Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays

From one of the most distinctive and intelligent emerging voices on Brooklyn’s cultural scene, Too Much and Not the Mood flings us headlong into Durga Chew-Bose’s most intimate philosophical and occasionally brooding, thoughts. Yes, Montreal-born Chew-Bose writes to her readers, but she also writes to her grandmother Dulcie, to Michael Jordan, to the marble floors in the lobby of her childhood apartment building and even to death. Too Much and Not the Mood is a collection of flash essays, letters and Chew-Bose’s own tartan of essay meets prose poetry. Though a number of her essays end almost before they begin, Chew-Bose reveals the significance of some of our most trivial and fleeting thoughts, holding fast to the shapeless and elusive impressions that we so easily let slip away. In her longer essays she ruminates deeply on human behaviour and the identities people project as they traipse through their daily lives, spinning profound and wondrous missives from her everyday experiences and observations. Reflective and highly astute, Chew-Bose is always in a process of becoming, and invites her readers to join in her search for a clearer understanding of who we are and the world we live in. With the confidence of Lena Dunham, the honesty of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and the extraordinary vision of Zadie Smith, Too Much and Not the Mood is a stunning debut from an author who is sure to become one of this generation’s most esteemed voices.