By the Time We Leave Here, We'll Be Friends
"BY THE TIME WE LEAVE HERE, WE'LL BE FRIENDS is a David Lynchian nightmare set in a Russian gulag, where its prisoners, guards, traitors, soldiers, lovers, and demons fight for survival and their own rapidly deteriorating humanity. Osborne's debut...is paranoid, cold, brutal, haunting, mystifying (in a good way), and totally unforgettable."--PAUL TREMBLAY, author ofThe Little SleepandIn the Mean Time"[A]n opium-laced fever dream, swinging readily between the surreal and the horrifyingly, starkly real. Siberia is a place, metaphoric and literal: It's an inescapable, brutal state of mind. Give in to the voices and let this story deliver its kaleidoscopic nightmare, sly lines, and the truth of a bloody, damaged, beating, human heart." --MONICA DRAKE, author ofClown Girl"The only thing crueler and weirder than life in Osborne's Stalinist gulag is the afterlife. Wringing an ergot-laced harvest of agony and absurdity from the bleak Siberian tundra, BY THE TIME WE LEAVE HERE, WE'LL BE FRIENDS manages the nigh-impossible feat of making Kafka's Penal Colony look like a Sweet Valley High romance." --CODY GOODFELLOW, author ofPerfect Union,Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, andRadiant Dawn/Ravenous Dusk"This lyrical spatter of inspired dementia... reminds me of Celine in serious nightmare mode, and yet its brutality is quiet--gentle even.   To find yourself enjoying forensic black humor scenes of disgust and revulsion is a tribute to Osborne's writing...." --KRIS SAKNUSSEMM, author ofZanesville,Private MidnightandEnigmatic Pilot"Like a rat in a bag of deer meat--this is BY THE TIME WE LEAVE talking--[it] scuttles around inside you as you read it, and you come to know that rat as your own heart. And it knows you back, has all along." --STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES, author ofIt Came from Del Rio"4.5 out of 5.[E]ven better than expected...will make even the most jaded horror lover squirm. BY THE TIME WE LEAVE HERE, WE'LL BE FRIENDS is a bleary, opium-addled fever dream from a highly talented new author.  Osborne is one to watch."--BLOODY-DISGUSTING.COM