Praise for Daphne

“In his stunning first novel, Boast turns the myth of Daphne and Apollo into a modern love story about social anxiety and physical debilitation…Sharply observant, both of the limits of human longing and of the fear of feeling trapped inside one’s body, Boast’s understated tale is at once tragic and enchanting.”
  Booklist, Starred Review

"Boast is interested in the ways we handle the unwieldy welter of emotions that defines human existence, how we protect ourselves from the pain of others and fail to express our own.... [O]wing in part to Boast’s effortless, ridiculously vivid prose... the whole novel bristles with connections and symbolism... so artfully tied off that even the most hard-hearted reader will find Boast’s deep awe of 'what it is to feel' catching."
  San Francisco Chronicle

Daphne... marries the succinctness of the short story with the reflective undertones of the memoir, creating a profoundly modern fable that is simultaneously tragic and inspiring.
   The Times Literary Supplement

"An update [of the Metamorphoses that] interprets Daphne’s transformation as a triumph... Boast’s novel is an amiable exploration of how humans might come to manage their raucous hearts... Boast deserves our gratitude for sending us back to [Ovid] now."
  The New Yorker

"Just like that, Boast seems to have captured today’s cultural zeitgeist."
  The New York Times

“Psychology and myth twist into each other in this debut novel about vulnerability and fear. . . . Boast's story is rooted in myth. But it's his perceptive take on the risks of emotion that the reader will remember.”
  Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"As Daphne decides how safely she wants to lead her life, she becomes a mythic heroine-guide who comes alive for readers in a modern setting. We all share her condition to a degree. How often do we retreat behind our headphones and devices to cut out the world—and what are we missing? How are we rewiring ourselves? Not only is it a sensationally captivating narrative, Daphne makes us look at our habits and calibrate.
  BookPage

“Supple. . . . Boast precisely depicts Daphne’s emotional states, with brief, sensorily rich passages when she is on the brink of overload. . . . The novel offers a striking metaphor for the ways emotion is experienced in the body.”
  Publishers Weekly

This engaging debut novel... a modern-day retelling of the Daphne and Apollo myth... appeals not only to the heart but also to the head.
  The Guardian

“Will Boast has written a novel that exquisitely marries ancient mythology and au courant medicine to tell our favorite tale, the love story, with insights both age-old and brand-spanking new. It's a fine, fine ride.”
  Antonya Nelson, author of Bound and Funny Once

“Richly meditative and quietly suspenseful, Daphne breathes fresh vigor into timeless questions about love and risk—the unknowable cost of fully opening one’s heart to another. Will Boast writes beautifully about life’s daily moral gambles, and Daphne is an outright marvelous debut.”
  Laura van den Berg, author of Find Me

"A clever consideration of the place of feeling in both public and private life... Illuminates the emotional management we all perform daily — while still following the eternally gratifying arc of the romance novel."
  The Financial Times

Boast’s real forte is the evocation of emotion, whether that be the ‘gust of affection’ that can hit you in the early days of a new relationship or the ‘trough of sorrow’ we tend to drink from when one has ended... Daphne is sleek and artful, it is also quite touching.
  Literary Review (UK)

‘Thought-provoking… Boast memorably tests how far people will go to seal themselves off from physical and emotional pain’
  The Sunday Times (UK)

PREVIOUS PRAISE FOR WILL BOAST's EPILOGUE
A New York Times Bestseller • A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Book • A San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year • A BBC Book of the Week • A Publishers Weekly Book of the Week

“Family tragedy leads to almost unbearable darkness but also renewal and hope for a young man in this excellent memoir… Boast writes with unsparing clarity, in precisely observed domestic scenes that reveal mountains of unspoken feeling… [A] finely wrought, wrenching yet lyrical study of a family that lives on past its seeming end.”
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“The book that stayed with me the longest is Will Boast’s memoir EPILOGUE. It’s a finely wrought and unsparing account of the loss of the author’s family… devastatingly sad and yet beautifully written with clarity, precision, and a truly effective structure. The first chapter alone is so powerful that I’ve read it aloud to friends. If you are a reader who can handle this type of grief, then this book is not to be missed.” 
Annie Coreno, Publishers Weekly, on her favorite book in 2014

“Boast, an accomplished fiction writer and essayist, has composed a moving, elegantly contrapuntal narrative about coming to terms with his families—the one he lost, and the one that welcomed him with open arms.”
Elle, 2014 Readers' Prize for Memoir

"[B]lew me away and kept me riveted, absolutely locked in its orbit for days…. Will Boast’s memoir, Epilogue, [is] about grief and—in the best, subtlest, utterly un-cloying ways—the possibility of unexpected renewal. There’s a chapter about Boast’s attempt to write a short story about his brother—after his death, giving him life somewhere else—that will stay with me for a long time, a man crafting an alternative narrative to hold what he’s haunted by."
Leslie Jamison, author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams

“Don’t let the title of Will Boast’s magnificent memoir fool you. Epilogue is about beginnings as much as endings, discovering as much as losing family. It’s honest, heartbreaking, gorgeously written, and hands down the most moving book I’ve read this year.”
Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena