INTRODUCED BY Akil Kumarasamy author of two books, most recently the novel Meet Us by the Roaring Sea, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2022
I READ Early Sobrieties with such a sense of wonder and anxiety about being back in one’s hometown, trapped with family and friends, knowing there is no end in sight. Here we have Monk in his twenties returning home to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, trying to stay sober as he wanders into chance meetings with friends and acquaintances over the summer. It’s a surreal, darkly funny, and meditative season of Monk’s life, and I felt every minute of it—Michael Deagler writes such precise, luminous sentences that it seemed like I was looking at light glancing off glass shards.
There’s a striking clarity and humor here regarding ordinary life, from a father decrying the postal service he has worked for most of his life to an aspirational but failed romance with a college acquaintance in need of a handyman. In the beginning of the book, Monk
