Concentric Macroscope

by Kelly Krumrie

Deep in the woods, the Agency has assigned a linguist to create a language to write a message which will be transmitted by a set of looming radio towers. The purpose and audience for the message are unknown to her. She grows hauntingly obsessed with her inability to complete her task as something forms within her. The sounds of the natural environment mount alongside paranoid whisperings of the nearby townspeople. And then the linguist spirals outward and begins to see macroscopically, all at once, like the concentric circles of a vibration.

Kelly Krumrie’s CONCENTRIC MACROSCOPE is an unsettling gaze into the foundations of language. It ushers soundscape into narrative and memory, and builds a world where fog, light, and water are the surest indications of reality. The form of Krumrie's experimental style layers time and space from one sentence to the next, rendering the text as an elongated, gorgeous incantation. This form, along with the narrator’s voice and mission, is akin to what might happen at the bizarre intersection of Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jeff VanderMeer, and Silvina Ocampo.

Genres: Fiction

157 pages, Paperback

Published March 17, 2026

Reviews

[Evan Pincus · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a book so obsessively about language I did not find the prose particularly compelling, and I admit having recently read Ratner’s Star didn’t do this book that reworks a great many of its motifs any favors (although obviously the tone/style/form are all quite different), but I like those motifs a great deal and enjoyed seeing them reconfigured. I first encountered Krumrie’s writing through her amazing pandemic-era blog Figuring, and between that and this novel, it’s very clear that she’s a writer with very similar interests and concerns to me, so I am excited to check out other work!

[gael · Rating 3 out of 5]

prose was indeed less compelling than i wanted for a work on language, and i didn’t particularly enjoy the torn focus to the torrid affair of the narrator’s past, but i did end up really enjoying some of the more frenetic energy that builds over the course of the project.

[Colette Bernheim · Rating 5 out of 5]

biased because I worked on this but this is one of the most special books I’ve ever encountered and I’m so grateful to share life alongside it

[Fox Pever · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. A profound example of how language and the communication of that language can shape the world around us; of what it is to use language when one is so terribly isolated and alone.