What do you think?
Rate this book
Foam
A strange and speculative text from one of the most innovative writers of their generation.
I am still transitioning, but I am unsure into what.
Who are all these Evas? They puncture and disrupt the domestic space and equilibrium of the narrator, who alternately relies upon them or administers their care. Foam is the latest boundary-blurring, genre-resistant, strange and speculative new fiction from Kate Zambreno, the inimitable and relentless literary stylist and conceptualist. Inspired by the absurdities of Eva Hesse and other soft sculpture, these are speculative art essays and textures, a document of precarity and slippery time—mischievous, moody, estranged—a masterwork of tone and atmosphere.
I am still transitioning, but I am unsure into what.
Who are all these Evas? They puncture and disrupt the domestic space and equilibrium of the narrator, who alternately relies upon them or administers their care. Foam is the latest boundary-blurring, genre-resistant, strange and speculative new fiction from Kate Zambreno, the inimitable and relentless literary stylist and conceptualist. Inspired by the absurdities of Eva Hesse and other soft sculpture, these are speculative art essays and textures, a document of precarity and slippery time—mischievous, moody, estranged—a masterwork of tone and atmosphere.
- GenresFiction
216 pages, Paperback
Published September 15, 2026
About the author
Kate Zambreno
34 books824 followersKate Zambreno is the author of the novels Green Girl (Harper Perennial) and O Fallen Angel (Harper Perennial). She is also the author of Heroines (Semiotext(e)'s Active Agents) and Book of Mutter (Semiotexte(e)'s Native Agents). A collection of talks and essays, The Appendix Project, is forthcoming from Semiotext(e) in April 2019, and a collection of stories and other writing, Screen Tests, is forthcoming from Harper Perennial in June 2019. She is at work on a novel, Drifts, and a study of Hervé Guibert. She teaches at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
Read
October 1, 2026there’s honestly just too much froth here to capture in one goodreads review. and that’s just the overflowing nature of froth isn’t it. here’s some thoughts tho:
foam is a dream come true!!!
for awhile i’ve been asking about “froth.” i’ve been talking about it, reading about it, taking pictures of it. it’s been whipped up, in my cup. people around me can get annoyed with the froth talk. for some reason, it’s touchy.
all this froth talk, this froth theorizing.....but little did i know that it would be FOAM that would bring me into the light.
i told maya, i can’t learn anything more about FOAM than what it says on the poster. because in my willful ignorance up until the event, FOAM will be about exactly what i want it to be: froth. and i want to exist for as long as possible in my own dream of the book. my FOAM. i floated in my FOAM for days. my FOAM was about little bits, excess, riverwork by lisa robertson.
perhaps this is quite selfish & naive. but it is what i did. i didn’t look up anything more about FOAM. i lived in my dream. being in new york is a whirlwind of spontaneity but somehow the one thing we all held steadfast to, amidst the literal superstorm, was FOAM. we were going to the bookstore on sunday night. and we did, despite inside-outed umbrellas, me having to carry all my worldlies with me, etc. etc.
the event was so incredibly moving. suffused in pink light, i felt spiritual, giddy, embodied, and frothed up. kate shared the event with hannah baer who i am now obsessed with because she is so smart and her reading was perfectly droll. the conversation between kate and hannah was like the perfect podcast. i even wore maggie’s boxy white button up shirt that made me feel like a scholar, the kind of scholar who has microbangs. i do have microbangs. i talked to kate in that shirt surrounded by some of the friends of my heart. EUPHORIC!!!
here are some of the bits from the talk that i’ve been chewing on since:
writing about the awful thing; looking straight at the awful thing, the awful relation; connections that feel ambivalent and strange; writing in order to figure out what is awful about these kind of relations and moments
feels related to the little bits, looking at the thing that’s uncomfortable and weird and slightly off
the tension between an interest in porousness/permeability vs. an addiction to writing the “I”
allowing oneself to be deeply fucked-up in your work: “wriitng is very different from trying to be a good person”
what if we wrote feelings instead of trying to document or argue?
“i write really petty texts” “slutty luxurious texts”
writing just below literature
giving writing and organizing permission to be different (?)
wariness towards beautiful sentences; how to have sentences that feel less finished
IF THERE’S NOT PLEASURE IN IT, THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH IT
anyway, i ecstatically read the book on multiple trains back to western mass the day after in a semi-fugue state.
honestly the book has become overshadowed by the book launch and the affective experience of the 24 hours in which i went to the book launch and furiously read the book on multiple trains, but i do think it is really really good. i like reading it alongside maggie and maya. i like how kate looks at the awful, at their relationships with landlords, babysitters, friends, kids, etc. and picks at the darkest feeling of all (imo): RESENTMENT. it inspired me to write about the complicated relations in my life that are ambivalent/strange/weird in a way that sometimes makes them feel separate from the eye of literature: people at touch the sky, parents of kids at hartsbrook, coworkers. these sort of weird relationships that are made complicated, awkward, and unclear by differences in class as well as positionings across the worker/”consumer” spectrum. i like the recurrence of physical experiences of foam and the attention to the “little bits” more broadly (dust bunnies, toothpaste in the sink) —many of these are found in interiors, mostly in the narrator’s apartment, transforming the intimate domestic sphere into a place of horror, wildness, surprise, intrusion in ways that feel real & disturbing. in the same way we gloss over the porous reality of the body in order to conceive of ourselves as bounded individual beings, we often envision our homes as quiet, limited spaces, when in fact kate shows how they are just as permeable as ourselves, traversed by a variety of animate and inanimate beings that unsettle, excite, and challenge us. i like the multiplicity of evas, & kate’s constant looking at art. so much to like, so much more to write. thank u kate thank u!
I would rather, perhaps, try to be a writer, or a person who thinks, than to be alone, by myself, all day, not a writer, or person who thinks 31
A writer needs to know when a story feels unfinished, even if the goal is for it to feel unfinished, I think I said. More and more, in the years since, however, I have thought about my desire for a story to feel unfinished. And what does it mean, unfinished. 43
To Eva, writing was about opening up a feeling, one of absurdity and often devotion, a horniness that was about a desire to be part of a collective 43
The research was the pleasure --the playing around with how I was thinking through other things 65
My home became eerie, no longer mine. But who was the hostility radiating from? 72
I began to be obsessed with the yellowing foam I saw everywhere in the city, on the edges of buildings, plugging up the emptied insides of now defunct red fire alarms. The foam darkened over time 83
I was part of everyone else and what they wanted out of me 86
Then I returned to the series, and spent the day in bed, trying to think foamy thoughts. It was only in bed that I could get any thinking done. I was beginning to ripen 86
Even now, getting up, picking through the lemons for the soft moldy ones, sliding my hand through the gray dryer lint and throwing it out. The way the fuzz sticks to my slightly wet fingers 99
My relationship now to the almost animate piles of dust bunnies that hide all over the apartment. Particles of dust hair and skin cells. A felt-like entanglement. Static electricity. I walk around and scoop them up with my fingers. They are named after different animals in different languages. Dust rat in Swedish. Poodle in Finnish. Wool mouse in German. Dust kitty in Hungarian. Lint man in Danish.
It’s a vestibule feeling 108
What children find beautiful in the late autumnal rot: pinecones, pine needles, evergreen boughs 114
I think of how much paper a child goes through. And what happens to all of those maps of the world. They do not last 116
I am absorbed by the books that I read. They become part of me, as I know they do for you. That’s my process. We agree that we read badly, we need to have the theory filtered second-hand 120
The speculative novel is spatial. There is a map. It is how we think together, how we live and blur into each other, side by side 121
...about rinsing out the toothpaste in the sink when they spit. Why don’t they do it? Why couldn’t they see it?
It felt like a connection she should follow, that she kept reading about glitter. Was the glitter in the painting or the writing? What did this mean, glittery writing? 197
foam is a dream come true!!!
for awhile i’ve been asking about “froth.” i’ve been talking about it, reading about it, taking pictures of it. it’s been whipped up, in my cup. people around me can get annoyed with the froth talk. for some reason, it’s touchy.
all this froth talk, this froth theorizing.....but little did i know that it would be FOAM that would bring me into the light.
i told maya, i can’t learn anything more about FOAM than what it says on the poster. because in my willful ignorance up until the event, FOAM will be about exactly what i want it to be: froth. and i want to exist for as long as possible in my own dream of the book. my FOAM. i floated in my FOAM for days. my FOAM was about little bits, excess, riverwork by lisa robertson.
perhaps this is quite selfish & naive. but it is what i did. i didn’t look up anything more about FOAM. i lived in my dream. being in new york is a whirlwind of spontaneity but somehow the one thing we all held steadfast to, amidst the literal superstorm, was FOAM. we were going to the bookstore on sunday night. and we did, despite inside-outed umbrellas, me having to carry all my worldlies with me, etc. etc.
the event was so incredibly moving. suffused in pink light, i felt spiritual, giddy, embodied, and frothed up. kate shared the event with hannah baer who i am now obsessed with because she is so smart and her reading was perfectly droll. the conversation between kate and hannah was like the perfect podcast. i even wore maggie’s boxy white button up shirt that made me feel like a scholar, the kind of scholar who has microbangs. i do have microbangs. i talked to kate in that shirt surrounded by some of the friends of my heart. EUPHORIC!!!
here are some of the bits from the talk that i’ve been chewing on since:
writing about the awful thing; looking straight at the awful thing, the awful relation; connections that feel ambivalent and strange; writing in order to figure out what is awful about these kind of relations and moments
feels related to the little bits, looking at the thing that’s uncomfortable and weird and slightly off
the tension between an interest in porousness/permeability vs. an addiction to writing the “I”
allowing oneself to be deeply fucked-up in your work: “wriitng is very different from trying to be a good person”
what if we wrote feelings instead of trying to document or argue?
“i write really petty texts” “slutty luxurious texts”
writing just below literature
giving writing and organizing permission to be different (?)
wariness towards beautiful sentences; how to have sentences that feel less finished
IF THERE’S NOT PLEASURE IN IT, THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH IT
anyway, i ecstatically read the book on multiple trains back to western mass the day after in a semi-fugue state.
honestly the book has become overshadowed by the book launch and the affective experience of the 24 hours in which i went to the book launch and furiously read the book on multiple trains, but i do think it is really really good. i like reading it alongside maggie and maya. i like how kate looks at the awful, at their relationships with landlords, babysitters, friends, kids, etc. and picks at the darkest feeling of all (imo): RESENTMENT. it inspired me to write about the complicated relations in my life that are ambivalent/strange/weird in a way that sometimes makes them feel separate from the eye of literature: people at touch the sky, parents of kids at hartsbrook, coworkers. these sort of weird relationships that are made complicated, awkward, and unclear by differences in class as well as positionings across the worker/”consumer” spectrum. i like the recurrence of physical experiences of foam and the attention to the “little bits” more broadly (dust bunnies, toothpaste in the sink) —many of these are found in interiors, mostly in the narrator’s apartment, transforming the intimate domestic sphere into a place of horror, wildness, surprise, intrusion in ways that feel real & disturbing. in the same way we gloss over the porous reality of the body in order to conceive of ourselves as bounded individual beings, we often envision our homes as quiet, limited spaces, when in fact kate shows how they are just as permeable as ourselves, traversed by a variety of animate and inanimate beings that unsettle, excite, and challenge us. i like the multiplicity of evas, & kate’s constant looking at art. so much to like, so much more to write. thank u kate thank u!
I would rather, perhaps, try to be a writer, or a person who thinks, than to be alone, by myself, all day, not a writer, or person who thinks 31
A writer needs to know when a story feels unfinished, even if the goal is for it to feel unfinished, I think I said. More and more, in the years since, however, I have thought about my desire for a story to feel unfinished. And what does it mean, unfinished. 43
To Eva, writing was about opening up a feeling, one of absurdity and often devotion, a horniness that was about a desire to be part of a collective 43
The research was the pleasure --the playing around with how I was thinking through other things 65
My home became eerie, no longer mine. But who was the hostility radiating from? 72
I began to be obsessed with the yellowing foam I saw everywhere in the city, on the edges of buildings, plugging up the emptied insides of now defunct red fire alarms. The foam darkened over time 83
I was part of everyone else and what they wanted out of me 86
Then I returned to the series, and spent the day in bed, trying to think foamy thoughts. It was only in bed that I could get any thinking done. I was beginning to ripen 86
Even now, getting up, picking through the lemons for the soft moldy ones, sliding my hand through the gray dryer lint and throwing it out. The way the fuzz sticks to my slightly wet fingers 99
My relationship now to the almost animate piles of dust bunnies that hide all over the apartment. Particles of dust hair and skin cells. A felt-like entanglement. Static electricity. I walk around and scoop them up with my fingers. They are named after different animals in different languages. Dust rat in Swedish. Poodle in Finnish. Wool mouse in German. Dust kitty in Hungarian. Lint man in Danish.
It’s a vestibule feeling 108
What children find beautiful in the late autumnal rot: pinecones, pine needles, evergreen boughs 114
I think of how much paper a child goes through. And what happens to all of those maps of the world. They do not last 116
I am absorbed by the books that I read. They become part of me, as I know they do for you. That’s my process. We agree that we read badly, we need to have the theory filtered second-hand 120
The speculative novel is spatial. There is a map. It is how we think together, how we live and blur into each other, side by side 121
...about rinsing out the toothpaste in the sink when they spit. Why don’t they do it? Why couldn’t they see it?
It felt like a connection she should follow, that she kept reading about glitter. Was the glitter in the painting or the writing? What did this mean, glittery writing? 197
September 20, 2026
Really quite wonderful as usual, although she always makes me fearful of working in an academic institution. It feels small and unimportant but I am genuinely quite peeved by the final sentence, maybe it’s the workshop-ee in me but what a cliche.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews