It is a challenging time to try to breakthrough the cultural noise with a debut novel, but Denise S. Robbins has bravely stepped into the arena with The Unmapping. The novel follows the lives of two main characters, Esme and Arjun, as they navigate a mysterious crisis called "The Unmapping," a phenomenon that causes entire neighborhoods and landmarks to shift locations abruptly, disrupting lives and leaving the city in chaos. The story also includes several interwoven narratives of other characters affected by this disorienting new reality. I enjoyed Denise’s novel, finding it similar, in many ways, to an HBO television series called The Leftovers, which itself was based on a novel by Tom Perrotta.
In my conversation with Denise, we cover a number of topics:
The writing experience including working with an independent publisher. This is not just a debut novel for Denise, but the debut novel under the new Mareas imprint at Bindery Books.
Robbins’ personal and literary influences, including her background in climate advocacy, City in the City by China Miéville, and Exit West by Mohsin Hamid.
How her worldview does and doesn’t shape her fiction. I complement her choice to avoid didacticism (something I’ve written about at Substack)
Why she chose to set her novel in NYC despite there already being too many NYC-based novels. She has written about this on Substack too.
Whether Denise is incidentally rescuing the “nice guy” trope with her character Arjun.
Whether Substack can provide a robust literary culture given the decline of IRL lit scenes.
Denise also recommend that avid readers pick up Ted Chiang’s stories, The Three-Body Problem series by Liu Cixin, and Orange World by Karen Russell. Her novel will be published June 3rd this year and is available for pre-order at booksellers like Amazon or Barnes & Noble. She can be found at https://denisesrobbins.com or on Substack.
