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Crystal Eaters
Remy is a young girl who lives in a town that believes in crystal that you are born with one-hundred crystals inside and throughout your life, through accidents and illness, your count is depleted until you reach zero. As a city encroaches daily on the village, threatening their antiquated life, and the Earth grows warmer, Remy sets out to accomplish something no one else to increase her sick mother's crystal count. An allegory, fable, touching family saga, and poetic sci-fi adventure, Shane Jones underlines his reputation as an inspired and unique visionary. Shane Jones 's (b. 1980) first novel, Light Boxes , was originally published by Publishing Genius Press in a print run of five hundred copies in 2009. The novel was reviewed widely, the film optioned by Spike Jonze, and the book was reprinted by Penguin. Light Boxes has been translated in eight languages and was named an NPR best book of the year. Jones is also the author of the novels Daniel Fights a Hurricane and The Failure Six .
187 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2014
29 people are currently reading
1683 people want to read
About the author
Shane Jones
30 books244 followersShane Jones is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews
October 9, 2014
May appeal to César Aira fans? This novel and some of Aira's stuff share a "flight-forward" (fuga hacia adelante) improvisational whimsicality that can seem exciting/liberating/new or cloying/indulgent/dull, often on the same page. Aira's translated language seems to me a little more locked down than SJ's in this, and Aira often inserts essayistic stretches -- particularly upfront -- that read like postmodern literary theory. But I think they share a similar instinct when it comes to their conceptual spark, sense of fun, and willingness to follow the flow.
Otherwise, I like the page-numbering conceit (the book starts on page 183 and the numbering descends to page 1). In general, crystal count is a damn good idea for a novel. I love the Breaking Bad-esque (black instead of blue crystal), psychedelic, existential, environmental, videogame, and incarceration-related thematic overtones. I’ll continue to read whatever SJ writes since he’s on an odd, interesting path that may very well lead to unseen territories described in crystalline clarity.
Regarding the all-important provision of stars, my rating represents the overcast sky of my reading obscuring the streaking of a five-star comet of conception.
January 29, 2015
Again drawn to a book because of its cover and its crispness, again - like Loteria - driven away by characters I can't relate to as well as a plot that winds, and the abject misery of everyone involved (including myself).
I wanted to love this book because of the way it intertwined modern reality with science fiction and then combined that with prose that curled and yawned and stretched in all sorts of delicious ways. But the thing was, the aspects of this story's tilted world that did fascinate me were blatantly tossed by the wayside in favor of, say, describing in detail just how far the black crystal dug into the skin beneath of Pants McDonald's toenail. Capiche?
This book ends up being less about a rich, vivid, strange world that I want to learn more about than a psychological study of family dysfunction. Or modern society and its deterioration thanks to yoga studios and wifi and all those luxuries that make upper class folk feel so god damn pretentious, take your pick.
I couldn't stand Momma Bear and Poppa Bear's misery. I've seen it all before, and in reading about these people I - to quote There Will Be Blood - see nothing worth liking. Poppa Bear, surprise surprise, stuffs his feelings and then punches walls...dear old dad. Momma Bear manages to top his theoretical constipation by pitching herself in the opposite direction of detriment: dying of some mysterious disease (Preventable? Curable? Incurable? we'll never know) in which her life trickles away uncontrollably.
Given that the majority of the characters in this book are boys or men, I really do not appreciate how this Mom, as one of the only two women in the book, exists solely to suffer - first to give her entire self to her messed up family, then to be gang raped (and no one gives a shit - even Pants, watching, by his wording seems to think she likes it), then to waste away from some from some disgusting mystery illness (as per "the process" according to the village's assumed book-of-death type tome.) All throughout, she is a mere plot point... not an actual person, just the pivot upon which everyone else cycles into despair.
As you can see, I'm one of those readers who, upon realizing that this work is more a "heart-wrenching tale of family grief" than a foray into a world worth exploring (what was that dark red crystal that several miners discovered? Are there pink crystals, purple crystals, clear crystals?) realized that this was actually a waste of time.
Which is too bad. This book's magic did not work on me, and boy, did it try.
I wanted to love this book because of the way it intertwined modern reality with science fiction and then combined that with prose that curled and yawned and stretched in all sorts of delicious ways. But the thing was, the aspects of this story's tilted world that did fascinate me were blatantly tossed by the wayside in favor of, say, describing in detail just how far the black crystal dug into the skin beneath of Pants McDonald's toenail. Capiche?
This book ends up being less about a rich, vivid, strange world that I want to learn more about than a psychological study of family dysfunction. Or modern society and its deterioration thanks to yoga studios and wifi and all those luxuries that make upper class folk feel so god damn pretentious, take your pick.
I couldn't stand Momma Bear and Poppa Bear's misery. I've seen it all before, and in reading about these people I - to quote There Will Be Blood - see nothing worth liking. Poppa Bear, surprise surprise, stuffs his feelings and then punches walls...dear old dad. Momma Bear manages to top his theoretical constipation by pitching herself in the opposite direction of detriment: dying of some mysterious disease (Preventable? Curable? Incurable? we'll never know) in which her life trickles away uncontrollably.
Given that the majority of the characters in this book are boys or men, I really do not appreciate how this Mom, as one of the only two women in the book, exists solely to suffer - first to give her entire self to her messed up family, then to be gang raped (and no one gives a shit - even Pants, watching, by his wording seems to think she likes it), then to waste away from some from some disgusting mystery illness (as per "the process" according to the village's assumed book-of-death type tome.) All throughout, she is a mere plot point... not an actual person, just the pivot upon which everyone else cycles into despair.
As you can see, I'm one of those readers who, upon realizing that this work is more a "heart-wrenching tale of family grief" than a foray into a world worth exploring (what was that dark red crystal that several miners discovered? Are there pink crystals, purple crystals, clear crystals?) realized that this was actually a waste of time.
Which is too bad. This book's magic did not work on me, and boy, did it try.
September 12, 2014
goddamn. my favorite book of 2014.
March 19, 2015
“You wanted to see.”
Remy’s shoulders fold inward and her stomach absorbs a hammer. Sharp pieces of crystal trickle down inside her. She’s never seen a body get this far.
Mom’s face has lost meat the skull once held. And Dad was right, something is wrong with her mouth, as if she chewed bricks. Her eyes are glazed and rust-colored. Soon, her left eye will drip crystals (Chapter 5, Death Movement, Book 8). Her nose is hardened ash that Remy imagines if she touched would crumble. Gray hair gunked with shit fans her pillow. Dad repeats Can you hear us? Can you? Are you okay? and Remy thinks Don’t leave me. Smell of dead dogs. Smell of burning. She peels the blanket from Mom’s feet and sees the skin is a darker red compared to her face and neck, and even her veins, once strong and blue, have disappeared beneath this new red shell. A lack of circulation results in the color red drying everything up, erasing the last crystals in the body (Chapter 9, Death Movement, Book 8). The red is moving toward her chest and aiming to stop her heart.
“You don’t have to be here,” says Dad, in a softer tone now that he’s seen Remy’s reaction. “I know you’ve heard this before, from me, from books, and maybe you don’t believe it, but it’s never been disproved. Parents go and their children step into their place. There’s nothing wrong with just letting that happen.”
***
And then there are the books you desperately want to like, though they just never seem to work, no matter how interesting the central conceit first appears.
Shane Jones’ Crystal Eaters is more of an attempt at crafting a modern-day fable than it is a novel. The story focuses on Remy, a young girl living in a nameless village that believes in the crystal count—that everyone, when they are born, has one hundred crystals inside of them, and that through illness, disease, accidents, etc., their count gradually plummets toward zero—toward death. The count never increases; life moves in only one direction. In many ways, the imagined system is similar in concept to the lives in a video game, though considerably less structured.
Early on, we discover that Remy’s mother is dying—her count is almost down to nothing (reflected physically by the book’s unconventional structure—beginning at chapter 40 and page 183, and counting down to the end). Her brother Pants is in prison, and her father is distant. Therefore, it is up to Remy to do what no one else has ever done and find a way to increase her mother’s dwindling crystal count. Meanwhile, the city—the world outside—is encroaching on the village with abject disregard (and confusion) toward the crystal mine and the village’s seemingly absurd beliefs.
As implied at the start of this review, I had a great many problems with Crystal Eaters. The story offers a unique idea at its core, but it doesn’t manage to grow beyond the gestation stage—the concept just never takes hold. Much of the issue rests with the fact that Jones never seems to fully commit to the strangeness of the crystal count culture. The people in the village, as it is described, see and interact with the crystals, though to the outside world it is a baffling, illogical conceit. And even among the outside world there seems to be different levels of acknowledgement—from the guard who tells Pants that the village’s problem is that it believes in rocks and not God (thereby acknowledging the village’s belief in the crystal count) to the people at the hospital at the end, caring for Remy’s mother in her final moments, who appear to be utterly confused by even the mention of crystals.
To take this a step further, the comment made about believing in God versus believing in rocks illustrates an even deeper problem with this book. Jones presents the city at one point as a godless device—evidence of secular humanistic progress threatening to overwhelm an old-world belief structure (development crushing religion beneath its thumb)—but then introduces the concept of God in the aforementioned conversation with Pants, revealing that the crystals are not, as initially assumed, an analogue for faith versus science/technology/progress, but are their own isolated offshoot akin to a splinter group of a larger faith, one nearing the end of its existence. And then, later, when it’s revealed that while the crystals are the very essence of life to those in the village, they also market them to the outside world for use in jewellery or New Age yoga practices. This again shatters the analogue by stripping the metaphor—the crystals—of any semblance of otherworldly impact or effect, turning them into little more than a trinket.
Short of the outside world feeling confusion at the village dwellers, there’s also little to no indication that they are even grounded within the same reality, and that all that is different between them are their beliefs. The village in this story seems to exist in a bubble, which I found frustrating and negatively affected any hope of narrative cohesion. It’s as if the city (the outside world) isn’t so much a threat to the village as it is a character in a different story altogether. What this all means is that Crystal Eaters never successfully marries its metaphor to the story being told. It never goes far enough with the conceit, preferring to leave it as a surface-level idea unwilling to throw enough of its weight in any one direction. It’s like a designer setting an image deliberately off-centre in an attempt to unsettle its viewers, but not going far enough that it doesn’t appear to be a mistake.
It’s stated somewhere near the start of the book that “The village survives on myth,” but myths generally have a root to them, a set of rules, and the village in Crystal Eaters doesn’t ever establish its own rule set, rather it seems to exist both in its mythology, but also attempts to have a place in the real world. Jones attempts to blur the lines with things like the black crystal, which is analogous to both addiction and faith-based reliance (providing the illusory effect of one’s crystal count increasing—like someone getting high and believing they are invincible). But the black crystal is a myth within an already loose mythology, and never seems like anything more than a red herring to distract Remy from the reality of her mother’s approaching death.
I feel as though I could have forgiven many of the book’s storytelling faults had I found more to love with its moment-to-moment writing. Here, too, Crystal Eaters falls unfortunately short. I found little to love in Jones’ often staccato writing. Ordinarily I am drawn to writing that breaks with convention, but in Jones’ case what was left out seemed essential. The conversations feel broken and fragmented, as if critical strands of dialogue have been unnecessarily excised in favour of abstraction. As a consequence of this, not one character voice seems different from another—everyone bleeds together in forced, truncated tones stripped of all colour (which is somewhat ironic given the attempt to flood the world with colour via use of the crystals). I also found much of the sentence structure to be distractingly passive and just not engaging.
When all is said and done, Crystal Eaters feels less like a novel, or even a fable, and more like a short story blown out but not filled out. It reads like the first pass of an idea that might have proven interesting had it been more thoroughly/tonally developed (the imagery is too one-dimensional—throw in the word “crystal” and suddenly everything’s weird and metaphorical!). I do appreciate what I think Jones was going for on a conceptual level, but it just never arrived at its destination for me. The book felt, sadly, like an idea executed but not ever realized.
Remy’s shoulders fold inward and her stomach absorbs a hammer. Sharp pieces of crystal trickle down inside her. She’s never seen a body get this far.
Mom’s face has lost meat the skull once held. And Dad was right, something is wrong with her mouth, as if she chewed bricks. Her eyes are glazed and rust-colored. Soon, her left eye will drip crystals (Chapter 5, Death Movement, Book 8). Her nose is hardened ash that Remy imagines if she touched would crumble. Gray hair gunked with shit fans her pillow. Dad repeats Can you hear us? Can you? Are you okay? and Remy thinks Don’t leave me. Smell of dead dogs. Smell of burning. She peels the blanket from Mom’s feet and sees the skin is a darker red compared to her face and neck, and even her veins, once strong and blue, have disappeared beneath this new red shell. A lack of circulation results in the color red drying everything up, erasing the last crystals in the body (Chapter 9, Death Movement, Book 8). The red is moving toward her chest and aiming to stop her heart.
“You don’t have to be here,” says Dad, in a softer tone now that he’s seen Remy’s reaction. “I know you’ve heard this before, from me, from books, and maybe you don’t believe it, but it’s never been disproved. Parents go and their children step into their place. There’s nothing wrong with just letting that happen.”
***
And then there are the books you desperately want to like, though they just never seem to work, no matter how interesting the central conceit first appears.
Shane Jones’ Crystal Eaters is more of an attempt at crafting a modern-day fable than it is a novel. The story focuses on Remy, a young girl living in a nameless village that believes in the crystal count—that everyone, when they are born, has one hundred crystals inside of them, and that through illness, disease, accidents, etc., their count gradually plummets toward zero—toward death. The count never increases; life moves in only one direction. In many ways, the imagined system is similar in concept to the lives in a video game, though considerably less structured.
Early on, we discover that Remy’s mother is dying—her count is almost down to nothing (reflected physically by the book’s unconventional structure—beginning at chapter 40 and page 183, and counting down to the end). Her brother Pants is in prison, and her father is distant. Therefore, it is up to Remy to do what no one else has ever done and find a way to increase her mother’s dwindling crystal count. Meanwhile, the city—the world outside—is encroaching on the village with abject disregard (and confusion) toward the crystal mine and the village’s seemingly absurd beliefs.
As implied at the start of this review, I had a great many problems with Crystal Eaters. The story offers a unique idea at its core, but it doesn’t manage to grow beyond the gestation stage—the concept just never takes hold. Much of the issue rests with the fact that Jones never seems to fully commit to the strangeness of the crystal count culture. The people in the village, as it is described, see and interact with the crystals, though to the outside world it is a baffling, illogical conceit. And even among the outside world there seems to be different levels of acknowledgement—from the guard who tells Pants that the village’s problem is that it believes in rocks and not God (thereby acknowledging the village’s belief in the crystal count) to the people at the hospital at the end, caring for Remy’s mother in her final moments, who appear to be utterly confused by even the mention of crystals.
To take this a step further, the comment made about believing in God versus believing in rocks illustrates an even deeper problem with this book. Jones presents the city at one point as a godless device—evidence of secular humanistic progress threatening to overwhelm an old-world belief structure (development crushing religion beneath its thumb)—but then introduces the concept of God in the aforementioned conversation with Pants, revealing that the crystals are not, as initially assumed, an analogue for faith versus science/technology/progress, but are their own isolated offshoot akin to a splinter group of a larger faith, one nearing the end of its existence. And then, later, when it’s revealed that while the crystals are the very essence of life to those in the village, they also market them to the outside world for use in jewellery or New Age yoga practices. This again shatters the analogue by stripping the metaphor—the crystals—of any semblance of otherworldly impact or effect, turning them into little more than a trinket.
Short of the outside world feeling confusion at the village dwellers, there’s also little to no indication that they are even grounded within the same reality, and that all that is different between them are their beliefs. The village in this story seems to exist in a bubble, which I found frustrating and negatively affected any hope of narrative cohesion. It’s as if the city (the outside world) isn’t so much a threat to the village as it is a character in a different story altogether. What this all means is that Crystal Eaters never successfully marries its metaphor to the story being told. It never goes far enough with the conceit, preferring to leave it as a surface-level idea unwilling to throw enough of its weight in any one direction. It’s like a designer setting an image deliberately off-centre in an attempt to unsettle its viewers, but not going far enough that it doesn’t appear to be a mistake.
It’s stated somewhere near the start of the book that “The village survives on myth,” but myths generally have a root to them, a set of rules, and the village in Crystal Eaters doesn’t ever establish its own rule set, rather it seems to exist both in its mythology, but also attempts to have a place in the real world. Jones attempts to blur the lines with things like the black crystal, which is analogous to both addiction and faith-based reliance (providing the illusory effect of one’s crystal count increasing—like someone getting high and believing they are invincible). But the black crystal is a myth within an already loose mythology, and never seems like anything more than a red herring to distract Remy from the reality of her mother’s approaching death.
I feel as though I could have forgiven many of the book’s storytelling faults had I found more to love with its moment-to-moment writing. Here, too, Crystal Eaters falls unfortunately short. I found little to love in Jones’ often staccato writing. Ordinarily I am drawn to writing that breaks with convention, but in Jones’ case what was left out seemed essential. The conversations feel broken and fragmented, as if critical strands of dialogue have been unnecessarily excised in favour of abstraction. As a consequence of this, not one character voice seems different from another—everyone bleeds together in forced, truncated tones stripped of all colour (which is somewhat ironic given the attempt to flood the world with colour via use of the crystals). I also found much of the sentence structure to be distractingly passive and just not engaging.
When all is said and done, Crystal Eaters feels less like a novel, or even a fable, and more like a short story blown out but not filled out. It reads like the first pass of an idea that might have proven interesting had it been more thoroughly/tonally developed (the imagery is too one-dimensional—throw in the word “crystal” and suddenly everything’s weird and metaphorical!). I do appreciate what I think Jones was going for on a conceptual level, but it just never arrived at its destination for me. The book felt, sadly, like an idea executed but not ever realized.
July 4, 2014
Try not to laugh when you meet Jugba Marzan who "smells like hot dog water and mouth mints." Or a girl named Remy's second dog, Dog Man.
Line by line it's tough to break away from Shane Jones' best book yet. Ball it up and shove it in your guts through your belly button.
My review at the L Magazine http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/c...
Line by line it's tough to break away from Shane Jones' best book yet. Ball it up and shove it in your guts through your belly button.
My review at the L Magazine http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/c...
February 8, 2021
Útek z väzenia (ale naopak!)
"Ako dieťa vidíte výtvory. Ako dospelý vidíte skazu."
Túto knižku som našla v antikvariáte u nás v Košiciach - krásna obálka a fantasy/dystopy obsah ma presvedčili, že knižka musí ísť so mnou domov. Po dlhej dobe som sa k nej konečne dostala a neviem. Táto kniha mala svetlé okamihy, ale aj tie kde sa mi rozum trochu pozastavoval.
Nápad je skvelý, to nemôžem poprieť. Tá dedinka, v ktorej žijú a "živia" sa kryštálmi má taký fantasy+náboženský charakter, čo je presne kombinácia pre mňa. Čo mi však vadí je, že autor to trošku mohol viac premyslieť, dať mi viac detailov o tom celom - ako funguje tá dedina? majú menu? koľko ich je v tej dedine? kto môže dolovať krištále a kto nie?- také tie organizačné veci mi trochu chýbali.
Čo mi taktiež vadilo na tejto knihe: Mali ste tu dva typy postáv: 1. "normálni" ľudia; 2. tí extrémne divní. A kebyže odstránite mená, tak postavy od seba len ťažko rozoznáte. Taktiež niekde za polkou mi tá kniha začala pripomínať myšlienkami Klub bitkárov. Akože doslova akoby autor prepísal nejaký citát z tej knihy a trochu si ho pozmenil:D Tým, že mám ho rada, tak mi to až tak nevadilo, ale...no tak.
Ale musím vyzdvihnúť originalitu a celkový mix žánrov. Každý človek sa narodí so 100 kryštálmi v sebe a postupne ako starne a stávajú sa mu nehody, tak ich stráca a zomrie, keď ich bude mať 0. Plus tieto kryštále sa dajú aj jesť alebo poháňa sa nimi elektrina. Kebyže sa do toho autor viac zažerie a nespraví z toho podivnú wanna-be-filozifickú knihu, tak by to bolo mega.
"Ako dieťa vidíte výtvory. Ako dospelý vidíte skazu."
Túto knižku som našla v antikvariáte u nás v Košiciach - krásna obálka a fantasy/dystopy obsah ma presvedčili, že knižka musí ísť so mnou domov. Po dlhej dobe som sa k nej konečne dostala a neviem. Táto kniha mala svetlé okamihy, ale aj tie kde sa mi rozum trochu pozastavoval.
Nápad je skvelý, to nemôžem poprieť. Tá dedinka, v ktorej žijú a "živia" sa kryštálmi má taký fantasy+náboženský charakter, čo je presne kombinácia pre mňa. Čo mi však vadí je, že autor to trošku mohol viac premyslieť, dať mi viac detailov o tom celom - ako funguje tá dedina? majú menu? koľko ich je v tej dedine? kto môže dolovať krištále a kto nie?- také tie organizačné veci mi trochu chýbali.
Čo mi taktiež vadilo na tejto knihe: Mali ste tu dva typy postáv: 1. "normálni" ľudia; 2. tí extrémne divní. A kebyže odstránite mená, tak postavy od seba len ťažko rozoznáte. Taktiež niekde za polkou mi tá kniha začala pripomínať myšlienkami Klub bitkárov. Akože doslova akoby autor prepísal nejaký citát z tej knihy a trochu si ho pozmenil:D Tým, že mám ho rada, tak mi to až tak nevadilo, ale...no tak.
Ale musím vyzdvihnúť originalitu a celkový mix žánrov. Každý človek sa narodí so 100 kryštálmi v sebe a postupne ako starne a stávajú sa mu nehody, tak ich stráca a zomrie, keď ich bude mať 0. Plus tieto kryštále sa dajú aj jesť alebo poháňa sa nimi elektrina. Kebyže sa do toho autor viac zažerie a nespraví z toho podivnú wanna-be-filozifickú knihu, tak by to bolo mega.
February 1, 2015
I had a tough time with this novel. I checked it out because I admire indie publisher Two Dollar Radio and I had listened to a podcast interview with the author on Other People. Set in a speculative world, or perhaps allegorical would be a better word, its gritty, even gross details actually made me feel yucky.
A small extremely poor village with seven dirt roads lies outside an ever encroaching city. The villagers mine crystal and sell it to manufacturers in the city for technological uses. They have mythical beliefs about crystal's properties, the main one being that every living creature is born with 100 units of crystal in their bodies. As life goes on this count steadily lowers due to accidents, injuries, illness, punishments, and emotional turmoil, until all the crystal is gone and death ensues.
Remy is sad throughout the book because both her dog and her mother are dying, her dad is stoically distraught, and her brother is in jail. The most mythical belief of all is that the crystal count can be replenished by ingesting a certain rare and hard to mine color of crystal.
At least that is what I could figure out. The chapters are numbered from 40 down to 0. Remy and her brother love their parents, death is inevitable, but also brings sorrow. The city controls anything that is good in the material world but the powerless villagers still have feelings.
I admit that the conceit with the crystals is original but the plot is not. If I had to live in that village I would welcome death.
In a Paris Review interview, Shane Jones says, "...prayer, crystals, myths, folktales, the universe as a system of life and destruction--I'm attracted to these things and they are players in the book."
The book garnered some highly positive, even adoring reviews, but it did not work for me.
February 19, 2015
I do wish this book had lived up to its jacket description, which focuses on Remy and what she supposedly sets out to do. The story's strength is Remy, as well as this interesting idea that a city is each day growing closer and closer to her little crystal mining village. But, sadly, these elements are not the focus of the story. The blurb makes the book's plot seem more tidy and succinct than it is.
Instead, the book diverts and starts to follow other characters, switching POV at every tiny chapter - to the mother, to the father, to Remy's brother, to a random kid named Z, perspectives which are not as compelling as Remy's. The plot element of the city is lost too and never fully fleshed out, which left this book with little to keep me going from chapter to chapter by the end.
Perhaps the story could have benefited from some better editing, someone to say, "Tell this same story (the troubled marriage, the brother in prison, the sick mother who was raped years ago), but make it so Remy is the one to tell it all." And someone to make sure that the clever, hard-hitting literary sentences Jones writes at the beginning of the book continue through the end.
Other issues: I'd heard this book was allegory, which ended up distracting me as a reader instead of compelling me. Also, I could never understand why everyone in the village thought black crystals didn't exist when everyone in the city prison seemed to know they did, and Remy herself ran through the village mines barefooted and got high off the black crystals that had embedded themselves in her feet.
This printing had some copy errors as well (as instead of gas, breaths instead of breathes).
Overall, 2.5.
Instead, the book diverts and starts to follow other characters, switching POV at every tiny chapter - to the mother, to the father, to Remy's brother, to a random kid named Z, perspectives which are not as compelling as Remy's. The plot element of the city is lost too and never fully fleshed out, which left this book with little to keep me going from chapter to chapter by the end.
Perhaps the story could have benefited from some better editing, someone to say, "Tell this same story (the troubled marriage, the brother in prison, the sick mother who was raped years ago), but make it so Remy is the one to tell it all." And someone to make sure that the clever, hard-hitting literary sentences Jones writes at the beginning of the book continue through the end.
Other issues: I'd heard this book was allegory, which ended up distracting me as a reader instead of compelling me. Also, I could never understand why everyone in the village thought black crystals didn't exist when everyone in the city prison seemed to know they did, and Remy herself ran through the village mines barefooted and got high off the black crystals that had embedded themselves in her feet.
This printing had some copy errors as well (as instead of gas, breaths instead of breathes).
Overall, 2.5.
July 4, 2014
Another great book by Shane Jones -- surreal, funny, and heartbreaking. I wrote a full review for Electric Literature here: http://electricliterature.com/review-...
June 2, 2016
I feel so drained after reading this. It's so filled with beauty and imagination and sadness and I can't help but love it.
January 30, 2022
Hyper-surreal and nearly incomprehensible is Shane Jones’s Crystal Eaters. The novel is a strange fable telling the story of a poor nuclear family in a world where the passage of time and death are both literally and allegorically manifested by the number of crystals remaining within one’s body. It’s a very difficult read because of how obfuscating Jones’s prose is and really didn’t work for me, though I did like some of the imagery & worldbuilding. Some positive reviews describe it as poetic or moving, but I just found it dense and trudged through until it was over.
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July 1, 2014http://www.full-stop.net/2014/07/01/r...
Review by Eleanor Gold
Dear Reader: consider this your first and last warning: Crystal Eaters is not psychological realism; it is not epic fantasy, though there are myths and a quest of sorts; it is not YA, though its ostensible protagonist is a young girl; nor is it precisely a coming of age novel, though perhaps it is closer to that than any of the others. Shane Jones’ writing does not fit into any of those easy — though perhaps mistaken — genres by which we categorize books and sort them on our shelves. That is, unless you have a bookshelf specifically for “Weird, Delightful, and Sometimes Painful,” where this book might just fit in next to The Orange Eats Creeps and The Soft Machine.
Crystal Eaters is the story of a strange and wondrous village near a city (called “the village” and “the city”) — and the city, it appears, is growing closer every day, encroaching on the villagers via tourists, surveillance, and the literal and uncanny growth of buildings. The villagers’ economy and culture centers on a crystal mine, which produces red, green, yellow, blue, and perhaps even the mythical black crystals. Everyone is born with 100 crystals inside them; throughout your life accidents, traumas, and the mere accumulation of years gradually deplete your crystal count until you die. Animals have fewer crystals than humans; the sun has enormously more, though these, too, might be running out.
Read the rest here: http://www.full-stop.net/2014/07/01/r...
Review by Eleanor Gold
Dear Reader: consider this your first and last warning: Crystal Eaters is not psychological realism; it is not epic fantasy, though there are myths and a quest of sorts; it is not YA, though its ostensible protagonist is a young girl; nor is it precisely a coming of age novel, though perhaps it is closer to that than any of the others. Shane Jones’ writing does not fit into any of those easy — though perhaps mistaken — genres by which we categorize books and sort them on our shelves. That is, unless you have a bookshelf specifically for “Weird, Delightful, and Sometimes Painful,” where this book might just fit in next to The Orange Eats Creeps and The Soft Machine.
Crystal Eaters is the story of a strange and wondrous village near a city (called “the village” and “the city”) — and the city, it appears, is growing closer every day, encroaching on the villagers via tourists, surveillance, and the literal and uncanny growth of buildings. The villagers’ economy and culture centers on a crystal mine, which produces red, green, yellow, blue, and perhaps even the mythical black crystals. Everyone is born with 100 crystals inside them; throughout your life accidents, traumas, and the mere accumulation of years gradually deplete your crystal count until you die. Animals have fewer crystals than humans; the sun has enormously more, though these, too, might be running out.
Read the rest here: http://www.full-stop.net/2014/07/01/r...
July 22, 2014
Light Boxes will probably forever be my favorite work by Shane Jones, but with Crystal Eaters, he's achieved the same urgency and magic as his other books. He continually takes the experimental side of contemporary fiction and grounds it in accessible allegory, making his work more interesting than most of what's out there now. I usually don't care for child protagonists, but in Remy, we get (for once) an atypical adolescent narrator. And where many contemporaries writing in this vein don't elicit empathy for their characters, Jones really evokes a sadness for this family that readers will feel, despite the unreality of the story's setting and premise.
I'd been waiting for this book all year, and it didn't disappoint.
I'd been waiting for this book all year, and it didn't disappoint.
April 8, 2019
Started off as this otherworldly, romantic read with an atmosphere comparable to the best work by Richard Brautigan. Unfortunately, it ended in an embarrassing display of lethargic schizophrenia. By the time things actually started happening, the prose became all action. The plot became too busy without ever really solving any questions or dilemmas. I think a lot of the literary types who flock to Shane Jones' work enjoy him for the wrong reasons. Because they're playing a role where they're supposed to enjoy him instead of genuinely feeling his work.
June 27, 2017
I loved the premise for this book, however the style for me was lacking. The hallucinogenic flights were vivid and interesting but became overwhelming. I lost the thread of the story several times and the characters got diluted in favor of experimentalism. For pure inventiveness and imagination, this one gets full marks; but the style, for me, kept the story from being fully realized.
February 28, 2014
Crystal Eaters is complex, taut, compelling lit. I've known Shane Jones was good from the beginning, but to have it confirmed, yet again, three novels in, is exciting. In Jones' hands, words are black crystals.
July 6, 2014
It's well written. However, I disagree with the hype surrounding this book. It's better than Daniel Fights A Hurricane but lacks the emotional velocity and punch of Light Boxes.
July 12, 2017
I feel like someone has already called this book electrically charged, but I will go ahead and support that review. This novel has a lot of heart and a lot of things leaking out of it.
May 9, 2020
This is the type of book I feel like I "should" like in order to be able to discuss it with very edgy, pretentious literary types. Like, it should have been assigned by that New-Agey college professor who smokes Russian cigarettes and only watches festival films. Am I painting the correct picture?
Once again, I fell victim to false advertisement! The blurb says this is a story of a young girl who's trying to increase her ailing mother's crystal count. Inferred: *this* should be the *focal point* of the novel. It was one-third of the book--maybe--and I will concede that one-third was beautiful and quite moving, and I would read that one-third again. Hence, the 3 star rating.
The other two-thirds were about a convict brother and his "addiction" and a loopy, wannabe, fame-seeking gang leader who, as I was reading both narratives, was like if all those albino guys from the new Mad Max had written their nightmares on the walls of their cave with urine and feces. It was jarring, erratic, disturbing, plain unenjoyable, AND: not what I signed up for, yo!
I was expecting this deeply emotional, maybe hippie-crunchy tale of a town obsessed with their crystal count and with a lot of family drama. Sadly, the grossness, head-tripping, and mania far outweighed what was moving.
The blurb slated this book as "allegory/fable". I've yet to figure out what for. Maybe addiction? Maybe an environmental manifesto? I feel like every writer who wants "edge" has to include rape and animal abuse; like that's not as old and tired as it is sad and gross.
Alas, this book really pissed me off. If I'd known I was about to go beyond the Thunderdome, I would have better prepared.
Not researching beyond the blurb rears its ugly head yet again. Buyer beware!
Once again, I fell victim to false advertisement! The blurb says this is a story of a young girl who's trying to increase her ailing mother's crystal count. Inferred: *this* should be the *focal point* of the novel. It was one-third of the book--maybe--and I will concede that one-third was beautiful and quite moving, and I would read that one-third again. Hence, the 3 star rating.
The other two-thirds were about a convict brother and his "addiction" and a loopy, wannabe, fame-seeking gang leader who, as I was reading both narratives, was like if all those albino guys from the new Mad Max had written their nightmares on the walls of their cave with urine and feces. It was jarring, erratic, disturbing, plain unenjoyable, AND: not what I signed up for, yo!
I was expecting this deeply emotional, maybe hippie-crunchy tale of a town obsessed with their crystal count and with a lot of family drama. Sadly, the grossness, head-tripping, and mania far outweighed what was moving.
The blurb slated this book as "allegory/fable". I've yet to figure out what for. Maybe addiction? Maybe an environmental manifesto? I feel like every writer who wants "edge" has to include rape and animal abuse; like that's not as old and tired as it is sad and gross.
Alas, this book really pissed me off. If I'd known I was about to go beyond the Thunderdome, I would have better prepared.
Not researching beyond the blurb rears its ugly head yet again. Buyer beware!
July 11, 2019
Book 14 of 2019 is finished! I purchased Crystal Eaters by Shane Jones on my “booknerd trip” to Columbus in April at @twodollarradio. It is listed as an “allegory, fable, touching family saga, and poetic sci-fi adventure” which sounded very interesting so I picked it up. The basis of being born with 100 crystals inside you and you lose them throughout your life by getting hurt or getting sick until you reached ZERO was fascinating. The mother in the story was sick and was super close to zero so the son tried to get her to eat these black crystals which were rumored to make your “count” higher again but basically just gave you a high that made you feel like your count was more than it actually was. I also thought it was cool that the chapters and pages went down as you read instead of up like the crystal counts did.
I wish this story was what the author focused on but I felt like he added the story about the sun getting closer to Earth and the city closing in on the village these crystal people lived and it just got to be too many stories in one story if that makes sense at all.
I rated this another 3 stars because of it not staying on track throughout the story and I don’t feel like I would read this again. I would definitely pick up more by Shane Jones though.
I wish this story was what the author focused on but I felt like he added the story about the sun getting closer to Earth and the city closing in on the village these crystal people lived and it just got to be too many stories in one story if that makes sense at all.
I rated this another 3 stars because of it not staying on track throughout the story and I don’t feel like I would read this again. I would definitely pick up more by Shane Jones though.
June 5, 2020
I don't believe I've ever given a book 1 star but I just really didn't like this one. I wanted to support a local publishing company/bookstore and they were selling mystery books for $10. I got this one and I thought the premise was very cool. Everyone has a crystal count and as you get injured or sick over your lifetime, your crystals deplete and once you hit zero it's light's out. Remy's mom is sick and her crystal count is going down rapidly. Rumor has it that there's black crystals that can actually add to your count so Remy sets out to find one. But the plot is much more than that.
This book is a self-proclaimed allegory and maybe I'm just too simple to understand it. Definitely not my style of writing either. Way too "out there" for my tastes but some people would probably love it.
I did like the setup of the book. The chapters and page numbers move down instead of up to simulate the crystal depletion. That was my favorite part.
This book is a self-proclaimed allegory and maybe I'm just too simple to understand it. Definitely not my style of writing either. Way too "out there" for my tastes but some people would probably love it.
I did like the setup of the book. The chapters and page numbers move down instead of up to simulate the crystal depletion. That was my favorite part.
February 9, 2025
Cool format. This would be an enjoyable story for someone. Not me, but someone! A bit Faulkner-ish in its abstraction and the way I sometimes don’t have a clue what is happening but I understand enough to feel hopeless and a little disgusted.
“No humor out there. Serious business among those stars. The universe does whatever it wants while we're forced to play games. We've all thought about our lives compared to what's above, right? Think about it, the universe is going to live forever. No counting days or crystals. No last breaths with loved ones. The universe will just keep expanding. Do you understand what I'm saying? It's important that we just do what it is we do and we keep doing it for as long as possible."
“Everyone in the city is insane. Everyone is touching technology. Free space in the city doesn't exist. Every inch is filled, and from a cloud's view, it's all moving like a tidal wave of concrete and blinking lights toward the village.”
“No humor out there. Serious business among those stars. The universe does whatever it wants while we're forced to play games. We've all thought about our lives compared to what's above, right? Think about it, the universe is going to live forever. No counting days or crystals. No last breaths with loved ones. The universe will just keep expanding. Do you understand what I'm saying? It's important that we just do what it is we do and we keep doing it for as long as possible."
“Everyone in the city is insane. Everyone is touching technology. Free space in the city doesn't exist. Every inch is filled, and from a cloud's view, it's all moving like a tidal wave of concrete and blinking lights toward the village.”
June 6, 2019
This is the sixth book by Jones that I've read this year and the first I haven't given five stars. While I've read all of his other books (so far) in a day or two, this one took almost two months to finish. I felt little attachment to the characters and often felt overwhelmed (sometimes in a good way) by the ongoing (and stunning) psychedelic hallucinations. That being said, this book was full of surrealist beauty and plenty of incredibly lyrical scenes (like the reverse jailbreak and the 'yellow insect' coming out of the ground). A powerful fable, no doubt, just not the one for me.
December 20, 2023
This was a blind buy for me, and man, I’m glad I went for it. I thought: “hm… Crystal Eaters… it’d be cool to eat crystals…” *add to cart* Ever woke up in the middle of the night in a feverish haze convinced you are somewhere between reality and another world? No one is awake or can quite see what you see, and there’s something oddly comforting about exploring this 3am universe, the spaces between… I am not a big fiction reader, I consider myself picky— I’m willing to accept that I don’t look for the classic elements of a story that most people are seeking, but it was a win for me. Crystal Eaters was the pretentiously poetic story I was looking for. If Richard Siken was a novel writer, this would be his word baby. Jones’ prose is hallucinogenic, vibrant, sharp, puzzling, gloomy, abstract, revolting, somehow beautiful. There is an Uncanny Valley feeling throughout that threatens to claw through your chest. Jones speaks in metaphor, riddles— he turns words into something other than their intended use, and it works flawlessly. Viscerally human. Existential dread bomb.
July 5, 2016
I found this at Moon Palace Books when I went to go buy the 3rd volume of The Familiar (a commitment I'm not confident I'll be able to uphold). I absolutely love Shane Jones' Light Boxes (I've read it several times in the past few years) and so I thought hey it's time to get another one. I wasn't quite sure about making the purchase at first, but the cover of the book really pushed me over the edge (as many have). So that if anything counts in favor of the book.
I'll start with a quote from the back by HTML Giant: "In Jones' world, a range of colors lives inside each person--in fact, that very rainbow gives the body its power, its life. And although death will one day drain those colors from each person, Crystal Eaters reminds us that life itself is a luminous thing."
At first I thought this would translate into personalities and psyches. In the book a range of colors does live inside each person, but you only see it when they suffer--physically or mentally. The colors don't so much represent psychological factors, but the primal life forces that reside in each person. For that reason it wasn't as complex in ways that I assumed; rather, its depth materializes in the bonds of family, the conflict between the village and city mirrored by an ancient battle between the sun and the mythic black crystal, and the meaningless suffering the characters cope with. It's very similar to Light Boxes in that respect and I found myself vicariously experiencing the frustration of figuring out what the (or a) normal way of handling such circumstances were for the characters. Crystal Eaters reminds us that life itself is a luminous thing, but only at the cost of the jagged shadows that distort it and fascinate us.
Overall, I enjoyed the book but not as much as Light Boxes. And although it shares similar themes and an ambiance of absurdism, I think it's different enough and cultivates its own aesthetic enough that they are not mere replicas of one another. My one major criticism is that it could have developed one or two characters more to really draw the story together or make a strong stab into the existential nothingness of the individual, but it chose rather to focus on the family as an overarching structure--which works too (maybe actually works or even works instead). Despite the lack of whatever it is I want, the individuals in the family are compelling on their own--the dying mother a haunting symbol of family unity, the world-worn father who mistakes stoicism for virtue, the older brother who starts a revolution but fails, and the little sister who stumbles into her brother's footsteps with a heightened sense of urgency and innocence. Its other strengths lie in its fantastical evocative images that revolve around crystals and parodies of modern day systems and structures considered "normal" (prisons, politicians, drugs). Jones is really successful at putting you in his world.
As a reader, I became frustrated with people I wanted to care about and hear more about, and I also found myself getting excited, apprehensive about their lattice-like sufferings. I would recommend this to fans of fantastical short novels of vibrant imagery but also a masterless world--but I can't help but think about how good Light Boxes is even as I write this. I'm eager to read his other book Daniel Fights A Hurricane. Here are a few of my fav passages:
"To not think hm wonder what's my count, while you're alive? I don't think you can ignore the thoughts of zero. It's scary to be alive. Sometimes, if I close my eyes and clear my head and just concentrate, like just really concentrate on what it would be like to be empty, to not have to live, to not get out of bed, my entire body goes into a kind of shock. It knows. I can feel what it will be like."
"It's a brittle corner soon to be dust. Pants shoves a sliver under his big toenail until it knifes the flesh. pacing in his cell, he bends his toe inside his sneaker, the crystal cracking and cutting, slitting open skin. He prepares this way for the health meeting because he has to talk during the health meeting. it's difficult enough to listen to hundreds of words exiting a guard's mouth about god, but to return them sober among peers and the supervisor is nearly impossible. It's hard to look at people who have faces. Besides, he thinks he's leaving this place sometime soon and one last health meeting is doable."
"He can't turn his head off. When his neck can't be pressed further, his legs fully extended, his body goes limp and he rolls onto his back. For a moment, he sees nothing, and that feels good. Hands on his chest he breaths in bursts that raise and lower his chest in such a dramatic fashion that he screams for help even though he knows the guards can't hear him or don't care to. He thinks he should have been a better son, and should have been a better brother, but he did the best he could, and it's only in this present moment, looking back, can he think such a non-helpful thought as I should have done better. In the past you can change yourself into someone better, or worse, but not in the present moment, no, that's impossible because the memory can't be molded yet into what you want it to be, and Pants thinks this, and laughs, and he moves his hand across the always cool prison floor imagining the dirt from the crystal mine as he breaks apart a layer of static."
"The sun pierced by buildings wrapped in tornadic filth."
I'll start with a quote from the back by HTML Giant: "In Jones' world, a range of colors lives inside each person--in fact, that very rainbow gives the body its power, its life. And although death will one day drain those colors from each person, Crystal Eaters reminds us that life itself is a luminous thing."
At first I thought this would translate into personalities and psyches. In the book a range of colors does live inside each person, but you only see it when they suffer--physically or mentally. The colors don't so much represent psychological factors, but the primal life forces that reside in each person. For that reason it wasn't as complex in ways that I assumed; rather, its depth materializes in the bonds of family, the conflict between the village and city mirrored by an ancient battle between the sun and the mythic black crystal, and the meaningless suffering the characters cope with. It's very similar to Light Boxes in that respect and I found myself vicariously experiencing the frustration of figuring out what the (or a) normal way of handling such circumstances were for the characters. Crystal Eaters reminds us that life itself is a luminous thing, but only at the cost of the jagged shadows that distort it and fascinate us.
Overall, I enjoyed the book but not as much as Light Boxes. And although it shares similar themes and an ambiance of absurdism, I think it's different enough and cultivates its own aesthetic enough that they are not mere replicas of one another. My one major criticism is that it could have developed one or two characters more to really draw the story together or make a strong stab into the existential nothingness of the individual, but it chose rather to focus on the family as an overarching structure--which works too (maybe actually works or even works instead). Despite the lack of whatever it is I want, the individuals in the family are compelling on their own--the dying mother a haunting symbol of family unity, the world-worn father who mistakes stoicism for virtue, the older brother who starts a revolution but fails, and the little sister who stumbles into her brother's footsteps with a heightened sense of urgency and innocence. Its other strengths lie in its fantastical evocative images that revolve around crystals and parodies of modern day systems and structures considered "normal" (prisons, politicians, drugs). Jones is really successful at putting you in his world.
As a reader, I became frustrated with people I wanted to care about and hear more about, and I also found myself getting excited, apprehensive about their lattice-like sufferings. I would recommend this to fans of fantastical short novels of vibrant imagery but also a masterless world--but I can't help but think about how good Light Boxes is even as I write this. I'm eager to read his other book Daniel Fights A Hurricane. Here are a few of my fav passages:
"To not think hm wonder what's my count, while you're alive? I don't think you can ignore the thoughts of zero. It's scary to be alive. Sometimes, if I close my eyes and clear my head and just concentrate, like just really concentrate on what it would be like to be empty, to not have to live, to not get out of bed, my entire body goes into a kind of shock. It knows. I can feel what it will be like."
"It's a brittle corner soon to be dust. Pants shoves a sliver under his big toenail until it knifes the flesh. pacing in his cell, he bends his toe inside his sneaker, the crystal cracking and cutting, slitting open skin. He prepares this way for the health meeting because he has to talk during the health meeting. it's difficult enough to listen to hundreds of words exiting a guard's mouth about god, but to return them sober among peers and the supervisor is nearly impossible. It's hard to look at people who have faces. Besides, he thinks he's leaving this place sometime soon and one last health meeting is doable."
"He can't turn his head off. When his neck can't be pressed further, his legs fully extended, his body goes limp and he rolls onto his back. For a moment, he sees nothing, and that feels good. Hands on his chest he breaths in bursts that raise and lower his chest in such a dramatic fashion that he screams for help even though he knows the guards can't hear him or don't care to. He thinks he should have been a better son, and should have been a better brother, but he did the best he could, and it's only in this present moment, looking back, can he think such a non-helpful thought as I should have done better. In the past you can change yourself into someone better, or worse, but not in the present moment, no, that's impossible because the memory can't be molded yet into what you want it to be, and Pants thinks this, and laughs, and he moves his hand across the always cool prison floor imagining the dirt from the crystal mine as he breaks apart a layer of static."
"The sun pierced by buildings wrapped in tornadic filth."
January 23, 2019
What I find really compelling about this book, and Shane Jones' writing in general, is how effectively he manages to convey devastation while really flexing the malleability of his cartoonish sci-fi/fantasy world. I did feel like the different perspectives lost themselves a little in the middle third, but the final third brings it all together in an interesting way, and the language is always interesting and funny be engaging.
December 21, 2018
In this alternate world, people think about death as losing your crystals. Everyone starts with 100, and when they all get used up due to aging, illness, injury, etc. then you die. Remy and Adam/Pants' mom is dying and they think they can save her by finding rare black crystals and figuring out a way to increase her crystal count.
Read
May 19, 2021So distracted lately, had to attempt this 3 times because I could not focus at all though. A good read though, starts off somewhat like a fable/kid's tale that slowly becomes more and more bleak, climate disaster, colonialism and addiction slowly warping people's lives as they desperately try to stabilise.
November 17, 2021
I'm disappointed because the bones of this world and the building done on the crystals and the encroaching city and the sun that hates the world are immensely interesting and it's all wrapped up in gross crystal body horror that never feels real enough, family drama, and gang rape of a dying woman as a plot device--none of which actually really goes anywhere or means anything.
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