Neotenica Book

RELEASE DATE - 9 JULY 2020

Neotenica is a novel of encounters: casual sex, arranged-marriage dates, cops, rowdy teenagers, lawyers, a Sapphic flirtation, a rival, a child, and two important dogs.

At the centre of it are Young Ae, a Korean-born ballet dancer turned PhD student, and her husband, a Korean-American male who inhabits an interior femininity, neither transgender nor homosexual, but a strong, visceral femininity nonetheless.

This novel is an adrenaline filled ride sliding across the surface of desire and chance through the quotidian turned playful.

"Neotenica is sentence-level sexy and surprisingly funny, my kind of thriller. Joon Oluchi Lee cracks open a window onto a very familiar Bay Area, yet one I’ve never before seen in fiction. I am obsessed with this book!"―Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes The Form of A Mortal Girl

"In Neotenica, observation is a way of life, a structure of not-quite-feeling. Wielding aestheticism as a gleeful tool for cultural inquiry, Joon Oluchi Lee undermines the ambivalence of mostly-affluent twentysomethings in the multicultural city by cataloging their detachment. Each chapter offers its own path between awareness and self-expression, boredom and curiosity, sensation and stasis. Clinically described, sexually candid, and viscerally detailed, this is a novel in fragments that builds toward a sadness almost like hope. If you know what this book is when you finish it, then you might not have really finished it."―Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author of Sketchtasy

"Hot, electric, and funny as all hell. This tiny kaleidoscopic explosion of a book is a beautiful dream examining desire, race, tenderness, class, femininity, family, children, and dogs. Inject Neotenica into your fucking veins."―Casey Plett, author of Little Fish

"Neotenica resists easy codifications. Through their refracting, and converging identities, the characters of Neotenica function in tandem; a warm ball of sweet matter hurtling through space and yearning for the freedom to exist as itself, not as its facsimile."―June Lei, The Brooklyn Rail

"Neotenica is a tiny masterpiece. It’s rowdy, alarming, sexy, and gives a deeper exploration of the messy, discursive texture of everyday life. Joon Oluchi Lee has written a novel with such verve and tenderness that you will become obsessed by page one."―Cristina Rodriguez, Deep Vellum Books