As the heat rises, a state of emergency is declared and tempers flare, leaving cracks in the foundation of their marriage. In the months that follow, they find themselves navigating a confluence of world crises and historical forces that affect each in ways the other struggles to understand.
Against this backdrop of existential dread, the fissures in their marriage widen as they confront their everyday apocalypse. An ongoing conversation one that moves backward and forward in time, swings between hope and despair, dry laughter and hard fury, all in an effort toward reconciliation. How will their conflicting ideas about how to build a life together—how to love each other—survive in the face of a future that’s collapsing before their eyes?
As the heat rises, a state of emergency is declared and tempers flare, leaving cracks in the foundation of their marriage. In the months that follow, they find themselves navigating a confluence of world crises and historical forces that affect each in ways the other struggles to understand.
Against this backdrop of existential dread, the fissures in their marriage widen as they confront their everyday apocalypse. An ongoing conversation one that moves backward and forward in time, swings between hope and despair, dry laughter and hard fury, all in an effort toward reconciliation. How will their conflicting ideas about how to build a life together—how to love each other—survive in the face of a future that’s collapsing before their eyes?
304 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 17, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
July 20, 2024
This really affected me, I think it's one of my favorite new books I've read this year. Funnily enough, when reading "The Anthropologists," I found myself thinking that though I don't normally love autofiction, I loved that book, and while this is very stylistically different from that book, it's also definitely autofiction (though they're stylistically different they both bear significant hallmarks of that style, and this one in particular seems to draw quite a bit on the author's life, although to be honest that isn't ever the most interesting thing about a novel to me and I don't know enough about either writer to be able to assess specifics). Anyway, in this case, too, I just felt taken in by the book and how it was written; in both cases, masterful writing overcame any of my hesitations.
Here, I think part of what worked for me was that unlike many recent Anglophone autofictions, the narrator (and his wife Ella, the novel's second protagonist, if such a word applies), the real world is vividly present, and so are the characters' bodies, especially Ella's, as she goes through fertility treatments. Sometimes, I think the autofictional style is a way to disconnect from a lot of the realities of life; instead, this novel feels particularly embedded in them, while also being very much A Novel. I also thought of "Small Rain," which clearly draws closely on Garth Greenwell's own experience (though again, I don't know the details) but is written as a novel, in a way that can expand on certain ideas and lyricize them. Even if you were to read these novels and assume that literally every detail were true (a strategy I don't recommend), the experience is different from reading a memoir.
There are a lot of thematic connections and ideas and images throughout that prove that point, but the novel is so deep I don't really think I can do them justice in a Goodreads review. But if you are someone who enjoys literary fiction, or in fact memoirs, I would pick this book up STAT.
Here, I think part of what worked for me was that unlike many recent Anglophone autofictions, the narrator (and his wife Ella, the novel's second protagonist, if such a word applies), the real world is vividly present, and so are the characters' bodies, especially Ella's, as she goes through fertility treatments. Sometimes, I think the autofictional style is a way to disconnect from a lot of the realities of life; instead, this novel feels particularly embedded in them, while also being very much A Novel. I also thought of "Small Rain," which clearly draws closely on Garth Greenwell's own experience (though again, I don't know the details) but is written as a novel, in a way that can expand on certain ideas and lyricize them. Even if you were to read these novels and assume that literally every detail were true (a strategy I don't recommend), the experience is different from reading a memoir.
There are a lot of thematic connections and ideas and images throughout that prove that point, but the novel is so deep I don't really think I can do them justice in a Goodreads review. But if you are someone who enjoys literary fiction, or in fact memoirs, I would pick this book up STAT.
August 3, 2024
This ends up being an eerie kind of reliving of the last decade or so of world events seen through expats living in France (and temporarily America) starting at about roughly Obama's presidency as they try to find themselves in their relationship, and try to conceive a child. The man of the relationship ends up being deeply alienating at times and I almost wish we had gotten a bit more of the woman's side of the story. Great vibes though.
October 31, 2024
This was a beautiful heartbreaking book! I found myself reading this at a slower pace than normal just so I could savor every word.
November 9, 2025
Among the best 21st century novels. A beautiful and complex cross-Atlantic love story that also explore the tensions of violence and inequality in a globalized and precarious world. Knapp writing style—embedding perspectives in dialogue and the observational stroll as a device—is eerily Sebald like and this book is in conversation with some shared concerns. Knapp reads history as being a constant series of states of emergency (or perhaps one that’s ongoing). He explores the importance of memory as historical witness too, although the narrative and philosophical tension is entirely personal and concerned with what it means for privacy, respect for other’s autonomy, and how it relates to a individual identity.
Some of Knapp’s scenes, like on Tangier Island, are high art and the love story is excellent. That said, the many pop culture and current event references seemed distracting and gratuitous at times, but it also makes the novel a time capsule and makes the story extremely accessible.
Some of Knapp’s scenes, like on Tangier Island, are high art and the love story is excellent. That said, the many pop culture and current event references seemed distracting and gratuitous at times, but it also makes the novel a time capsule and makes the story extremely accessible.
August 30, 2024
States of Emergency takes us to the sweltering summer of 2015 in Paris, where a young couple—an American and his French wife—grapple with fertility treatment. As the heatwave paralyzes the city, tempers flare, leaving cracks in their marriage.
Pros:
Exquisite Prose: Knapp’s writing is a revelation. It’s like sipping fine wine—rich, nuanced, and intoxicating.
Global Context: Against the backdrop of world crises and historical forces, the couple’s struggles gain depth. It’s a microcosm of our chaotic times.
Tender Exploration: The novel delves into intimacy, race, and love. It’s a delicate dance between vulnerability and resilience.
Cons:
Pacing: While the prose is a marvel, the pacing occasionally stumbles. It’s like a symphony with a few off-key notes.
Beyond pacing, it’s the existential weight that holds it back. The world’s collapsing, and so are their lives. But perhaps that’s the point—sometimes, even love can’t mend all fractures.
Pros:
Exquisite Prose: Knapp’s writing is a revelation. It’s like sipping fine wine—rich, nuanced, and intoxicating.
Global Context: Against the backdrop of world crises and historical forces, the couple’s struggles gain depth. It’s a microcosm of our chaotic times.
Tender Exploration: The novel delves into intimacy, race, and love. It’s a delicate dance between vulnerability and resilience.
Cons:
Pacing: While the prose is a marvel, the pacing occasionally stumbles. It’s like a symphony with a few off-key notes.
Beyond pacing, it’s the existential weight that holds it back. The world’s collapsing, and so are their lives. But perhaps that’s the point—sometimes, even love can’t mend all fractures.
April 13, 2025
3.5 ⭐️
The story was very compelling, and the way the author described the emotions of the characters was very special. The story was a bit disjointed and the structure was difficult for me to stay focused on- I get lost in huge long paragraphs sometimes. Would still rec this one for the big brain people
The story was very compelling, and the way the author described the emotions of the characters was very special. The story was a bit disjointed and the structure was difficult for me to stay focused on- I get lost in huge long paragraphs sometimes. Would still rec this one for the big brain people
January 31, 2025
This was a top book of 2024 for me, and I imagine I'll be coming back to it for a long time. It's a beautiful, mature, thoughtful novel, and his craft choices are stunning - it's the best work of autofiction I've read in a long time, and there were sections that made me crow with delight they were so clever. Formidably ambitious and beautifully executed.
November 2, 2024
Like Ben Lerner and Rachel Cusk with a dash of Garth Greenwell. Really spectacular writing if not discursive.
September 7, 2024
The pleasure of reading Chris Knapp’s States of Emergency is more the pleasure of reading a series of essays than that of reading a novel. It reminded me a bit of Sigrid Nuñez’s The Friend in that regard, although the forays into politics, history, philosophy, culture, and science remain mostly at the survey level and often are not developed in a way that engages the emotions or provokes reassessment of opinions. In many ways, the book is a discursive collage. While I love and admire a good collage, this didn’t jell for me into anything greater than the sum of its parts. I saw little shape or pattern or flow to the assemblage, and that left me to admire the beauty (or ugliness) of each little bit rather than the meaning or effect of the whole.
A small example: In the last 20 pages or so of the novel, the narrator becomes a bit fixated on Zadie Smith. We discover that he is a great fan of her work and has read everything she has written. If she is so important to his development as a writer and to his understanding of writing as an art, in a book full of (often extended) musings about movies, books, and culture, why has she not surfaced before this point? It felt like something tacked on the collage at the last minute that doesn’t fit or create any pattern or flow in the whole.
While there’s definitely a narrative through-line—the story of the narrator’s marriage as the couple increasingly become desperate to conceive—I felt I was always outside the story looking in, which feels strange for a first-person novel. Strange is not necessarily bad, and the narrator is trying to stand outside his own story, so this distant perspective may be part of Knapp’s project. However, I didn’t find it engaging. I had a similar reaction to Katie Kitamura’s A Separation, in that I ultimately didn’t gain any emotional payoff for the intellectual exercise. Kitamura’s book had a plot that was less broken by discursive exposition, and this kept me reading. I had to work to keep reading States of Emergency. I often found myself craving a scene or some dialogue.
The point when I actually did start to get involved in the narrative (well into the book—the first section was hard work for me to stay engaged), I found the discursive forays annoying because I wanted to follow the plot. That is not to say it was a bad choice in terms of craft, because the narrator was in a hospital waiting room and trying to distract himself from the suspense. I actually felt closer to him even as I was annoyed. My impatience for the narrative had grown throughout the book, however, so my annoyance was greater than my admiration.
I never felt like I really understood the narrator or his relationship with his wife. They act like they love each other, the narrator says that they love each other, but I don’t experience that love as a reader, either in the giving or the receiving. So I don’t really understand what binds them together when much in the story pulls them apart. I really don’t understand why they want a child so much—there’s no longing to hold the child, or fantasies about future parenthood, or description of an emptiness the child would fill, or any other indication of why having a child would be important—particularly in their precarious economic situation and at this point in their careers. And I don’t like either of them enough to speculate on the why, or construct my own emotional understanding of the relationship from the collage of incidents Knapp gives us.
This book was not to my taste, but the sense of place and time was quite well done, and readers who want to experience Paris, New York, and Charlottesville in 2015-16 will find much to admire.
Thanks to NetGalley and The Unnamed Press for allowing me access to an advanced copy.
A small example: In the last 20 pages or so of the novel, the narrator becomes a bit fixated on Zadie Smith. We discover that he is a great fan of her work and has read everything she has written. If she is so important to his development as a writer and to his understanding of writing as an art, in a book full of (often extended) musings about movies, books, and culture, why has she not surfaced before this point? It felt like something tacked on the collage at the last minute that doesn’t fit or create any pattern or flow in the whole.
While there’s definitely a narrative through-line—the story of the narrator’s marriage as the couple increasingly become desperate to conceive—I felt I was always outside the story looking in, which feels strange for a first-person novel. Strange is not necessarily bad, and the narrator is trying to stand outside his own story, so this distant perspective may be part of Knapp’s project. However, I didn’t find it engaging. I had a similar reaction to Katie Kitamura’s A Separation, in that I ultimately didn’t gain any emotional payoff for the intellectual exercise. Kitamura’s book had a plot that was less broken by discursive exposition, and this kept me reading. I had to work to keep reading States of Emergency. I often found myself craving a scene or some dialogue.
The point when I actually did start to get involved in the narrative (well into the book—the first section was hard work for me to stay engaged), I found the discursive forays annoying because I wanted to follow the plot. That is not to say it was a bad choice in terms of craft, because the narrator was in a hospital waiting room and trying to distract himself from the suspense. I actually felt closer to him even as I was annoyed. My impatience for the narrative had grown throughout the book, however, so my annoyance was greater than my admiration.
I never felt like I really understood the narrator or his relationship with his wife. They act like they love each other, the narrator says that they love each other, but I don’t experience that love as a reader, either in the giving or the receiving. So I don’t really understand what binds them together when much in the story pulls them apart. I really don’t understand why they want a child so much—there’s no longing to hold the child, or fantasies about future parenthood, or description of an emptiness the child would fill, or any other indication of why having a child would be important—particularly in their precarious economic situation and at this point in their careers. And I don’t like either of them enough to speculate on the why, or construct my own emotional understanding of the relationship from the collage of incidents Knapp gives us.
This book was not to my taste, but the sense of place and time was quite well done, and readers who want to experience Paris, New York, and Charlottesville in 2015-16 will find much to admire.
Thanks to NetGalley and The Unnamed Press for allowing me access to an advanced copy.
July 30, 2024
i am so sorry to say this, but i dnf'd this book at 40%.
i do not often dnf books. for some reason, i have a deeply ingrained fear of hurting the author's feelings, and i feel guilt if i don't finish a book. but this one just wasn't for me. "states of emergency" by chris knapp is a historical fiction book (and by historical, i mean 2015-16) set mainly in Paris, France. one thing i loved about this book was that it was chock full of beautiful quotes and language. it almost felt like reading a classic, like "emma" or "pride and prejudice."
however, there was largely no dialogue, other than dialogue in a relayed sense. the whole book (or at least the first 40% of it) was written almost like a. stream of consciousness journal entry or a letter to someone. there were a lot of impactful smaller stories within the larger narrative, but there was no overarching plot whatsoever. this book is mostly just vibes, and not what i had expected going into it.
further, while the characters were incredibly deep and smart, they just weren't realistic or likable. i wanted to like ella so badly, but i just... didn't like her. and the unnamed narrator is just whiny and annoying to me. like be a man... lol.
one thing knapp does really well is combining the microscopic and macroscopic plot points in an effortless and beautiful way. however, this unfortunately made the novel feel far too political. this isn't a bad thing, if you enjoy a heavily political book, but it just isn't what i like to read or what i was looking for.
i gave this book 2 stars, not necessarily because it was a bad book or poorly written, but simply based on my own preference and perception of the book.
i do not often dnf books. for some reason, i have a deeply ingrained fear of hurting the author's feelings, and i feel guilt if i don't finish a book. but this one just wasn't for me. "states of emergency" by chris knapp is a historical fiction book (and by historical, i mean 2015-16) set mainly in Paris, France. one thing i loved about this book was that it was chock full of beautiful quotes and language. it almost felt like reading a classic, like "emma" or "pride and prejudice."
however, there was largely no dialogue, other than dialogue in a relayed sense. the whole book (or at least the first 40% of it) was written almost like a. stream of consciousness journal entry or a letter to someone. there were a lot of impactful smaller stories within the larger narrative, but there was no overarching plot whatsoever. this book is mostly just vibes, and not what i had expected going into it.
further, while the characters were incredibly deep and smart, they just weren't realistic or likable. i wanted to like ella so badly, but i just... didn't like her. and the unnamed narrator is just whiny and annoying to me. like be a man... lol.
one thing knapp does really well is combining the microscopic and macroscopic plot points in an effortless and beautiful way. however, this unfortunately made the novel feel far too political. this isn't a bad thing, if you enjoy a heavily political book, but it just isn't what i like to read or what i was looking for.
i gave this book 2 stars, not necessarily because it was a bad book or poorly written, but simply based on my own preference and perception of the book.
September 10, 2024
I really wanted to like this book because I found the premise interesting, but it just didn't really come together for me. The central thread of the main couple's marriage just felt very far away most of the time. The protagonist recounts stories told by friends, or stories about friends, so often that I almost felt like I was reading a collection of short stories for a large part of the book. I would get super engrossed in one of them and then it would end and I'd remember oh yeah, this is a book about this couple. It was an odd and disjointed experience that kinda left me just not really caring about their marriage. I pushed through because it was an ARC, but had it not been I probably would have DNFed mid book.
Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for the ARC
Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for the ARC
April 8, 2025
I really grew to love this novel. Once you attune yourself to the narrator’s voice, interests, & sympathies the scenes feel really acutely drawn. I don’t know another autofictional novel that summons as much detail and style as “States of Emergency.” Every scene is meticulously written—somehow the writing is both austere and completely honest. A book that requires a slower pace, temporal track-hopping & willingness to take digressions. Rewarding.
October 25, 2025
Moving and highly observant, if a little overly intellectual for my tastes some of the time. The reader gets a felt sense for the deep love and deep loss shared by, and driving a wedge between, the central couple. The framing of the story with many of the major and minor events of the past decade or so brought the book to life and made it relevant to anyone who’s lived through this period.
December 17, 2024
Difficult to finish this one. Like a more mature “normal people” seemed like a lot of the issues would’ve resolved themselves if they just told the truth. Interesting parts about history though
January 4, 2025
got mad and quit because it's not a novel, it's autofiction. i'm so fed up with the trend of pretending you're coming up with a story and instead passing a memoir off with your wife lola's name put as ella instead. spare me. maybe i'll come back when i'm less crabby. maybe i'll read an actual novel
update: finished. mad that it was good.
update: finished. mad that it was good.
February 26, 2026
The rambling nature of Chris Knapp’s prose took me a minute to settle into but once I did I found this to be a pretty fascinating read
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