Post-Traumatic

Can Vivian live ecstatically, after what has been done to her?To the outside observer, Vivian is a success story - a dedicated lawyer who advocates for mentally ill patients at a psychiatric hospital. Privately, Vivian contends with the memories and aftereffects of her bad childhood, compounded by the everyday stresses of being a Black, Latinx woman living in a white society. She lives in a constant state of hypervigilant awareness that makes even a simple tube ride into a heart-pounding drama.

For years, Vivian has self-medicated with a mix of dating, dieting, dark humour and smoking weed with her best friend, Jane. But after a family reunion prompts Vivian to take a bold step, she finds herself alone in new and terrifying ways, without even Jane to confide in, and she starts to unravel. Will she find a way to repair what matters most to her?A debut from a stunning talent, Post-Traumatic is a new kind of survivor narrative, featuring a complex heroine who is blazingly, indelibly alive.

Readers who loved Open Water, A Little Life or Luster will adore this razor-sharp book about the aftermath of trauma that somehow manages to brim with warmth, laughter, and hope. What people are saying about Post-Traumatic:'Deeply original, socially important, psychologically revelatory, propulsively and idiosyncratically readable. Post-Traumatic is a gem.' Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot'Stunning and riotous, Post-Traumatic took me right under and then revived me, like only the best fiction can do.

Johnson's delicious, meticulous prose delivers such intimacy and hilarity on the page, I laughed and cried all the way through. This is a raw, brilliant, and unforgettable debut. I love everything about it!' Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies'Vivian is one of the most fascinating characters I've read in contemporary fiction: self-aware and lost, cutting and wounded, resilient and vulnerable - all those misfit bits that add up to the whole of a real human being.

Reading Post-Traumatic feels like an illicit thrill.' Dawnie Walton, author of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev'Chantal V. Johnson has blessed us with a cool, stylish, and violently funny novel about survival. It made me smile, laugh, cringe, shiver, and think.

Like life, Post-Traumatic is richly triggering and highly recommended.' Myriam Gurba, author of Mean'Post-Traumatic is swift, caustic, charismatic, beautiful, terrifying, and so incredibly funny. It learns and unlearns itself continually, propelled by a restless main character whose gaze withers the world, the reader, and more achingly, herself. Johnson composes such precise, pathologically consumable prose that I couldn't stop reading, even if it was the way I'd watch a scary movie: through my fingers.' Tommy Pico, author of IRL and Junk

Poate Vivian sa traiasca extatic, dupa ce i s-a facut? Pentru observatorul din afara, Vivian este o poveste de succes - un avocat dedicat care pledeaza pentru pacientii bolnavi mintal la un spital de psihiatrie. In privat, Vivian se lupta cu amintirile si efectele secundare ale copilariei ei proaste, agravate de stresul cotidian de a fi o femeie neagra, latino, care traieste intr-o societate alba.