Read it in the Green Room
Mice 1961
- writingAskew, wince-funny language
- atmosphereArtificial, askew 1960s Florida
- paceInterrupted search
Two sisters and a housekeeper in a deliberately artificial 1960s Florida, in a comic, strange novel about belonging and conformity. For readers who enjoy skewed language and deadpan humour.
Beta invites go out in waitlist order. One devlog email a month, at most — or just read the devlog.
Mice 1961
Stacey Levine
The Green Room
Backstage of Mice 1961.
Walk in mid-chapter. The people of the book are there, as themselves, knowing what they know so far — and nothing else. Ask them anything. They have read exactly as far as you have.
A moment in the Green Room
Mice 1961 · Stacey Levine
The narrator
Of Mice 1961, as they are at your reading place
You
What happens next?
The narrator
“I can only tell you what you have read. Past your page there is nothing yet — not for you, and not for me. Turn it, and come back.”
Their knowledge stops where your reading does.
Who is in the room
Anyone who has walked on by your page.
The cast
Any character who has appeared so far. Someone who hasn’t walked on yet isn’t in the room. That’s not a limitation; that’s the point.
The narrator
The voice telling you the story, as far as it has told it.
The author
As the book presents them — the mind behind the pages you have read, not a biography.
The book itself
Ask what it is doing to you so far. It answers from its own pages, up to yours.
Before you go in
What critics and prize juries said.
Editorial synthesis
Dave Karp in Heavy Feather Review called the author the bard of the marginal and the novel wince-inducingly funny, set in an odd, artificial 1960s Florida. Lydia Millet, reviewing for the Washington Post in an excerpt published by the press, said she laughed aloud many times and found a brilliant chemistry of alienation and familiarity.
Drawn from Heavy Feather Review, The Washington Post (excerpt on Verse Chorus Press site).
Recognition
- FinalistPulitzer Prize 2025 · Fiction
How it stays unspoiled
Nothing past your page exists.
The companion is assembled from the passages you have read and only those. A character who knows the ending is no one worth talking to, so there is no override — not behind a setting, not behind a confirmation. Your position is the wall.
Get the book
One ebook. Yours.
US$11.99ebook · eBooks.com
Buy the ebook once, read it in Green Room — or in any reader you already use.
Get the ebook at eBooks.comReading, narration and Green Room compatibility not yet verified for the retailer edition.
The cast has been waiting for you.
Join the waitlist — beta invites go out in order, and the devlog keeps you honest company until then.
