Excerpt from Chatter by Ethan Kross, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Other volunteers in Irving's experiment also demonstrated preoccupations that jumped around time, braiding together in the patter of the inner voice. For example, while walking across a bridge, an older woman recalled crossing the same bridge with her father as a girl just as a man threw himself off and committed suicide. It was an indelible memory, in part because her father was a professional photographer and snapped a picture of the moment, which ended up in a citywide newspaper. Meanwhile, a man in his mid-thirties crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and thought about all the human labor it took to build it, also telling himself that he would succeed at a new job he was about to start. Another woman, waiting for a late blind date in Washington Square Park, recalled a past boyfriend who cheated on her, which ended up sparking a reverie about her desires for connection and spiritual transcendence. Other participants talked about economic hardships that might await them, while the anxieties of others centered on a looming event from a decade earlier: 9/11.

Excerpted from Chatter by Ethan Kross. Copyright © 2021 by Ethan Kross. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.