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Myths and Fairy Tales. Consciousness. Escape. Redemption. Pathos. Eccentricity. Assimilation.

A wildly beautiful book, this literary masterpiece – reminiscent in spirit and some thematic elements of the also-magnificent Kazuo Ishiguro- is both heartbreakingly tender and intensely thoughtful.

While the reader can’t stop thinking about the momentousness of the themes raised, it’s impossible to turn away from emotions soaring or sagging from the weight and wonder of these spellbinding characters, – their trials, traumas, and peculiarities, captured by the author with seemingly effortless freshness and vivacity.

With intricate and incredibly graceful technique, the author recursively layers time and space, in the form of a dense collection of tightly-packed fictional vignettes, – let’s call them narrative bubbles, – each of them imbued with meaning and context, particular and finite, a capsule perfectly capturing non-linear slices of time and space as it concerns one unique characters life; bumping along, touching a myriad of other narrative bubbles; coalescing, dissolving and re-emerging; bursting or binding into larger and more complex compound bubbles, – and so it goes, ad infinitum (easily imagined, boundless to continue, unchecked and multiplying, outside the confines of this narrative).

Amidst a backdrop of the ominous, spectacular power of technology (perhaps inadvertently unleashed, at an always under-appreciated cost) to homogenize, de-humanize, subjugate – these stories, bursting with extraordinariness, cry out for our attention, our hearts, and the oh so human yearning to connect, transcend and personify lives only briefly held as uniquely ours (or so we imagine) to watch.

I adored this book. Easily one of the slim-set of my now favorite all-time books.

So dense with beauty and bigness it begs to be read again. Perhaps slower this time, if possible, with even more appreciation for both story, and storyteller, and ideas unleashed; a legacy left to the mind of each and every reader; touched, dazzled and different, simply by its sharing.

A great big thank you to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.