The hero of Rick Gekoski’s debut novel at first seemed to be a misanthropic crank. James Darke, a retired English teacher, spent months at home wallowing in gloomy thoughts, replaying wistful memories and berating the cruel and idiotic ways of the world and his fellow man. When it emerged that Darke was broken by the loss of his wife, the story and its protagonist acquired heft. A coming-of-old-age tale unfolded into a poignant yet hard-hitting meditation on grief, with a richly complex character at its centre.
Three years on and Mr Gekoski has written a supremely accomplished tragicomic sequel. If “Darke” depicted a painful journey into the light, “Darke Matter” charts forward steps and glances back at the abyss, while exploring a murky moral issue. It is more ambitious than its predecessor, and the author pulls it off in style.
Kendra Atleework’s memoir Miracle Country opens with two major events: the California wildfires of 2015 and Atleework’s rushed return to the Owens Valley, where the fires reached and threatened her childhood home. Atleework’s home is safe in the end, but this opening introduces two themes the book explores: the danger inherent in the California desert landscape, and Atleework’s intense attachment to this area she calls home. It also introduces her family as being at the root of Atleework’s connection to the Owens Valley; neither of her parents were originally from the region, but both felt a bond with the landscape—its hiking trails and beauty and possibilities, good and bad. Atleework’s mother passed away when she was sixteen, and this loss shapes Atleework’s poignant and skillful exploration as she connects her memories and the history of the Owens Valley to tell her own story of her home.
Social criticism is embedded within the Gothic formula, a truth that Silvia Moreno-Garcia certainly appreciates. Her new novel, Mexican Gothic, is a ghastly treat to read, but this supernatural escape tale isn't simply escapist. Set in Mexico in 1950, when women weren't yet allowed to vote, Mexican Gothic explores how, for its independent female characters, marriage threatens to be a premature burial.
Kaufman, of course, is the clever one here, and he has a blast tweaking toxic masculinity, celebrity worship, political correctness, filmmaking, therapy, high art, low art and much more. Themes that have long preoccupied the writer, particularly in the films “Adaptation” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” reappear in “Antkind.” Humanity’s ever competing perceptions of reality, the unreliability of memory, the question of God’s existence and the malleable nature of storytelling are measured again and again in this novel that is long but never dull.
Once in the vast middle of pain—pain stopped,
and a certain clarity descended.
In the sudden effortlessness of being, I could
forget the body. I stayed perfectly still,