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Person/a
A novel about the complexities of being a woman, an artist, a mother, and a wife; a novel about persona and obsession and loyalty and repression; an exorcism.
Told in four volumes over seven years, with emails, g-chats, and an ‘interview’ with Lydia Davis (and a nod to Ms. Davis’s The End of the Story), the style of Person/a is often experimental, pushing the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, obsession and mental instability, female independence and a loyalty to current and former lovers, but with the ultimate loyalty being to oneself or one's writing, and is there a difference? and should we be ashamed?
Told in four volumes over seven years, with emails, g-chats, and an ‘interview’ with Lydia Davis (and a nod to Ms. Davis’s The End of the Story), the style of Person/a is often experimental, pushing the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, obsession and mental instability, female independence and a loyalty to current and former lovers, but with the ultimate loyalty being to oneself or one's writing, and is there a difference? and should we be ashamed?
- GenresFiction
610 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2017
7 people are currently reading
544 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Ellen
34 books83 followersElizabeth Ellen's stories have appeared in numerous online and print journals over the last ten years, including elimae, Quick Fiction, Hobart, Lamination Colony, Muumuu House, HTMLGIANT, and many others. She is the author of the chapbook Before You She Was a Pit Bull (Future Tense) and her collection of flash fictions, Sixteen Miles Outside of Phoenix, was included in A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness: four chapbooks of short short fiction by four women (Rose Metal Press). Fast Machine is a collection of her best work from the last decade. She was recently awarded a Pushcart Prize for her story "Teen Culture" which appeared in American Short Fiction in 2012. She lives in Ann Arbor, where she co-edits Hobart and oversees Hobart's book division, Short Flight/Long Drive Books.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
May 20, 2017
"The problem with mixing fiction with nonfiction is that people can't tell the difference. That was supposed to be the upside. Hiding bits of truth inside of lies."
It took me a while to get into this book but then I read 400 pages in a day. My eyes hurt. The print is too small. It's really good.
It took me a while to get into this book but then I read 400 pages in a day. My eyes hurt. The print is too small. It's really good.
February 6, 2020
Oh my god. So good. I read it in two sittings, I think. The feeling I had when reading it resembled the feeling I had as a kid when reading anything. (I was totally lost in it.)
I rarely give 5 stars to anything these days.
I rarely give 5 stars to anything these days.
April 30, 2017
This is a positively dizzying book. At first it seems similar to the gritty, gut-punch emotionally raw stories of Fast Machine. Without changing to a different prose style though, things quickly become amazingly complex and layered. At the same time that it seems chaotic and uncontrolled, it's clear Ellen (as the author) is completely in control. This is an amazingly sophisticated structure that at once leaves the reader as bewildered and flayed as Ellen (as the character) appears to be. Gratifying as it is in a sentence by sentence level, the book is something that really needs to be experienced as a whole in order to really see what it manages to accomplish. At the end, I'm more stunned than able to decide or articulate what I really feel about it, and that's marvelous.
July 10, 2019
haven't turned pages that fast & freaked out since the ending of House of Leaves
September 11, 2021
Never before have I so closely related to a character that it was painful to read. As I read on I kept on finding myself commenting in despair: "oh god I have done that". Unrequited love sucks and Elizabeth Ellen spends 400+ pages agonizing over it.
July 5, 2017
transformative.
January 13, 2018
This is the best book I have read in a long time. It’s intimate and aggressive and deeply fucked up. A part of me believes it was written specifically for me, and I alternate between wanting to tell everyone about it and wanting to keep it a secret from everyone I know.
“.... maybe I fall back in love with the story, our story. Maybe that has always been the pull. The allure. I am in love with this story in the same way I am in love with the story of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. As I am in love with the story of Marguerite Duras and her Chinese lover. As I am in love with Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio. Almost from the moment I met him, Ian remained untouchable to me. Consequently, I am always present or waking up in that agony one feels when a puppy is not allowed into your outstretched hands. If anticipation is the purest form of pleasure, I am no longer able to differentiate between agony and pleasure. I only know I am alive with wanting.”
“.... maybe I fall back in love with the story, our story. Maybe that has always been the pull. The allure. I am in love with this story in the same way I am in love with the story of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. As I am in love with the story of Marguerite Duras and her Chinese lover. As I am in love with Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio. Almost from the moment I met him, Ian remained untouchable to me. Consequently, I am always present or waking up in that agony one feels when a puppy is not allowed into your outstretched hands. If anticipation is the purest form of pleasure, I am no longer able to differentiate between agony and pleasure. I only know I am alive with wanting.”
August 31, 2017
“I click on the link as a way of saying hi. I click on the link as a way of saying I hate you and I love you and I wish we’d never met and I wish you were dead and I am sick and I wish I didn’t love you.”
*
It’s a strange and thrilling experience, reading as a finished book what you once read in rough manuscript form. Last summer, I read a draft of Elizabeth Ellen’s novel-in-progress while at a residency at The Anderson Center. At that time, the manuscript — a highly autobiographical work about a short-lived affair that turns into a years-long obsession — was less than 300 pages long. I devoured the whole thing in a night and sent her some comments. Full review here —
*
It’s a strange and thrilling experience, reading as a finished book what you once read in rough manuscript form. Last summer, I read a draft of Elizabeth Ellen’s novel-in-progress while at a residency at The Anderson Center. At that time, the manuscript — a highly autobiographical work about a short-lived affair that turns into a years-long obsession — was less than 300 pages long. I devoured the whole thing in a night and sent her some comments. Full review here —
January 11, 2018
the other day I was talking to a friend about the experience of not feeling well while consuming art. How for some people, the feeling of discomfort, displeasure is just that, and thus leaves that person feeling like they've been wronged and intentionally manipulated. And how other people, people like me, find an odd comfort in being allowed to be overcome with the sensations of discomfort and agitation and malaise. Because these emotional states are not allowed to be openly expressed often. They are a no-no. And make you look bad, and depict you as a human who has obviously failed.
Well, what I am saying is that Person/a tortured me and I enjoyed it. I don't know if that makes me a masochist. I'm also not positive that e.e. wants her readers to feel tortured. I would assume that she would be okay with us feeling that since it is clear that the narrator welcomes it upon herself. And while reading this book, if truly committed, you eventually become the narrator, e.e., whoever is really on the page. It's hard to know and it becomes hard to know what space exists between you as a reader and the book itself.
I'm not sure if this is merely consequence of the fact I've just gone through a break up. Though I wouldn't solely pin it on that. I have the instinct to call this book a break-up novel, but I think it's more complex than that. There isn't much solid, shared life between the narrator and Ian. So what is there to break up? It more so seems like the book is trying, rather, to put something together that never was in the first place. And I enjoy these facades throughout the novel, the disillusionments that happen while reading it, the realization that something you had thought you were following or tracing was never actually there in the first place. But simply insinuated, suggested. I resonate with this. The book is over 600 pages though the information provided, the actual materialistic substance of the novel over feels no more than one or two pounds weighing inside my mind. So what is actually happening inside those pages? A lot of apprehension and confusion and repetition and disintegration and disassociation. Like a mind undergoing dementia. I'm not sure if this is intentional but I enjoyed this experience.
This book is one of those books that is more so about the experience of reading it than what is to be taken away. Everything is there, between those pages, and to try to extrapolate some secretive coded message is not appropriate for such a text. It's about the present. It's about how we do not have relationships with people but only our fantasy and conceived notion of them. To me, it alludes to a suggestion to give up the effort of collective consciousness, of human harmony, of complete empathy and understanding of someone as a person. Because that is impossible, in the end we only have how they appear in our mind, and I would say that, even though this may make me depressed or give me discontent, I welcome it.
Well, what I am saying is that Person/a tortured me and I enjoyed it. I don't know if that makes me a masochist. I'm also not positive that e.e. wants her readers to feel tortured. I would assume that she would be okay with us feeling that since it is clear that the narrator welcomes it upon herself. And while reading this book, if truly committed, you eventually become the narrator, e.e., whoever is really on the page. It's hard to know and it becomes hard to know what space exists between you as a reader and the book itself.
I'm not sure if this is merely consequence of the fact I've just gone through a break up. Though I wouldn't solely pin it on that. I have the instinct to call this book a break-up novel, but I think it's more complex than that. There isn't much solid, shared life between the narrator and Ian. So what is there to break up? It more so seems like the book is trying, rather, to put something together that never was in the first place. And I enjoy these facades throughout the novel, the disillusionments that happen while reading it, the realization that something you had thought you were following or tracing was never actually there in the first place. But simply insinuated, suggested. I resonate with this. The book is over 600 pages though the information provided, the actual materialistic substance of the novel over feels no more than one or two pounds weighing inside my mind. So what is actually happening inside those pages? A lot of apprehension and confusion and repetition and disintegration and disassociation. Like a mind undergoing dementia. I'm not sure if this is intentional but I enjoyed this experience.
This book is one of those books that is more so about the experience of reading it than what is to be taken away. Everything is there, between those pages, and to try to extrapolate some secretive coded message is not appropriate for such a text. It's about the present. It's about how we do not have relationships with people but only our fantasy and conceived notion of them. To me, it alludes to a suggestion to give up the effort of collective consciousness, of human harmony, of complete empathy and understanding of someone as a person. Because that is impossible, in the end we only have how they appear in our mind, and I would say that, even though this may make me depressed or give me discontent, I welcome it.
June 24, 2020
Can a short but passionate unrequited fling turn into years of obsessive behavior, self-destruction, and making your family mad at you? Well, yeah. Duh. That's life. And this is life--real and fictional--at its most vulnerable, maddening, and sad. EE reaches deep on nearly every page here, even when she is repeating herself a lot (which is maybe the book's only flaw). She's not afraid to make herself look selfish, ugly, stalker-ish, and catty--and those are many of the reasons we ultimately love her.
March 15, 2018
Feverish I Love Dick with hot goss relevant to my interests and a gut-punch of an anticlimax
November 6, 2017
Most book things now (with a few exceptions) are just built around nice, safe books written for nice and safe book club readers. These are usually the books you see on display at Barnes and Noble. These internet writers are, like, literally terrorists to me. They’re training as we speak. They’re getting ready to invade. They’re building an army.
(Scott Mcclanahan)
(Scott Mcclanahan)
June 15, 2017
Elizabeth Ellen forced me to buy this book from her. But it was a good book.
September 19, 2023
Best read frantically. A Novel of writing as begging. Unbelievably and cruelly real.
I don’t consider myself a very good reviewer, so I’ll just include my favorite page, among the 600+.
“Every time I return to this novel, after a week or two months or two years in which I don’t work on it, I fall back in love with Ian. Or maybe I fall back in love with the story, our story. Maybe that has always been the pull. The allure. I am in love with this story in the same way I am in love with the story of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. As I am in love with the story of Marguerite Duras and her Chinese lover. As I am in love with the story of Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio. Almost from the moment I met him, Ian remained untouchable to me. Consequently, I am always present or waking in that agony one feels when a puppy is not allowed into your outstretched hands. If anticipation is the purest form of pleasure, I am no longer able to differentiate between agony and pleasure. I only know I am alive with wanting.”
I don’t consider myself a very good reviewer, so I’ll just include my favorite page, among the 600+.
“Every time I return to this novel, after a week or two months or two years in which I don’t work on it, I fall back in love with Ian. Or maybe I fall back in love with the story, our story. Maybe that has always been the pull. The allure. I am in love with this story in the same way I am in love with the story of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. As I am in love with the story of Marguerite Duras and her Chinese lover. As I am in love with the story of Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio. Almost from the moment I met him, Ian remained untouchable to me. Consequently, I am always present or waking in that agony one feels when a puppy is not allowed into your outstretched hands. If anticipation is the purest form of pleasure, I am no longer able to differentiate between agony and pleasure. I only know I am alive with wanting.”
November 30, 2022
Super engrossing portrait of obsession, addiction, projection, anxiety, and even the writing process itself. This is ~600 pages of one woman's obsession with a man she essentially hasn't spoken to in years. There's no plot aside from her endless ruminative thought patterns and behaviors around this person, and yet it's totally gripping and I didn't want to put it down. It feels very raw, very unfiltered. As a writer, I also found it insightful that the book was focused almost as much on its own writing and publication process as it was about the obsession itself.
January 5, 2018
While I can't say that reading Person/a is exactly enjoyable all the way through, it is an enlightening representation of the banality of love and/or obsession. Elizabeth Ellen autofictionally pines for the literary bad-boy Ian for 600 poetically-spaced pages of anger, lust, and depression, and as a reader, you can feel the crush of all of those emotions.
April 5, 2018
[4.5/5] Damn. This is a dizzying blurring of the lines between fiction and NF that pulls no punches. Elizabeth Ellen allows her narrator (also Elizabeth Ellen) to explore the most painfully honest, most fucked-up, the most voyeuristic corners of an obsession with a would-be relationship. This is a text that feels alive even when it's walking in circles.
May 10, 2018
This original book enthralled me. I kept thinking: this should be getting boring because of the length and all the repetition. But the repetition works to create an authentic atmosphere of obsession, which is the subject matter of the book. Reading this book made me long to have an obsession of my own.
January 8, 2019
This book was.... different. I'm not even really sure what direction it went. A woman becomes obsessed with a guy she met through some of her writing friends and he pretty much ghosts her after a trip. She becomes obsessed and starts showing up at his house. Then the second half of the book is about if he was some famous singer? I guess I got lost. I didn't even read the second half.
February 20, 2020
This is a book about relationships, rejection, obsession. Maybe mostly about the obsession to write a good book. Ellen has done that. She uses a wide variety of techniques to accomplish this including shifts in perspectives/narration/characters and re-telling certain parts of the story with new/different info, as well as short poem-like texts, quotations from literature and pop culture, notes about her book, notes to the reader, screen caps of text messages and emails. The book begins with rejection letters which feels like a cool meta move. Like her self-titled poetry book, Ellen proves she can hit the same subject in multiple ways and make it feel dangerous, risky, interesting and moving every time. Person/A+
December 13, 2023
Try though she might tell you this book is (kinda) fiction, you are going to judge Elizabeth Ellen. You are going to think badly of her; scoff at her; cringe; make tsk-ing noises with your tongue at her behavior and thoughts.
But read it anyway. And then ask yourself: Aren't we all monsters?
But read it anyway. And then ask yourself: Aren't we all monsters?
April 17, 2025
Absorbing and compelling. Everything I wanted Eros: The Bittersweet to be. I was sad when it was over. Such insightful musings on love, longing, obsession, self denial, and the craft of writing and narrative persona.
May 7, 2017
"there are no parts of me left unfilled by anguish"
May 18, 2017
If you read Chris Kraus' "I Love Dick" and then this novel, they'd seem to be in an enthralling conversation with one another.
June 27, 2017
Read my full review in The Los Angeles Review: http://losangelesreview.org/book-revi...
July 1, 2017
Genius.
September 19, 2018
obsession and compulsive behavior and generally smearing the line between fiction and non. a lot of discomfort but that doesn't stop it from being very good.
February 7, 2020
Fuck Elizabeth Ellen!!
June 28, 2020
Ugh. Over indulgence of self. Never have o read more self serving writing. Oh the problems of the privileged white lady. SO BORED.
November 10, 2022
An experimental page turner is hard thing to pull off. Certain parts were so personal that it made me feel like I really shouldn't be reading this, but of course I couldn't stop.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews