This was a semi-surreal story in an empty setting which is hard to categorize. That is a good thing as far as I am concerned – and I enjoyed this book because it was so different from conventional format books that I often read.
At first the story seems small and simple, and even though you don’t have answers, at least you can feel the tension of the situation and you trust the author to guide you. Slowly you realize that this setting is not actually the world that you know – the tether is there but it is frayed and could break at any time.
And I liked that the author made it clear up front that there are no answers to some of the big questions that come up. I think that kind of honesty is necessary to do what the writer is trying to do. But as soon as we know that answers are not forthcoming, and things are not going according to the rules we consciously and unconsciously know – it feels like anything can happen. Including a great deal of introspection.
There are a lot of haunting scenes – places devoid of people and vast empty spaces. I also go for this kind of stuff in books so I was extremely satisfied to find so much of that here. Where can I find more of this?
My only criticisms are that I felt the sections of the story are oddly divided. As we open up to this new reality there are phases that are described, but the time spent in each one felt out of balance to me.
I really enjoyed this odd duck of a book – it nicely broke up the style of reading I’ve been doing lately.
Next I am reading Open by Andre Agassi.
