A Set of Lines

by S.D. Stewart, Nate Dorr (Illustrator)

"Last night I drew all night. I copied the images from the textbook and then I drew them again freehand—I made them move on the page, lengthened the lines and darkened the centers."

The tree, the river, the old textbook—a triptych with shifting borders hangs in a place where dreams and memories intertwine. Omission and loss haunt those who live here, suspended as they are in an endless struggle to connect. Contracting and expanding as it progresses, the narrative of their existence ever-circles around a shrouded core.

260 pages, Paperback

Published May 14, 2020

About the author

i'm over here.

Reviews

[Nathanimal · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a marvelous book, a very NOW novel of the future. Imagine a world where there’s no outside, where passersby are faceless and every day feels so much the same that time smears. You don’t have to imagine it, you’re probably living some version of it right now. A Set of Lines is life pared down until it bleeds. It might inadvertently be the first coronapunk novel.

There’s a massive presence in these pages of something you barely get to see, an entity called the Censor. It’s a kind of monster, a memory monster. (And when you do glimpse it, it’s terrifying.) The protagonist has just enough awareness to know he’s been compromised by this entity. He senses that key memories have been excised, that essential narrative equipment has been damaged. So the novel builds itself from mental wreckage, from scrambled memory and dream and conjecture, all this raw cognition. What strange, mutable material. There’s something in common here with the nouveau roman, though it’s not at all cold and distant as those books tend to be.

This novel will pull you down into it. I compare it to ambient music. The rhythmic recurrence of images and thoughts is hypnotic and offers a different, satisfying kind of reading experience. Time smears. Moreover you can’t miss the personal urgency working behind the scenes. This isn’t an author trying to make a career by displaying his mastery, it’s an artist wrestling with a deeply felt crisis. It feels more genuine than a lot of contemporary fiction. And in this age of persona that’s exactly what I crave and what literature still seems best positioned to deliver.

I have to mention the artwork, too. Nate Dorr’s illustrations are perfect and add thoughtfully to the story. Thanks to him this novel isn’t just a great read, it’s a beautiful object.

Guys, this is kind of a special review for me, if you don’t mind me getting personal. In 2014, after being member of Goodreads for seven years, I left. I shuttered my profile and switched off my notifications. I was working on a novel at the time and was frustrated with my lack of progress. I was going through some things, too, and had retreated inward. At the beginning of 2019 I returned, feeling a bit embarrassed. I needed people again. I’m so glad I did! The sense of community here is stronger than before and I’ve really valued the connections I’ve made. The production of this book owes in part to friendships made here. I’m honored to know this author and to have been involved in a small way in the production of this book. This book signifies much of the connection I was hoping to find when I returned here.

[Nate D · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a sealed city, a nameless worker is haunted by the recurring images that manage to shine through his obliterated memories of times before. A tree, a river, a drawing someone once tried to show him -- these become bright-burning signs in an unnatural twilight existence. But in being drawn back into the fragmentary past, will he lose hold of the few connections that remain in the present?

I was an early reader of this, and also designed the cover and six illustrations for the interior. So clearly I'm not a neutral observer, But even if I was, I'd doubtless have been equally sucked in by its uncertain-yet-familiar collapsed world and sense of precarious memory and self-continuity. A Set of Lines brushes shoulders with the best kinds of dystopian fiction and oneiric subjectivity, but with precision prose and a tight control of its elements that keep the story tethered. And while creating the images for this from a mostly-sealed home in the increasingly dystopian present, it really began to feel more timely than ever.

[Rebecca Gransden · Rating 4 out of 5]

In spare language Stewart constructs a world of detachment. A medicated wooziness overshadows the novel, where time and memory is fragmentary. Strange tasks with obscure purpose are undertaken with a resigned acceptance. There is the ever-present suppressed suggestion that clarity exists somewhere in the unconscious, kept under wraps and sublimated, but pressing forcefully, ready to spring into revelation, made urgent by the subdued and anaesthetised mundanity of existence. Endless repetitious days become confused, and are infused with daydreams, in particular referencing the recurring symbolic image of a tree with orange bark. The world is being surveilled, and in the background hover the persistent Censors. This aspect is skilfully executed, their presence represented as intrinsic to the makeup of a remade society. Having this underplayed imbues them with a more sinister quality than if their presence had been an explicitly oppressive one, as the surreptitiousness of control methods is part of their power. There is always the feeling that a clear view and explanation of this reality is out of reach. The world is insulated, aspects that were once the province of natural processes are imposed and artificial—a cool light casts over the world and fake birdsong sings. Times before a great Change are hinted at, and images of nature repeat in memories, while other memories play over, taken from different points of view. There is a feeling that some sort of answer exists in examining memories in this way. In a pithy way, this novel is probably what would happen if Michel Gondry decided to direct Kafka. Characters are known by a single letter, which suggests a number of dystopian scenarios, such as categorisation, the enforced suppression of individual expression, the banality of a system based around box ticking, placement in a hierarchy of utility, and, the staple of all fiction hostile to bureaucratic machinations, dehumanisation. There is a shorthand inherent in tackling dystopian themes, and Stewart moulds a knowing backdrop, using that shorthand to create a scaffolding which amplifies the atmosphere of benumbed melancholy. Throughout, there is an overwhelming sense of longing underneath the surface, a longing obfuscated and perhaps suppressed for so long, that its very function is being forgotten. The unconscious mind and its rebellion against passivity in the face of the denial of human wants and dignities is very present in this novel.

The artworks provided by Nate Dorr for the book that are placed intermittently throughout the text add another layer of depth and are extraordinary in their own right.

A special novel, identifying the interior zeitgeist.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

The general atmosphere of unease and futility here reminds me of Stewart's earlier Bunker Diaries, which I loved for its claustrophobia and sparse but effective treatment. A Set of Lines opens up into a larger, but still confined and constricting world, of depressing tunnels, vertical buildings, artificial light and simulated birdsong. A separate living scenario, that we would consider much more "natural", exists in the woods; but like much else in the novel, I'm not sure if this is actually part of the narrator's dreams. There are hints of a widespread "condition" involving memory loss; of course these days it's hard not to associate the "condition" with our respiratory pandemic.

The odd, intriguing motifs slide in and out with small changes, like a set of musical theme-and-variations (most chapters are short, with similar lengths), or a Robbe-Grillet labyrinth. Uncomfortable and suspicious interactions go nowhere. Characters struggle with isolation, but ultimately seem unhappy with the small unreliable connections that they do make. The mundane but slippery and dream-like events and experiences are delivered with spare, quiet prose, at a leisurely pace that is very attractive (and very nicely supported by the illustrations and overall book design).

[Merl Fluin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Near-future dystopian sci-fi. Not sci-fi as in whizz-bang, but dystopian as in seeping fog that lingers in your hair and clothes a long time after you think you've finished reading. The storytelling is all the more effective because it treats each different layer of reality as equally real, without forcing them into categories such as dreaming/waking or sane/mad. And the final chapter is quietly terrifying.

[Katrinka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really solid storytelling—I especially appreciated the author's trust in readers to do the imaginative work involved in being placed in this world.

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

No, he shook his head and ran inside, ran inside, ran inside. Yes, to the Censor, always watching, always waiting to administer the strangled comfort of redaction.

An atmospheric novel that sometimes hits a little too close to home for me during the time of the 'rona, though Sean claims he wrote it before the pandemic (I don't believe him. I think he crawled inside my head, redacted my nightmares, and extracted it into print).

Claustrophobic, surreal, mysterious, foreboding: a post-apocalyptic vision of climate-changed life, though something about it also feels kinda retro-apocalypse... like the bureaucratic nightmares of Kafka, maybe, mixed with a little Orwell (in that you never feel completely safe, even inside your own head/thoughts).

Certain motifs return again and again in a repetition that mirrors the protagonist's fractured memories that never fully congeal. The significance of a set of lines, a tree that brings one back to the earth, the connection of lines that can also connect those who are looking in a shared vision. Nate's drawings perfectly complement the writing here.

The reader is just as much in the dark as the protagonist, which makes for a dizzying experience. We never fully find out what's happening, but that doesn't really matter. We feel it in our bones that something is lost that can never be regained. We also never find out if certain characters are trying to help or not. And the character of the Censor, though never fully explained, is a vague, ever-present, threat.

The setting switches magically to an island where the protagonist lives a peaceful life in a cabin. But then he is mysteriously back in the underworld with his monotonous job again. There are several portals that lead through and back. It seems he is always on a rift at the border between these worlds, teetering between dream and reality, though we never know which is which.

I really enjoyed it. Great job Sean and Nate!

A slightly off-topic side note: I sketched this tree in my notebook about a month ago, and my mind kept returning to it when I was reading:

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I get what the author was aiming for, but it was far too vague and repetitive for a novel. I might have enjoyed it as a short story.