Book Buzz: Etna by Paul Yoon
“I think, like all my projects, it was not just one thing [that started this project]. It was a few things. The obvious one and the fastest answer would be I fell in love with a dog. I have a dog who’s 12 years old now. His name is Oscar. My first dog ever, I never had a dog growing up. I know a lot of people who have animals, and they talk to their dogs. I’ll wake up, and I’ll hear my wife, Laura [van den Berg], talking, and I’ll think she’s on the phone or something. And then I realize she’s just talking to Oscar. But I never talked to him out loud, and I still don’t. Other than basic commands, it’s this silent communication, almost like telepathy or something like that, or imagined telepathy. I spent a lot of time thinking about what his voice would sound like. At the same time, over the past few years as we experience the world, read about the world, open up the newsfeed and all that, there’s been a feeling like I’m exhausted by humanity. Exhausted by humans. I say this a little bit jokingly, but I think I just needed a break from humans.
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― Paul Yoon, Interview, Interview Magazine
What booksellers are saying about Etna
- Etna is one of those rare books that quietly sneaks into your heart and stays there…I laughed, I cried, and more than once I had to stop reading just to sit with a particularly stunning line.
― Stephanie, Story Hollow in Madisonville, TN | BUY
- Oh, Etna! I didn’t know what to expect going into this book but fell in love almost instantly. What an odyssey! This is one that will stick with me for quite some time.
― Mackenzie, Thank You Books in Birmingham, AL | BUY
- Etna is a story about continuing on when everything you have known and loved is lost and gone forever. The novel ends with the hopeful message that we can endure terrible things and yet, in the ruins, there is always new life waiting for us if we are strong enough to accept what has occurred and move forward with a sense of hope for the future, even if that new life is a different life, a stranger to us.
― Savannah, The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines, NC | BUY
About Paul Yoon
Paul Yoon is the author of six works of fiction: Etna; Once the Shore, a New York Times Notable Book; Snow Hunters, winner of the Young Lions Fiction Award; The Mountain, an NPR Best Book of the Year; Run Me to Earth, a Time Must-Read Books of 2020 and longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; and The Hive and the Honey, winner of the 20th Annual Story Prize and longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates prize.
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“In December 2017, I was doing some last-minute Christmas shopping in a mall in Miami. I was about to leave when I heard some pops over a loudspeaker. People around me started running, screaming, crying. We thought we were in a mass shooting. It turned out to be a hoax. Before I knew it wasn’t real, I ran with the crowd and hid behind a bush, where I pondered my whole life. 
