Renée Branum on Buster Keaton, Giving Herself More Freedom, and Her Secret Shelf at the Library

At the beginning of Renée Branum’s sly and perceptive Defenestrate, Marta finds herself confronting an almost unfathomable loss: her beloved twin brother Nick lies in the hospital after falling out a window, seemingly a victim of their family’s longstanding curse. Years ago, their Czech great-great grandfather pushed a stonemason off a window ledge to his death. Since then, the family has been beset by unusual (and sometimes fatal) falls. As Nick begins his precarious recovery, Marta reflects on not only her family’s unusual history, but also on her own fraught relationship with her mother, who stopped speaking to Nick when he came out. In her debut novel, Branum casts a compassionate and generous gaze upon her deeply relatable characters, dissecting the intricacies of family relationships with luminous prose. Critics have raved about Defenestration. The New York Times Book Review listed it as one of their Editor’s Choice selections, and The Washing Post raved “in a feat of literary archery, Branum’s lyrical prose hits its mark again and again, rich but never overly ripe, delicate but with a tautness that propels the narrative.”