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A gorgeous, mesmerizing read with a stop-the-clock ending, that you may just find yourself dreaming about, the next time you hear a bird sing outside your window (your very own soul-stirring spark bird).
Simon, our third person POV narrator is a thirty-year-old musician, who has never quite managed to get his life on track. Made “gaunt and gangly” by life, and a disappointment to his Ma, Simon obsesses over an unresolved love for his shadowy and now-deceased grandpa, his precocious early talent drying up with his ultimately unfinished (and finally abandoned) musical masterpiece.
When Simon is hired by the mysterious monolithic Innovore corporation to do work even more mysterious, he finds himself working in service of a goal that feels as ambiguous as the ethics of the company (and its smooth-talking CEO) may prove themselves be.
Fired from Innovore, and cast even more adrift, as Simon sinks deeper into a search for something he cannot name or identify, a message leading to a path out of his current swirling, waterlogged life — his essence, his reality, his “veneer of truths” are in for a tumble on a quest that will stretch wider and deeper than struggling Simon can even imagine.
Rich with gorgeous imagery, and layered with language so poetic this reader found herself stopping to re-read sentence after sentence (no surprise from these talented authors), this is a small book held together with big ideas, and so many of them they are positively bursting at the seams.
In no particular order, a reader will find: enormous sinkholes (metaphorical and otherwise), hidden caves and homeless encampments; birds and animals and the magic of our shared “transparent realm”; nature (and the ever-present pink-spotted beetles) held in check, or out of balance; the irreconcilable pull-and-push of care and companionship; and the readiness, once you find it, to experience the connectedness of everything that matters.
A wonderful multi-layered read, this book is a both a joy and a journey.
A great big thank you to one of the authors (Jonathan Koven) for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.
