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The Box
A stylistically dazzling novel about objects, people, and the forces and seams between them.
Of course, each thing has its own sides to every story.
In a dark and crooked lane in an unnamed city where it never ceases to snow, a small white box falls from a coat pocket. It is made of paper strips woven tightly together; there is no apparent way to open it without destroying it. What compels a passing witness, a self-described anthrophobe not inclined to engage with other people, to pick up the box and chase after the stranger who dropped it?
The Box follows an impenetrable rectangle as it changes hands in a collapsing metropolis, causing confluences, conflicts, rifts, and disasters. Different narrators, each with a distinctive voice, give secondhand accounts of decisive moments in the box’s life. From the anthrophobe to a newly hired curator of a renowned art collection, from a couple who own an antiquarian bookshop to a hotel bartender hiding from a terrible past, the storytellers repeat rumors and rely on faulty memories, grasping at something that continually escapes them. Haunting their recollections is one mysterious woman who, convinced of the box’s good or evil powers, pursues it with deadly desperation.
In this mesmerizing, intricately constructed puzzle of a novel, Mandy-Suzanne Wong challenges our understanding of subjects and objects, of cause and effect. Is it only humans who have agency? What is or isn’t animate? What do we value and what do we discard?
Of course, each thing has its own sides to every story.
In a dark and crooked lane in an unnamed city where it never ceases to snow, a small white box falls from a coat pocket. It is made of paper strips woven tightly together; there is no apparent way to open it without destroying it. What compels a passing witness, a self-described anthrophobe not inclined to engage with other people, to pick up the box and chase after the stranger who dropped it?
The Box follows an impenetrable rectangle as it changes hands in a collapsing metropolis, causing confluences, conflicts, rifts, and disasters. Different narrators, each with a distinctive voice, give secondhand accounts of decisive moments in the box’s life. From the anthrophobe to a newly hired curator of a renowned art collection, from a couple who own an antiquarian bookshop to a hotel bartender hiding from a terrible past, the storytellers repeat rumors and rely on faulty memories, grasping at something that continually escapes them. Haunting their recollections is one mysterious woman who, convinced of the box’s good or evil powers, pursues it with deadly desperation.
In this mesmerizing, intricately constructed puzzle of a novel, Mandy-Suzanne Wong challenges our understanding of subjects and objects, of cause and effect. Is it only humans who have agency? What is or isn’t animate? What do we value and what do we discard?
264 pages, Paperback
Published September 19, 2023
24 people are currently reading
3260 people want to read
About the author
Mandy-Suzanne Wong
10 books41 followersMandy-Suzanne Wong is a Bermudian writer of fiction and essays. She is the author of The Box, a novel (Graywolf, House of Anansi); Drafts of a Suicide Note (Regal House), a Foreword INDIES literary-fiction finalist and PEN Open Book Award nominee; Listen, We All Bleed (New Rivers), a PEN/Galbraith-nominated essay collection and EcoLit Best Book of 2021; and Awabi, a duet of short stories, winner of the Digging Press Chapbook Series Award. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arcturus, Black Warrior Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, Litro, and Necessary Fiction, winning recognition in the Best of the Net, Aeon Award, and Eyelands Flash Fiction competitions.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
October 25, 2025
THE BOX is an experimental piece of writing that is a chorus of voices, cadence and inflection. The plot centers around the journey of a small box. This seemingly innocuous object is the fulcrum that challenges the reader to discover where the box is located, who is talking and what is happening.The narrative is a maze of shifting orientations and puzzles accompanied by clashing tones that disorient any semblance of coherence.
The novel contains six sections.The first section creates the mood and mystery that will transform and reappear in each subsequent part. An unknown narrator sees someone drop a box in an unnamed city that is trapped in a never ending snow which falls at the same rate as it melts. The residents seem to be encased in a large snow globe, wandering in a white haze that clouds perception. Nevertheless, our unnamed narrator follows and ultimately engages the person who has dropped the box. Their encounter introduces the mysterious allure of the eponymous box. It is small and made of white woven paper strips. It is also impossible to open. In this way, the box becomes an object that is venerated for its unknown qualities.It is a chameleon that accumulates stories and speculation as it travels through the city, changing hands and acquiring mystery and intrigue.
The voices telling the story all relate second hand information and gossip. The accounts are highly speculative and each is told in distinct and different rhythms and syntax.There are layers of political, ecological and moral questions embedded in each tale. However, the heartbeat of the novel is defined by the texture of voice and tone of each narrator who adds to the story. In an interview with LITHUB, the author explains.
“ Each in their own way,THE BOX’s narrators exist at their societies’ margins. Theirs are vulnerable Englishes which, outside of literature, aren’t necessarily spoken anywhere.”
Thus the author combines text with different aural and tonal rhythms, blending narrative and sound. At times the sentences seem to vibrate off the page, challenging the reader to “ listen” for clues to discover narrator and setting while trying to decipher the connection, if any, of each narrator to the others and their relationship to the peripatetic box. For this reader, the text was littered with philosophical and literary musings embedded in a maze that challenged one to transcend limitations and expand outlooks.
Some sections of the novel were more successful than others. Yet every section succeeded in reaffirming the power of language to convey different meanings and nuances. In time, the sentences gained a rhythm that turned dissonance into melody. I am undecided if the box itself was one elaborate macguffin. I am also not sure that I grasped all of the text’s philosophical underpinnings. Nevertheless, I felt enriched from accompanying the box on its journey.
The novel contains six sections.The first section creates the mood and mystery that will transform and reappear in each subsequent part. An unknown narrator sees someone drop a box in an unnamed city that is trapped in a never ending snow which falls at the same rate as it melts. The residents seem to be encased in a large snow globe, wandering in a white haze that clouds perception. Nevertheless, our unnamed narrator follows and ultimately engages the person who has dropped the box. Their encounter introduces the mysterious allure of the eponymous box. It is small and made of white woven paper strips. It is also impossible to open. In this way, the box becomes an object that is venerated for its unknown qualities.It is a chameleon that accumulates stories and speculation as it travels through the city, changing hands and acquiring mystery and intrigue.
The voices telling the story all relate second hand information and gossip. The accounts are highly speculative and each is told in distinct and different rhythms and syntax.There are layers of political, ecological and moral questions embedded in each tale. However, the heartbeat of the novel is defined by the texture of voice and tone of each narrator who adds to the story. In an interview with LITHUB, the author explains.
“ Each in their own way,THE BOX’s narrators exist at their societies’ margins. Theirs are vulnerable Englishes which, outside of literature, aren’t necessarily spoken anywhere.”
Thus the author combines text with different aural and tonal rhythms, blending narrative and sound. At times the sentences seem to vibrate off the page, challenging the reader to “ listen” for clues to discover narrator and setting while trying to decipher the connection, if any, of each narrator to the others and their relationship to the peripatetic box. For this reader, the text was littered with philosophical and literary musings embedded in a maze that challenged one to transcend limitations and expand outlooks.
Some sections of the novel were more successful than others. Yet every section succeeded in reaffirming the power of language to convey different meanings and nuances. In time, the sentences gained a rhythm that turned dissonance into melody. I am undecided if the box itself was one elaborate macguffin. I am also not sure that I grasped all of the text’s philosophical underpinnings. Nevertheless, I felt enriched from accompanying the box on its journey.
October 1, 2025
“All objects must be given equal attention, whether they be human, non-human, natural, cultural, real or fictional.” says philosopher Graham Harman in his Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything. It is hardly a coincidence that the author of “The Box” lists his influence among others at the end of the book. This is a wonderfully special fictional object. But unlike the box featured in the novel, anyone can open it both literary and metaphorically and find in there a unique number of treasures limited only by the reader’s imagination.
It is a shame I am again find myself in the situation that i do not have time to write "a proper" review. So instead I would list what would i want to talk about in case I would have that time.
I would talk about how rich is this novel in its philosophical underpinnings. One have a choice of either to go with aforementioned object-oriented paradigm; or think of much older panpsychism that is going through a renaissance in popularity due to new theories of consciousness. There is a beautiful and wonderfully succinct and idiosyncratic “theory” in the text:
“Indoor gardener asked him what consciousness felt like to a mushroom, a door, a hotel. Mr Six said thinking about consciousness is groping in the dark knowing something you can’t name is groping in the dark beside you.”
I would also develop the idea of “strangeness” of objects but also of people, even the most closed ones. “A thing isn’t for any of you; a thing is for itself. A thing’s real self is its secret self,” - says one character. “In a search for origins or meanings, the more you don’t find, the more certain you become of things’ strangeness.”. This and the situation with the box that cannot be opened has reminded me of my sad hero Wittgenstein with his beetle in a box that no-one else can see. That famous thought experiment of his showing the impossibility of private language; the limits of human ability to understand another human and even the wider world. I would definitely expand on this parallel.
I would write about phenomenology of a box, its shape, its function and its role in the development of human society from the use of squarely-shaped objects in design and architecture since the time memorial and to the boosting of the late capitalism with containership used in international trade.
I might continue like that and move to consumerism, its ecological impact, a possibility of a box becoming a status object (why not?)... Or I might leave it at that and come back to the fact that for me this all is not that much about the box: more striking is how to write such a brilliant fictional object of a novel.
It seems to be designed as experiment with style. I’ve got a huge affinity for such books that challenge and intrigue in equal measure. Each of the six chapters is written differently. If i would write a "proper" review, i would analyse the differences, would try to trace the influences or find the possible comparisons like the objects in Pond or deliciously self-conscious, neurotic narrator in Panthers and the Museum of Fire and in the first chapter here.
I would express an awe how the author has managed the unreliability of narration. It is not simply someone recounts someone’s else story. It is at least two levels removed: someone is having a conversation with someone else who recounts a story she heard outside the frame; rumours; second-hand accounts. Also each chapter introduces the new narrator with the voice previously unfamiliar. This and the constant snow on the background is deliciously disorienting (if not quite that sinister as it might have intended).
I would talk about the writing. I could possibly detect a bit of exercise in style. But some results were quite dazzling:
Is it Joyce or even earlier something English Joyce himself absorbed:
“Behold the Bend. Where the mighty river makes a shifty little wiggle like a card shimmying up a sleeve before the sootiest, slinkiest, slimiest, squintiest bridge in the city. … Shutting up her ship and making certain of the door’s abundant locks, slooshing thenceforth though the snow as it sprinkles us with obstinacy, is Antique-Furniture specialist”
And is it an echo of Macbeth's: “Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow...”:
“But she says each day that brings no change piles on her heart atop the other days that’s all alike and piled up there already. It sneaks into your mind, the snow. Like a noise that’s too far off but trembles the air for miles around. For even in the obstinate self-containment of each thing, things reverberate one another."
“Things reverberate one another” indeed! I would expand on this if I would be writing “the proper” review.
I would write how i’ve loved a whole chapter written in a dialogue, never properly attributed, between the two antique booksellers; how much I've enjoyed another chapter, “Remainder”, an affectionate monologue of a hotel worker conversing with her hotel as if the latter is a conscious being. I would also note that the last two chapters were a bit less successful in spite of keeping with inventiveness in style.
And I would end my review that as an object, a fictional object, this book was a sheer gift.
It is a shame I am again find myself in the situation that i do not have time to write "a proper" review. So instead I would list what would i want to talk about in case I would have that time.
I would talk about how rich is this novel in its philosophical underpinnings. One have a choice of either to go with aforementioned object-oriented paradigm; or think of much older panpsychism that is going through a renaissance in popularity due to new theories of consciousness. There is a beautiful and wonderfully succinct and idiosyncratic “theory” in the text:
“Indoor gardener asked him what consciousness felt like to a mushroom, a door, a hotel. Mr Six said thinking about consciousness is groping in the dark knowing something you can’t name is groping in the dark beside you.”
I would also develop the idea of “strangeness” of objects but also of people, even the most closed ones. “A thing isn’t for any of you; a thing is for itself. A thing’s real self is its secret self,” - says one character. “In a search for origins or meanings, the more you don’t find, the more certain you become of things’ strangeness.”. This and the situation with the box that cannot be opened has reminded me of my sad hero Wittgenstein with his beetle in a box that no-one else can see. That famous thought experiment of his showing the impossibility of private language; the limits of human ability to understand another human and even the wider world. I would definitely expand on this parallel.
I would write about phenomenology of a box, its shape, its function and its role in the development of human society from the use of squarely-shaped objects in design and architecture since the time memorial and to the boosting of the late capitalism with containership used in international trade.
I might continue like that and move to consumerism, its ecological impact, a possibility of a box becoming a status object (why not?)... Or I might leave it at that and come back to the fact that for me this all is not that much about the box: more striking is how to write such a brilliant fictional object of a novel.
It seems to be designed as experiment with style. I’ve got a huge affinity for such books that challenge and intrigue in equal measure. Each of the six chapters is written differently. If i would write a "proper" review, i would analyse the differences, would try to trace the influences or find the possible comparisons like the objects in Pond or deliciously self-conscious, neurotic narrator in Panthers and the Museum of Fire and in the first chapter here.
I would express an awe how the author has managed the unreliability of narration. It is not simply someone recounts someone’s else story. It is at least two levels removed: someone is having a conversation with someone else who recounts a story she heard outside the frame; rumours; second-hand accounts. Also each chapter introduces the new narrator with the voice previously unfamiliar. This and the constant snow on the background is deliciously disorienting (if not quite that sinister as it might have intended).
I would talk about the writing. I could possibly detect a bit of exercise in style. But some results were quite dazzling:
Is it Joyce or even earlier something English Joyce himself absorbed:
“Behold the Bend. Where the mighty river makes a shifty little wiggle like a card shimmying up a sleeve before the sootiest, slinkiest, slimiest, squintiest bridge in the city. … Shutting up her ship and making certain of the door’s abundant locks, slooshing thenceforth though the snow as it sprinkles us with obstinacy, is Antique-Furniture specialist”
And is it an echo of Macbeth's: “Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow...”:
“But she says each day that brings no change piles on her heart atop the other days that’s all alike and piled up there already. It sneaks into your mind, the snow. Like a noise that’s too far off but trembles the air for miles around. For even in the obstinate self-containment of each thing, things reverberate one another."
“Things reverberate one another” indeed! I would expand on this if I would be writing “the proper” review.
I would write how i’ve loved a whole chapter written in a dialogue, never properly attributed, between the two antique booksellers; how much I've enjoyed another chapter, “Remainder”, an affectionate monologue of a hotel worker conversing with her hotel as if the latter is a conscious being. I would also note that the last two chapters were a bit less successful in spite of keeping with inventiveness in style.
And I would end my review that as an object, a fictional object, this book was a sheer gift.
March 5, 2024
Shortlisted for the 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize, US and Canada
Whether it was curiosity or dread that moved me I no longer know, but so that you will attempt to finagle from me not a word more than I shall offer, my concession in this respect being motivated by some begrudging consideration because if more people wondered as you do, asked themselves what a particular anthropogenic and to all appearances inanimate thing might get up to over and above what is conceivable to Homo sapiens, then this planet would not now seem a hostile alien one, …
The Box is a brilliantly original novel which directly challenges the anthropocentrism of much of humanity, building on philosophical ideas from the likes of Jane Bennett and literary voices in translation from a rich selection of world authors.
The novel is told in six parts, each with a distinctive voice, as Wong explained in Superstition Review:
And while the narration is by the human characters, the agency in the novel lies elsewhere, as Wong explained, this time alongside a fascinating reading list of dystopian novels in translation at Electric Literature:
It begins with a chapter Secondhand, written in wonderfully long sentences (Sebald and Krasznahorkai come to mind). One of my favourite literary critics on X subjects books to the first page test and this one immediately grabs the reader with its depiction of a city experiencing an unusually prolonged and oddly uniform fall of snow (which continues throughout the novel):
At the beginning of the week before last, people in general began to understand that this snow we’re having is strange enough to be disturbing not in the sense that all snow is uncanny as anything falling from the sky is uncanny, showing that the seams of the world between Earth and sky, sky and space, solid and liquid, between the present and unimaginable past are riddled with imperceptible holes, but disturbing in its perfect regularity, which you must admit is perfectly irregular: there was the blizzard, yes and very well, to whatever extent that there are facts of life the occasional blizzard is one; but after the wind died the snow lived on, and even after the biggest snowdrifts, the really unmanageable hillocks, were cleared away or melted by the hot breath of the city so it was obvious to everyone that the blizzard was over, snow continued falling straight down as it is doing now, continuing at a pace that seems for all practical purposes to be nearly proportional to the rate at which, with sporadic assistance from the occasional overworked municipal snowplow, the warm fumes from cars and buses, the hot and befouling eructations of the underground-train system, and all the lights and all the people going in and out of buildings relieve the streets of prior snow, which has discolored and been squashed, with the result that we are all of us to this day shuffling about in nigh a foot of powder, which being ever new is always white and clean; and just as in a costume unnoticeable seams bind the odd-shaped fabric cutouts which together make the garment, so too it seems that some precarious tension holds together in suspense the city’s ingrained filth and the unremitting freshness apparent in this strange snow blown to us from god knows where on a wind that has forgotten it and disappeared.
Our anthrophobic narrator tells of spotting a small object, the titular box, falling from the pocket of another:
You’d think such a being as I, having witnessed what appeared to be a paper thing falling litterlike into the snow from the pocket of some human’s coat, would in accordance with my character and circumstances have run away and left the thing where it had fallen; only that thing, a paper thing, white paper in the snow, exerted counterforces which I cannot define but which proved stronger than history and all my instincts: the little white box fit in the palm of my hand with perhaps a whisper of a rattle when it moved, was of a size that could’ve accommodated cigarettes or playing cards, a wallet or slim wad of cash, yet was absolutely self-contained lacking the door or flap of the cigarette or playing-card carton, but then again it was the opposite of self-contained being all-over seams, by which I mean it was constructed of paper strips entangled as if haphazardly, shooting out as if dynamically between one another and diving under one another in all directions; but so tight a weave it was that no strip seemed to have an end, delicate as they were the strips held fast to one another with a tension that resulted in an impenetrable rectangle, for neither fingernail nor toothpick nor so much as a breath could’ve wriggled underneath those seams and not a one would yield to pulling or prying, of that I was certain when I turned over the curio in my mittens, a curiosity of kinetic rectangular perfection, a hypnotizing snarl of gaps with all the vulnerability of paper in the snow, and the devil of it was it belonged to someone else, the nervous man who’d dropped it before my very eyes, which fact alone made it a complicated, daunting thing…
Those “circumstances” include a previous time when the narrator had “when last I went out of my way, thirteen or fifteen years ago in the dead of night to investigate a fallen object in the street” this turned out to be a brutally beaten women with horrific injuries - the same woman is latter to reappear as another narrator.
When our narrator catches up with the man who dropped the box he doesn’t seem that enthused to have it returned, and is more interested if the finder was able to open it. He asks the narrator to accompany him to a cafe, where he relays the second-hand story of how the box came into his possession after his cousin’s first wife’s stepbrother’s eldest daughter and a friend visited an unusual airbnb full of different boxes where objects were randomly to be found. They then found themselves visited late at night by a black-haired woman with distinctive teeth who they assumed was another guests double-booked at the property by mistake, but who transpired to have come in search of one particular box.
This black-hairedwoman, and her frantic search for the box, which seems to evade her possession while otherwise changing hands quite frequently, is a recurring character throughout the novel, but one of a number to meet a tragic end.
Counterfate, the second section, is a switch of tone, and tells (again rather second-hand) of a modern art exhibition whose centrepiece included the box, which was later stolen. The black-haired woman again is a visitor to the exhibition while the artists misses her own launch after a snow-caused bus accident, and the story also touches on the role of wealthy sponsors in the promotion of what is deemed artistically worthy.
Changeling is narrated as a dialogue between the two proprietors of an antiquarian bookshop, one with something of an edge, and where who is speaking is not always clear. Their shop is in The Bend, rather at the bottom of the commercial food-chain, where pawnbroking or fencing stolen good seem to provide much of the trade. They have wound up in possession of the box, after it seemed to have changed hands in a fradulent transaction involving another shop.
Remainder is narrated by the woman found by the narrator of Secondhand “fifteen or thirteen years ago” in her account - or rather by her “remainder” as that dreadful wounds sustained on that night were fatal.
She now works in a boutique hotel La Blue Boite and her story is addressed to the hotel itself. Her own account tells of how the hotel’s rooms became highly sought after as the continuing snow disrupted all transport and trapped many visitors in the city, and her concerns about one guest, Mr Six (she refers to all guests by their room number) who she is convinced wants to buy the hotel for a chain. Mr Six, to relay her fears, relates the bizarre story of his twin brother who got a job as an “indoor gardener” at another distinctive hotel, htl-esc, which combines the concepts of a hotel and an escape room (any guest who can solve the clues and escape the hotel before their stay ends gets to stay for free - no one ever succeeds) but which becomes subject to the various bizarre occurrences as the objects in the hotel take on an agency of their own (a hole that digs itself; flowers with inorganic blooms; furniture that decides where it would rather be and then comes together to fuse into a tree).
The indoor gardener complained of insomnia. He’d no time to sleep between discharging irregularities, listening to the hole, checking public areas, making videos of the hole, checking service areas, pouring water in the hole, making rounds of guest rooms with the housekeeping department, informing the day manager he hadn’t heard a splash, checking hidden corridors, looking after Robin, the carpethugger, his secret garden. He wrote that hotels inhabit people. People inhabit hotels but differently. He wrote he didn’t have insomnia anymore. He thought his dreams weren’t all his. He thought he was evolving into an emaneater.
The indoor gardener wrote that every chair and shelf and doorknob emanates what it will do and wants to seem and cannot bear. Napkins, cellars, bartenders, carpets, everything emanates histories and potentials. Everything’s emanations blizzard all the senses all the time on almost secret wavelengths. We ignore things’ secret wavelengths unless we can use them. They’d be too much otherwise. The indoor gardener thought he could no longer ignore emanations. htl-esc teemed with emanating things.
One of the indoor gardener’s job is to give the box to anyone who solves sufficient clues to ask him a particular question (only one guest gets that far).
As the length of my comments may indicate, this was my absolute favourite of the sections for its resonance (my wife is a hotel proprietor) and entertaining take on the agency of objects (the story reminded me of some of the Japanese speculative fiction Wong has cited as influences on her).
Icon tells of the murder of the black-haired woman by some youths (one of who themselves later dies in childbirth) in a mothballed shopping mall, and is narrated by someone who styles himself a Sub-Executive Supervisor of CytyBox, a packaging company for the cyber-age. The murder was witnessed by one of his employees, who he looks down on for her enthusiasm for the old-fashioned art of wrapping.
And Medium is set in the city’s main train station in an interminable queue of people waiting, in vain, to leave the city. This section updates us on some of the threads and characters from the previous chapters - and prompted a re-read to better understand the box's journey and the relationship between the characters - but the main unifying link is the box:
I know what you're thinking, Courier. You're thinking the box in my dreams, the box on Max's sheet, and the box at so many crime scenes couldn't be just one box. You think you're reading a perforated history of multiples, counterfeits, and clones. Granted, time and being could be discontinuous and plural; no evidence exists, besides rumors and feelings, that you're the same entity you were a minute ago. But everything will be simpler when you accept reality: The box is a living thing that chooses and causes things to happen. Its inner workings mayn't resemble ours, but once you've accepted that irreducible difference, you'll feel better. You'll realize, when the box takes you hither and yon, as it brought Max to set up shop in Central Station, causality needn't cling to its popular form with effects queuing meekly behind causes in an obvious order. It's just as reasonable for the box to invade my dreams as it is for the same box to get itself stolen from a chest of drawers I've never seen. Paradox is not eliminated, for being alive only makes a thing more vulnerable. As the box makes its way through the world, it's vulnerable to others that are doing the same thing. So small, light, and fragile is this box compared to others that it falls victim to the remotest coincidences: to accidents so probabilistically negligible, of relevance more distant than unheard-of planets, that to those of us relying on linear causality their impossibility seems absolute.
This is a novel I needed to re-read, backwards, to piece together what happened - my notes on the book are https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-DXbTAbazuSG-mvgwXU_jFu3IlxKHuxfv6BQrX7J7sA/edit
My appreciation of the novel also was boosted by these articles by Mandy-Suzanne Wong at LitHub and Books by Women, as well as this insightful Goodreads discussion thread.
Brilliant and one of those novels that (to quote Sebald on Krasznahorkai) “far surpasses all the lesser concerns of contemporary writing”
Authorial inspirations
From the afterword:
Misquoted and misinterpreted in this book are rumors instigated by: Theodor Adorno, Giorgio Agamben, Jane Bennett, John Berger, Lucio Cardoso, Fyodor Dostoevsky, John Robert Gregg, Graham Harman, Martin Heidegger, Alphonso Lingis, Clarice Lispector, Maaza Mengiste, Timothy Morton, Andrei Platonov, Marie Redonnet, Gerhard Richter, Erwin Schrödinger, W. G. Sebald, Antoine Volodine, and where applicable their English translators.
From an interview with rob mclennan
Q: What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
A: Ah! You got me started. This list could go on for reams. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, Clarice Lispector, Sofia Samatar, Andrei Platonov, Antoine Volodine, Lev Tolstoy, Mark Haber, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Fernando Pessoa, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Salman Rushdie, Amina Cain, Terry Pratchett, Mieko Kanai, Marie N’Diaye, Maxim Osipov, Chinua Achebe, Maria Stepanova, Yoko Tawada, W.G. Sebald, Maaza Mengiste, Yoko Ogawa . . .
Whether it was curiosity or dread that moved me I no longer know, but so that you will attempt to finagle from me not a word more than I shall offer, my concession in this respect being motivated by some begrudging consideration because if more people wondered as you do, asked themselves what a particular anthropogenic and to all appearances inanimate thing might get up to over and above what is conceivable to Homo sapiens, then this planet would not now seem a hostile alien one, …
The Box is a brilliantly original novel which directly challenges the anthropocentrism of much of humanity, building on philosophical ideas from the likes of Jane Bennett and literary voices in translation from a rich selection of world authors.
The novel is told in six parts, each with a distinctive voice, as Wong explained in Superstition Review:
The narrators’ voices color and are colored by their own situations and personalities, but they are also inspired by literatures from other times and places, primarily by writings translated into English from other languages, with the result that none of them sound like the everyday Englishes to which we are accustomed; all of the narrators, each in their own ways, come across as foreigners to contemporary Anglophone cultures, which can give them an unauthoritative air, the air of the unauthorized. After all, none of them is telling their own story, they’re rather spreading rumors; and this precludes the novel from being governed by any definitive, linear narrative.
And while the narration is by the human characters, the agency in the novel lies elsewhere, as Wong explained, this time alongside a fascinating reading list of dystopian novels in translation at Electric Literature:
In my novel The Box, the dominant entities are neither humans nor humanoids, not even animals, but limbless, mindless, voiceless things. The human characters stumble and squabble, create and steal and love and die, because ordinary things like cabinets, packages, trains, and snowflakes are the way they are. People exist at things’ mercy, empowered by them and powerless against them. Where characters’ ability to make changes to their world, or even to perceive what is happening around them, is curtailed and overwhelmed by the weather and an unintelligible trinket-size box—such a story’s central actors are not its humans.
It begins with a chapter Secondhand, written in wonderfully long sentences (Sebald and Krasznahorkai come to mind). One of my favourite literary critics on X subjects books to the first page test and this one immediately grabs the reader with its depiction of a city experiencing an unusually prolonged and oddly uniform fall of snow (which continues throughout the novel):
At the beginning of the week before last, people in general began to understand that this snow we’re having is strange enough to be disturbing not in the sense that all snow is uncanny as anything falling from the sky is uncanny, showing that the seams of the world between Earth and sky, sky and space, solid and liquid, between the present and unimaginable past are riddled with imperceptible holes, but disturbing in its perfect regularity, which you must admit is perfectly irregular: there was the blizzard, yes and very well, to whatever extent that there are facts of life the occasional blizzard is one; but after the wind died the snow lived on, and even after the biggest snowdrifts, the really unmanageable hillocks, were cleared away or melted by the hot breath of the city so it was obvious to everyone that the blizzard was over, snow continued falling straight down as it is doing now, continuing at a pace that seems for all practical purposes to be nearly proportional to the rate at which, with sporadic assistance from the occasional overworked municipal snowplow, the warm fumes from cars and buses, the hot and befouling eructations of the underground-train system, and all the lights and all the people going in and out of buildings relieve the streets of prior snow, which has discolored and been squashed, with the result that we are all of us to this day shuffling about in nigh a foot of powder, which being ever new is always white and clean; and just as in a costume unnoticeable seams bind the odd-shaped fabric cutouts which together make the garment, so too it seems that some precarious tension holds together in suspense the city’s ingrained filth and the unremitting freshness apparent in this strange snow blown to us from god knows where on a wind that has forgotten it and disappeared.
Our anthrophobic narrator tells of spotting a small object, the titular box, falling from the pocket of another:
You’d think such a being as I, having witnessed what appeared to be a paper thing falling litterlike into the snow from the pocket of some human’s coat, would in accordance with my character and circumstances have run away and left the thing where it had fallen; only that thing, a paper thing, white paper in the snow, exerted counterforces which I cannot define but which proved stronger than history and all my instincts: the little white box fit in the palm of my hand with perhaps a whisper of a rattle when it moved, was of a size that could’ve accommodated cigarettes or playing cards, a wallet or slim wad of cash, yet was absolutely self-contained lacking the door or flap of the cigarette or playing-card carton, but then again it was the opposite of self-contained being all-over seams, by which I mean it was constructed of paper strips entangled as if haphazardly, shooting out as if dynamically between one another and diving under one another in all directions; but so tight a weave it was that no strip seemed to have an end, delicate as they were the strips held fast to one another with a tension that resulted in an impenetrable rectangle, for neither fingernail nor toothpick nor so much as a breath could’ve wriggled underneath those seams and not a one would yield to pulling or prying, of that I was certain when I turned over the curio in my mittens, a curiosity of kinetic rectangular perfection, a hypnotizing snarl of gaps with all the vulnerability of paper in the snow, and the devil of it was it belonged to someone else, the nervous man who’d dropped it before my very eyes, which fact alone made it a complicated, daunting thing…
Those “circumstances” include a previous time when the narrator had “when last I went out of my way, thirteen or fifteen years ago in the dead of night to investigate a fallen object in the street” this turned out to be a brutally beaten women with horrific injuries - the same woman is latter to reappear as another narrator.
When our narrator catches up with the man who dropped the box he doesn’t seem that enthused to have it returned, and is more interested if the finder was able to open it. He asks the narrator to accompany him to a cafe, where he relays the second-hand story of how the box came into his possession after his cousin’s first wife’s stepbrother’s eldest daughter and a friend visited an unusual airbnb full of different boxes where objects were randomly to be found. They then found themselves visited late at night by a black-haired woman with distinctive teeth who they assumed was another guests double-booked at the property by mistake, but who transpired to have come in search of one particular box.
This black-hairedwoman, and her frantic search for the box, which seems to evade her possession while otherwise changing hands quite frequently, is a recurring character throughout the novel, but one of a number to meet a tragic end.
Counterfate, the second section, is a switch of tone, and tells (again rather second-hand) of a modern art exhibition whose centrepiece included the box, which was later stolen. The black-haired woman again is a visitor to the exhibition while the artists misses her own launch after a snow-caused bus accident, and the story also touches on the role of wealthy sponsors in the promotion of what is deemed artistically worthy.
Changeling is narrated as a dialogue between the two proprietors of an antiquarian bookshop, one with something of an edge, and where who is speaking is not always clear. Their shop is in The Bend, rather at the bottom of the commercial food-chain, where pawnbroking or fencing stolen good seem to provide much of the trade. They have wound up in possession of the box, after it seemed to have changed hands in a fradulent transaction involving another shop.
Remainder is narrated by the woman found by the narrator of Secondhand “fifteen or thirteen years ago” in her account - or rather by her “remainder” as that dreadful wounds sustained on that night were fatal.
She now works in a boutique hotel La Blue Boite and her story is addressed to the hotel itself. Her own account tells of how the hotel’s rooms became highly sought after as the continuing snow disrupted all transport and trapped many visitors in the city, and her concerns about one guest, Mr Six (she refers to all guests by their room number) who she is convinced wants to buy the hotel for a chain. Mr Six, to relay her fears, relates the bizarre story of his twin brother who got a job as an “indoor gardener” at another distinctive hotel, htl-esc, which combines the concepts of a hotel and an escape room (any guest who can solve the clues and escape the hotel before their stay ends gets to stay for free - no one ever succeeds) but which becomes subject to the various bizarre occurrences as the objects in the hotel take on an agency of their own (a hole that digs itself; flowers with inorganic blooms; furniture that decides where it would rather be and then comes together to fuse into a tree).
The indoor gardener complained of insomnia. He’d no time to sleep between discharging irregularities, listening to the hole, checking public areas, making videos of the hole, checking service areas, pouring water in the hole, making rounds of guest rooms with the housekeeping department, informing the day manager he hadn’t heard a splash, checking hidden corridors, looking after Robin, the carpethugger, his secret garden. He wrote that hotels inhabit people. People inhabit hotels but differently. He wrote he didn’t have insomnia anymore. He thought his dreams weren’t all his. He thought he was evolving into an emaneater.
The indoor gardener wrote that every chair and shelf and doorknob emanates what it will do and wants to seem and cannot bear. Napkins, cellars, bartenders, carpets, everything emanates histories and potentials. Everything’s emanations blizzard all the senses all the time on almost secret wavelengths. We ignore things’ secret wavelengths unless we can use them. They’d be too much otherwise. The indoor gardener thought he could no longer ignore emanations. htl-esc teemed with emanating things.
One of the indoor gardener’s job is to give the box to anyone who solves sufficient clues to ask him a particular question (only one guest gets that far).
As the length of my comments may indicate, this was my absolute favourite of the sections for its resonance (my wife is a hotel proprietor) and entertaining take on the agency of objects (the story reminded me of some of the Japanese speculative fiction Wong has cited as influences on her).
Icon tells of the murder of the black-haired woman by some youths (one of who themselves later dies in childbirth) in a mothballed shopping mall, and is narrated by someone who styles himself a Sub-Executive Supervisor of CytyBox, a packaging company for the cyber-age. The murder was witnessed by one of his employees, who he looks down on for her enthusiasm for the old-fashioned art of wrapping.
And Medium is set in the city’s main train station in an interminable queue of people waiting, in vain, to leave the city. This section updates us on some of the threads and characters from the previous chapters - and prompted a re-read to better understand the box's journey and the relationship between the characters - but the main unifying link is the box:
I know what you're thinking, Courier. You're thinking the box in my dreams, the box on Max's sheet, and the box at so many crime scenes couldn't be just one box. You think you're reading a perforated history of multiples, counterfeits, and clones. Granted, time and being could be discontinuous and plural; no evidence exists, besides rumors and feelings, that you're the same entity you were a minute ago. But everything will be simpler when you accept reality: The box is a living thing that chooses and causes things to happen. Its inner workings mayn't resemble ours, but once you've accepted that irreducible difference, you'll feel better. You'll realize, when the box takes you hither and yon, as it brought Max to set up shop in Central Station, causality needn't cling to its popular form with effects queuing meekly behind causes in an obvious order. It's just as reasonable for the box to invade my dreams as it is for the same box to get itself stolen from a chest of drawers I've never seen. Paradox is not eliminated, for being alive only makes a thing more vulnerable. As the box makes its way through the world, it's vulnerable to others that are doing the same thing. So small, light, and fragile is this box compared to others that it falls victim to the remotest coincidences: to accidents so probabilistically negligible, of relevance more distant than unheard-of planets, that to those of us relying on linear causality their impossibility seems absolute.
This is a novel I needed to re-read, backwards, to piece together what happened - my notes on the book are https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-DXbTAbazuSG-mvgwXU_jFu3IlxKHuxfv6BQrX7J7sA/edit
My appreciation of the novel also was boosted by these articles by Mandy-Suzanne Wong at LitHub and Books by Women, as well as this insightful Goodreads discussion thread.
Brilliant and one of those novels that (to quote Sebald on Krasznahorkai) “far surpasses all the lesser concerns of contemporary writing”
Authorial inspirations
From the afterword:
Misquoted and misinterpreted in this book are rumors instigated by: Theodor Adorno, Giorgio Agamben, Jane Bennett, John Berger, Lucio Cardoso, Fyodor Dostoevsky, John Robert Gregg, Graham Harman, Martin Heidegger, Alphonso Lingis, Clarice Lispector, Maaza Mengiste, Timothy Morton, Andrei Platonov, Marie Redonnet, Gerhard Richter, Erwin Schrödinger, W. G. Sebald, Antoine Volodine, and where applicable their English translators.
From an interview with rob mclennan
Q: What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
A: Ah! You got me started. This list could go on for reams. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, Clarice Lispector, Sofia Samatar, Andrei Platonov, Antoine Volodine, Lev Tolstoy, Mark Haber, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Fernando Pessoa, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Salman Rushdie, Amina Cain, Terry Pratchett, Mieko Kanai, Marie N’Diaye, Maxim Osipov, Chinua Achebe, Maria Stepanova, Yoko Tawada, W.G. Sebald, Maaza Mengiste, Yoko Ogawa . . .
September 22, 2024
I read this one because it was longlisted for the U.S./Canada Republic of Consciousness Prize, although it was actually on my radar prior to its nomination.
A funny thing happened multiple times as I was reading this. It's narrative bled into the narratives of other books I'd recently read making me feel like I couldn't disentangle them from one another... They were the same story or they were intertwined... It was a disorienting experience as if the text had entered my mind and was interacting with traces of these other texts (namely, The System of Objects, The Activist, and to a lesser extent, Underworld). The feeling was like when you hazily remember parts of a dream but you can't quite recall enough to pull together a coherent picture. Like looking through an iced up window and being able to rub a small spot to look through while the periphery is muted and blurred.
The enigmatic box at the center of this book becomes something like a cipher or maybe more like a container for a cipher never revealed. The closed box becomes a structure through which characters and readers develop a complicated relationship as we puzzle over it together, imagine its contents, trace its trajectory and chain of possession. It confuses and confounds and promises some sort of future relief/hope. Wong has essentially written a story in which an object has agency. Narrative and dynamic all revolve around it.
It's a novel that wrestles with theory and philosophy using fiction as its stage. Vivid, cerebral, and utterly unique. Definitely the rare case of a book I'd like to re-read (despite not being much of a re-reader). I was disappointed it didn't take this year's prize.
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WHAT I NEEDED TO BE IN THE BOX WAS A DICTIONARY
quoins | geli | chary | minikins | vernissage | quadrate | teraptych | legatee | enfilade | anent | piscatorial | thimblerig | costermonger | perfidious | stivaconchs | apeironyx vitalyx | xerioneirics | boite | boiteuse | furbelowing | cynosure | malocological
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A quote I appreciated that the author offered up at the longlist virtual event hosted on Zoom by the U.S./Canada Republic of Consciousness Prize: "All inanimate objects are recalcitrant."
"…what evidence is there for the insidiousness of the box other than its strangeness, its secretiveness which we might call its privacy, its magnetism which may be nothing more than one’s own curiosity making itself manifest…"
A funny thing happened multiple times as I was reading this. It's narrative bled into the narratives of other books I'd recently read making me feel like I couldn't disentangle them from one another... They were the same story or they were intertwined... It was a disorienting experience as if the text had entered my mind and was interacting with traces of these other texts (namely, The System of Objects, The Activist, and to a lesser extent, Underworld). The feeling was like when you hazily remember parts of a dream but you can't quite recall enough to pull together a coherent picture. Like looking through an iced up window and being able to rub a small spot to look through while the periphery is muted and blurred.
The enigmatic box at the center of this book becomes something like a cipher or maybe more like a container for a cipher never revealed. The closed box becomes a structure through which characters and readers develop a complicated relationship as we puzzle over it together, imagine its contents, trace its trajectory and chain of possession. It confuses and confounds and promises some sort of future relief/hope. Wong has essentially written a story in which an object has agency. Narrative and dynamic all revolve around it.
"…when a box cannot be found to suit a thing, it’s never the box that is imperfect but the thing itself, the thing’s insistence on excessive slipperiness or angularity, quite so, without exception, so that if there is no box that can contain whatever thing, it follows that the thing should not exist, for that there exist boxes for all things is a natural law of Commerce, order is alone the natural state of Commerce, and indeed Civilization exists to stamp out disorder wheresoever it appears in citizens or in things."
"An all-white box is all surface. Its power is all repulsion. Is going-away power. Like a train. Unlike a train, the box has no visible opening. It can’t take anything in, so everything’s canceled. The timetable is empty. As the box is a container that no longer needs its content. And killed it. Killed the secret. Closed itself around a corpse of secret. A container that no longer has its tenants is a ruin. And a remainder and a ghost. A ruin is a premonition."
It's a novel that wrestles with theory and philosophy using fiction as its stage. Vivid, cerebral, and utterly unique. Definitely the rare case of a book I'd like to re-read (despite not being much of a re-reader). I was disappointed it didn't take this year's prize.
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WHAT I NEEDED TO BE IN THE BOX WAS A DICTIONARY
quoins | geli | chary | minikins | vernissage | quadrate | teraptych | legatee | enfilade | anent | piscatorial | thimblerig | costermonger | perfidious | stivaconchs | apeironyx vitalyx | xerioneirics | boite | boiteuse | furbelowing | cynosure | malocological
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A quote I appreciated that the author offered up at the longlist virtual event hosted on Zoom by the U.S./Canada Republic of Consciousness Prize: "All inanimate objects are recalcitrant."
February 5, 2024
Metafiction AND theoretical fiction AND super fun? Impossible, I hear a weak voice in the distance, but not in the case of The Box. In fact, it is difficult to even begin to unravel the threads that make this novel so good, just as it is difficult, even impossible, to open the titular box. So I'll just say that a lot of the fun, for me at least, was in identifying theoretical ideas (without the help of the list at the end of the book). There's the thing-power from Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, the withdrawal from The Quadruple Object, the hyperobject from Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, and a host of other related concepts from new materialisms and object-oriented ontologies. And before potential readers shy away, the prose is never philosophically dry. Wong plays with these ideas in such a way that another source of fun is guessing where the style of each chapter comes from. All of this is framed by a months-long snowstorm, which makes the novel's investment in dealing with the current anthropogenic environmental crisis more than clear. And indeed, Wong is clear in her critique of the late capitalist hyper-production and hyper-consumption that has brought us to this point.
June 11, 2023
Oof. This was a rough one. The only reason I didn't give up about ~10 pages was because I didn't want my NetGalley % complete score to decline.
The book is told in 6 parts and it follows this mythical box that no one can open (or can they? Maybe?). The story is set in a city where it starts snowing one day and doesn't stop.
It starts with a character finding the box that someone dropped in the snow. They return it to the person who dropped it and the person tells them how their .... daughter.... niece .... someone acquired the box. I'll borrow what another reviewer said - "The opening sentence alone [was] Proustian in its length". One sentence went on for 2 Kindle pages (and my font isn't that large). A paragraph would go over 3-4 Kindle pages.
When that section finally ended, we jumped to a new narrator in the future who was a curator for an art exhibit. The writing style changed for each narrator, which was done well, other than that I was not a fan of most of them. This section was another slog and felt very pretentious about art and the meaning of art.
The third section was narrated by an older married couple who own a used bookstore and was telling a 3rd party about the box. This section was confusing at first since it takes a little to realize it's 2 narrators and each paragraph denotes a narrator switch. The box was accidentally/on purpose given to someone when they bought something else - a "changeling". This section started out interesting but then it kept going. They would not shut up about the stupid changeling box and the drama about the stupid changeling and I was ready to throw my Kindle across the room if I read "changeling" one more time.
The fourth section was about a woman hiding out in a hotel after being attacked and raped. She was in love with the hotel building. She worked as a bartender for the hotel and met Mr. Six who was trapped at the hotel (remember that the snow is still going non stop). Mr. Six has a brother who worked at a different hotel puzzle room and then went a bit crazy. He told the story of his brother - that was the strongest part of this book and this was the only chapter where I didn't regret picking up this book.
The fifth section brought me back to regret - it's narrated by a man who is a sub-executive manager at a big box store. It felt like I was stuck in Fox News hell; he kept talking about how people who don't contribute in a productive way (as defined by him) to society don't count, including if they're murdered. He hated a little old woman who worked at the store because she would elaborately wrap presents since, obviously, that's a waste of resources.
The last section is told by an older woman who is trying to get on a train to get out of the city. She and a huge amount of older women live in the train station waiting for a train that will never come. This section is told via emails which the women dictate to a person who has all the batteries so she can send emails on behalf of others. This was the second strongest section of the book. We get some closure on some of the stories but also a lot is left up in the air.
And there you have it! I'm sure some people will like this book, but it was not for me. I was expecting something like The Red Violin movie but instead got an alternate reality with the snow and a magic/sinister/?? box. It felt like it was trying to make a grand point or 4 and I wasn't smart enough to appreciate it.
Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for this Advance Review Copy.
The book is told in 6 parts and it follows this mythical box that no one can open (or can they? Maybe?). The story is set in a city where it starts snowing one day and doesn't stop.
It starts with a character finding the box that someone dropped in the snow. They return it to the person who dropped it and the person tells them how their .... daughter.... niece .... someone acquired the box. I'll borrow what another reviewer said - "The opening sentence alone [was] Proustian in its length". One sentence went on for 2 Kindle pages (and my font isn't that large). A paragraph would go over 3-4 Kindle pages.
When that section finally ended, we jumped to a new narrator in the future who was a curator for an art exhibit. The writing style changed for each narrator, which was done well, other than that I was not a fan of most of them. This section was another slog and felt very pretentious about art and the meaning of art.
The third section was narrated by an older married couple who own a used bookstore and was telling a 3rd party about the box. This section was confusing at first since it takes a little to realize it's 2 narrators and each paragraph denotes a narrator switch. The box was accidentally/on purpose given to someone when they bought something else - a "changeling". This section started out interesting but then it kept going. They would not shut up about the stupid changeling box and the drama about the stupid changeling and I was ready to throw my Kindle across the room if I read "changeling" one more time.
The fourth section was about a woman hiding out in a hotel after being attacked and raped. She was in love with the hotel building. She worked as a bartender for the hotel and met Mr. Six who was trapped at the hotel (remember that the snow is still going non stop). Mr. Six has a brother who worked at a different hotel puzzle room and then went a bit crazy. He told the story of his brother - that was the strongest part of this book and this was the only chapter where I didn't regret picking up this book.
The fifth section brought me back to regret - it's narrated by a man who is a sub-executive manager at a big box store. It felt like I was stuck in Fox News hell; he kept talking about how people who don't contribute in a productive way (as defined by him) to society don't count, including if they're murdered. He hated a little old woman who worked at the store because she would elaborately wrap presents since, obviously, that's a waste of resources.
The last section is told by an older woman who is trying to get on a train to get out of the city. She and a huge amount of older women live in the train station waiting for a train that will never come. This section is told via emails which the women dictate to a person who has all the batteries so she can send emails on behalf of others. This was the second strongest section of the book. We get some closure on some of the stories but also a lot is left up in the air.
And there you have it! I'm sure some people will like this book, but it was not for me. I was expecting something like The Red Violin movie but instead got an alternate reality with the snow and a magic/sinister/?? box. It felt like it was trying to make a grand point or 4 and I wasn't smart enough to appreciate it.
Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for this Advance Review Copy.
February 24, 2024
The book, The Box, is much like the central character itself – an enigma, a container, a paper holder of things within that can be guessed at yet remain unknown.
This cli-fi novel pulls you through unusual situations & puzzles from mysterious encounters to art, from capitalism to women’s rights, from the definition of home & belonging to climate change. Many things can be interpreted & analyzed & no two people will come away with the same meanings. Ultimately, I took away that we can never really know what resides in another (animate or inanimate) but we may feel the effects (such as climate change or interpersonal relationships) of our efforts nonetheless. And that we would be wise to treat all things with care.
A fascinating & thought-provoking book.
This cli-fi novel pulls you through unusual situations & puzzles from mysterious encounters to art, from capitalism to women’s rights, from the definition of home & belonging to climate change. Many things can be interpreted & analyzed & no two people will come away with the same meanings. Ultimately, I took away that we can never really know what resides in another (animate or inanimate) but we may feel the effects (such as climate change or interpersonal relationships) of our efforts nonetheless. And that we would be wise to treat all things with care.
A fascinating & thought-provoking book.
September 29, 2023
Impressively long sentences - I did actually enjoy the writing. But not really sure what I was supposed to get from this. I think I need to try it again as a paperback.
February 14, 2025
“I think her overall gist was that nobody can understand the box unless they open it for themselves without breaking it; but nobody should dare to open it lest they miss the point or worse.”
If the above quote appeals to you, then you may enjoy this novel more than I did. Set in an unnamed location where it is perpetually snowing, it is a philosophical book with a box as “protagonist.” There are six interconnected episodes (I hesitate to call them “stories”) that involve the titular box. It contains elements of crime, environmentalism, and other social commentary. Schrödinger’s cat makes an appearance, which I presume is meant to be applied to the paradox of the box.
If you like the avante-garde or “experimental” literature (for lack of a better term), then give it a try. Several of my friends gave it 5 stars. I prefer more storyline and/or character development over what is provided here, or at least a more of a straightforward approach. In places, it borders on impenetrable. This is an erudite work of ideas or maybe a “novel of things.” I give it points for creativity and innovation, and I appreciate books that push the envelope, but I would not want a steady diet of this type of writing.
3.5
If the above quote appeals to you, then you may enjoy this novel more than I did. Set in an unnamed location where it is perpetually snowing, it is a philosophical book with a box as “protagonist.” There are six interconnected episodes (I hesitate to call them “stories”) that involve the titular box. It contains elements of crime, environmentalism, and other social commentary. Schrödinger’s cat makes an appearance, which I presume is meant to be applied to the paradox of the box.
If you like the avante-garde or “experimental” literature (for lack of a better term), then give it a try. Several of my friends gave it 5 stars. I prefer more storyline and/or character development over what is provided here, or at least a more of a straightforward approach. In places, it borders on impenetrable. This is an erudite work of ideas or maybe a “novel of things.” I give it points for creativity and innovation, and I appreciate books that push the envelope, but I would not want a steady diet of this type of writing.
3.5
May 22, 2023
I gave up on this book after five pages, which is a first for me. The opening sentence alone, Proustian in its length, was the first red flag, but when I saw that that was how this author chose to write this book — rambling, stream-of-consciousness - I had to demur. If that’s your thing, you’ll like this book. Unfortunately, it isn’t mine.
October 27, 2023
This book is, as others have pointed out, not an easy read. Experimental in form, dystopian in setting, this novel follows, indirectly, the movement of an enigmatic box constructed of white woven paper through a city trapped in an endless snowfall that has blurred all normal social interactions. It is a novel of ideas that is, like the box at its centre, entirely composed of interdependent narratives. The voices that take turns narrating each chapter are strange and estranged, each revealing a strong character or tone, but in most cases revealing only fragments of their pasts. A reader naturally looks to find clues and links uniting the stories that are told, but the mystery is a kind of moebius strip that turns in on itself. The author includes a list of writes and thinkers whose ideas and images she misquotes and misinterpreted along the way, but I only noted two obvious references, so I'm not certain how essential a broad frame of reference is to appreciate this work. Ambitious and unusual, it will take time for me to put this strange text behind me.
A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2023/10/23/un...
A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2023/10/23/un...
May 29, 2024
Ultimate everyday nonsensationalistic weird tail about a box and a bunch of snow. Great proof that you don't need to put extra limbs on humans or involve alien magical creatures to go proper weird. Apparently, a paper box and some hitchhiker snails can do all the work. And that's just the beginning of a big accelerating swoop of weirdness that's building up towards horror. More, please.
January 16, 2024
2.25 stars
Intriguing concept, indigestible writing, The Box's premise immediately hooked me: a nameless city undergoing a strange weather phenomena (endless snow), while we follow various perspectives as a mysterious object (the titular box) makes its way across different hands. At a high level, I appreciate the interconnected short stories setup (and the author uses different formats for each), it is a delight when elements from previous stories resurface in a new context. The literal and conceptual meaning of a box is also thoughtfully interpreted, covering topics from urban planning (city as a cluster of boxes), capitalism (modular system and reproduction), intellectual property, and our innate curiosity to discovery—the fact the book cover is a visual representation of the box itself is a stroke of genius.
Unfortunately the writing is where The Box lost me: long-winded and intensely verbose. I'll confess I don't pick up experimental literary fiction often, but this one in particular feels like there's a gap between its language and content—I don't think what it's saying is that profound (unless I completely miss the point), but the language used is what makes it impenetrable. Out of the 6 stories, Remainder is the most intelligible (not saying the story itself is anything ordinary—about a gardener working in a 'escape room' hotel), and possibly the only saving grace for this novel.
I don't mind being challenged when reading a literary work, but in the case of The Box the reward doesn't feel at all fulfilling; instead of using language to deliver out of the ordinary insight, it comes across as a pretentious spectacle. The audiobook narrators are well-performed objectively, but this might be the type of writing where listening alone will just bring on more frustration and confusion.
**This ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Much appreciated!**
Intriguing concept, indigestible writing, The Box's premise immediately hooked me: a nameless city undergoing a strange weather phenomena (endless snow), while we follow various perspectives as a mysterious object (the titular box) makes its way across different hands. At a high level, I appreciate the interconnected short stories setup (and the author uses different formats for each), it is a delight when elements from previous stories resurface in a new context. The literal and conceptual meaning of a box is also thoughtfully interpreted, covering topics from urban planning (city as a cluster of boxes), capitalism (modular system and reproduction), intellectual property, and our innate curiosity to discovery—the fact the book cover is a visual representation of the box itself is a stroke of genius.
Unfortunately the writing is where The Box lost me: long-winded and intensely verbose. I'll confess I don't pick up experimental literary fiction often, but this one in particular feels like there's a gap between its language and content—I don't think what it's saying is that profound (unless I completely miss the point), but the language used is what makes it impenetrable. Out of the 6 stories, Remainder is the most intelligible (not saying the story itself is anything ordinary—about a gardener working in a 'escape room' hotel), and possibly the only saving grace for this novel.
I don't mind being challenged when reading a literary work, but in the case of The Box the reward doesn't feel at all fulfilling; instead of using language to deliver out of the ordinary insight, it comes across as a pretentious spectacle. The audiobook narrators are well-performed objectively, but this might be the type of writing where listening alone will just bring on more frustration and confusion.
**This ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Much appreciated!**
June 19, 2023
The Box has superbly crafted sentences. The beginning section with its rambling prose, reminding me of WG Sebald, is very rich and pulled me in. The voices and perspectives of each of the six sections of this book are so different from each other in such a cool way. The snapshot stories told in a way that it is hard to know what is true and what is rumor make me wish there was more!
Reading The Box can bring up tough feelings as we are trained as humans and society to put humans first, and this book really engages with the opposite viewpoint, questioning our unconscious assumptions and reflecting on all of the effects that objects can have on us. It is very timely reading for people who recognize the challenges that we face in the near future cannot be solved with the same mindset we have collectively now.
This book definitely fits into the category of literary fiction. It could be read lightly - the character portraits are unique and engaging. But this is definitely a book where when thoughtfully or read again, you’ll be able to see and understand more of the complexity. This book is more rewarding the more you engage with it as there are so many layers and possible connections. Perhaps like the weaving of the box or different sides of a story like different sides of a box!
Reading The Box can bring up tough feelings as we are trained as humans and society to put humans first, and this book really engages with the opposite viewpoint, questioning our unconscious assumptions and reflecting on all of the effects that objects can have on us. It is very timely reading for people who recognize the challenges that we face in the near future cannot be solved with the same mindset we have collectively now.
This book definitely fits into the category of literary fiction. It could be read lightly - the character portraits are unique and engaging. But this is definitely a book where when thoughtfully or read again, you’ll be able to see and understand more of the complexity. This book is more rewarding the more you engage with it as there are so many layers and possible connections. Perhaps like the weaving of the box or different sides of a story like different sides of a box!
December 15, 2023
This is a very *specific* book. This isn't a book you're just going to pick up and start reading. You need to be in the right mood and headspace for it. The opening pages set you up for what you're about to get, so at least you'll be prepared. Beautiful prose in some very hefty paragraphs. I think to people who are prepared, who are ready to sit down and really spend some time with the book, it will reward them in big, big ways. It's a book you have to sit with a bit. I don't think it's an accident that the cover is designed to make the book resemble the titular box. It IS the box, and we're one of the characters whose path it crosses.
I feel like this is a book that will be loved or loathed. And I think the majority of people who loathe it won't give it a real chance (I've seen reviews of people giving up after five or ten pages, which is like walking out of Jojo Rabbit during the opening credits and saying the whole movie is just clips of propaganda films).
The female narrator was very, very good. The male narrator was fine, but I found his energy a bit too much at times.
I feel like this is a book that will be loved or loathed. And I think the majority of people who loathe it won't give it a real chance (I've seen reviews of people giving up after five or ten pages, which is like walking out of Jojo Rabbit during the opening credits and saying the whole movie is just clips of propaganda films).
The female narrator was very, very good. The male narrator was fine, but I found his energy a bit too much at times.
July 25, 2024
This whole star system is nuts. I’m giving this 5 stars because it made my brain hurt. I like to be challenged. The book concerns a small box made of braided strips of paper that doesn’t open. Its story is told in 6 parts in 6 settings in an unnamed city where it has been snowing for months.
Favorite quotes. “…the snow’s a serene tempest that’s uncovered the irrationality of all existence.” “The box if it’s a box reaches across time and space to interfere with other things because that’s the way things are.” “…a box you can’t open is a pit in a night in a hole in a bottomless pit.”
I liked what it had to say about the invisibility of older women.
The settings were a cafe, antique shops, art galleries, hotels, a box store, and train stations. I liked the hotel chapter. It had a story I could follow about a hotel where the plants took over the building.
There’s a lot here.
Favorite quotes. “…the snow’s a serene tempest that’s uncovered the irrationality of all existence.” “The box if it’s a box reaches across time and space to interfere with other things because that’s the way things are.” “…a box you can’t open is a pit in a night in a hole in a bottomless pit.”
I liked what it had to say about the invisibility of older women.
The settings were a cafe, antique shops, art galleries, hotels, a box store, and train stations. I liked the hotel chapter. It had a story I could follow about a hotel where the plants took over the building.
There’s a lot here.
November 28, 2023
These stories are as enigmatic as the box they feature.
March 2, 2025
I read this as it was on the list of best books of 2024 that members of the Mooske and the Gripes GR group does. I believe it won the 2023 ROC of the US & CA. I loved it but have no idea how to review it.
It is snowing in the city and has been for quite awhile. An old man drops a small white rectangular box into the snow. A woman sees it happen. She picks it up and returns it. They go into a bar for a warm drink. He tells her a story. She becomes obsessed by the box.
Then we are at an art exhibition. The artist is injured in a traffic accident on her way to the exhibit. A major figure in the art world is supposedly going to buy her installation. His curator thinks not. A strange woman the curator thinks is a local comes in and converses with the major figure. A small white rectangular box is stolen from the installation.
Two owners of an used bookstore discuss a small, white rectangular box that a woman is looking for and ponder on whether an antique dealer know about it.
A group of teenagers break into a box store (a place that makes boxes for items to be shipped in) and create havoc and at some point find a small white rectangular box and make it part of a ritual. A woman comes looking for it and doesn't leave alive. An elderly gift wrapper who worked for the store escapes.
Women protesters que to take a train out of the city. The que does not seem to move. The box gets bought by a guard at the station.
What does it all mean? Can anyone open the box? Is the box directing the show? What do you think? Is it all connected?
It is snowing in the city and has been for quite awhile. An old man drops a small white rectangular box into the snow. A woman sees it happen. She picks it up and returns it. They go into a bar for a warm drink. He tells her a story. She becomes obsessed by the box.
Then we are at an art exhibition. The artist is injured in a traffic accident on her way to the exhibit. A major figure in the art world is supposedly going to buy her installation. His curator thinks not. A strange woman the curator thinks is a local comes in and converses with the major figure. A small white rectangular box is stolen from the installation.
Two owners of an used bookstore discuss a small, white rectangular box that a woman is looking for and ponder on whether an antique dealer know about it.
A group of teenagers break into a box store (a place that makes boxes for items to be shipped in) and create havoc and at some point find a small white rectangular box and make it part of a ritual. A woman comes looking for it and doesn't leave alive. An elderly gift wrapper who worked for the store escapes.
Women protesters que to take a train out of the city. The que does not seem to move. The box gets bought by a guard at the station.
What does it all mean? Can anyone open the box? Is the box directing the show? What do you think? Is it all connected?
December 19, 2023
This book was just not it for me. While I enjoyed the idea of different people being in possession of this thing at different time, I just found that overall story fell flat. I really had to slog through it in order to finish.
I will say that I did enjoy the narration. Both narrators have a clear, well-paced diction that was a silver lining to the monotany.
🧚🏻Thank you so much to NetGalley, HighBridge Audio, and author Mandy Suzanne Wong for providing me with an advanced audio copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
I will say that I did enjoy the narration. Both narrators have a clear, well-paced diction that was a silver lining to the monotany.
🧚🏻Thank you so much to NetGalley, HighBridge Audio, and author Mandy Suzanne Wong for providing me with an advanced audio copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
August 9, 2024
3.5/5 stars. Very bizarre, very thinky, and in the end I'd say a pretty cool book -- although I kind of went back and forth on that point as I read. I think the interplay of the wildly different perspectives/voices in each chapter was what really made this book work -- it is sort of a novel in six interconnected short stories, which is neat -- although inevitably(?) that meant that some chapters were (far, far) more enjoyable to read than others. I really liked Changeling and Remainder, and probably could have read an entire standalone novel from either of those perspectives (in fact, it seems that Wong first published a standalone short story called The Indoor Gardener , which presumably became Remainder and then maybe this whole book). On the other hand I was not a huge fan of the opening chapter, Secondhand (which is by my count 32 pages long but only 26 sentences, yikes), or of the satirical but still grating Icon . But, I really do think every piece had to be there to complement all the others, and for me the highs were worth the lows.
June 23, 2023
This has an interesting premise. I can see the author's talent on the page. However, I don't think this will find a big audience. It's missing something, but I'm not smart enough to know what. Nonetheless, this has merit, and I look forward to the author's next work.
Thanks very much for the free copy for review!!
Thanks very much for the free copy for review!!
August 24, 2023
Reviewing this one in full for a venue, but this was one of the most complex reads I've experienced and I'm going to be unpacking this "box" for months.
August 17, 2024
I stuck it out to the end, which is why I gave it two starts. Had I not finished, I would have given it one. But the ending left me wanting a bit more.
This story is told in 5 parts as the mysterious box moves from person to person. Every single one of these people are insufferable and proustian. I hated all but the last story.
I listened to the audiobook. The male narrator did nothing to differentiate the characters when he had ones that alternated talking. The female was fine.
Thank you to NetGalley and the author for my copy of this audiobook
This story is told in 5 parts as the mysterious box moves from person to person. Every single one of these people are insufferable and proustian. I hated all but the last story.
I listened to the audiobook. The male narrator did nothing to differentiate the characters when he had ones that alternated talking. The female was fine.
Thank you to NetGalley and the author for my copy of this audiobook
August 10, 2023
I got to the end (again) and said to myself, 'Okay, have I read this novel now? Am I done with this novel?'
And I can't answer myself.
More than any other novel (possible exceptions: the novels of Volodine and Can Xue), the reading experience I had was like being at a concert, listening to a live performance. It is a contemporary piece of classical music. I'm hearing it for the first time. Sometimes the music grips me. Sometimes I hear repeating themes that I can grab onto and derive meaning from. But there are also intervals where I'm passively listening, and a little zoned out, having my own thoughts that may or may not be inspired by the music coming through my ears. And in the end I've had an artistic experience that swirls inside me and leaves me feeling deeply satisfied, but the experience I had may not be the experience anyone else had, and the experience was not one I could derive definitive semantic meanings from. It was not to be pinned down by words, or summarized in a synopsis, any more than music can be summarized or described as having certain definitive 'meanings.'
I enjoyed it most when I found a sweet spot where I was paying rapt attention to the words, and at the same time was allowing myself to free-associate with their meanings. I even gave myself permission to make up my own meanings, as I wished.
For instance. There is an un-openable box in this novel, and it is very small and nondescript, but, hey, what is inside? Everyone wants to know. It plagues people. They need to know but they can't figure out how to open this box. And this box seemed to fit exactly with how I was plagued to find meaning in the novel, in the words I was reading. I wanted to know exactly what these words were meant to mean. What the heck. I couldn't figure it out because the stories kept leaping and darting forth and then hiding themselves in the grass.
And then I remembered how often I personally imagine words themselves as "boxes." Words-as-boxes fascinates me. Often I find myself thinking about how each word really is just a sound or a string of scribbles, and yet we humans think of words as a kind of container (or box) for a thing we call "meaning," and how weird is that? The way we count on these word-boxes to hold a meaning inside themselves, as they pass from one human ear to the next? It's remarkable. It's not like we can open a word up and see MEANING inside there.
But was I supposed to have had this thought as I read this novel?
Who knows.
The novel travels swiftly along from one vivid scene to the next--but then upends itself, or shifts in a radical way. It was challenging and I loved it but I can't tell you what it was meant to mean. In this review I've used music as a metaphor for my reading experience, but I could just as well have said it was like abstract art. Like a Pollock painting. Beautiful, enigmatic. Whether this work is a messy accident, or completely controlled in its effect, might be a matter for debate. The point is, I never felt guided toward a certain conclusion. I was invited in, to make my own judgments. And that was a wonderful thing.
Does this book make sense?
Does this review make sense?
I don't know. I just don't know.
And I can't answer myself.
More than any other novel (possible exceptions: the novels of Volodine and Can Xue), the reading experience I had was like being at a concert, listening to a live performance. It is a contemporary piece of classical music. I'm hearing it for the first time. Sometimes the music grips me. Sometimes I hear repeating themes that I can grab onto and derive meaning from. But there are also intervals where I'm passively listening, and a little zoned out, having my own thoughts that may or may not be inspired by the music coming through my ears. And in the end I've had an artistic experience that swirls inside me and leaves me feeling deeply satisfied, but the experience I had may not be the experience anyone else had, and the experience was not one I could derive definitive semantic meanings from. It was not to be pinned down by words, or summarized in a synopsis, any more than music can be summarized or described as having certain definitive 'meanings.'
I enjoyed it most when I found a sweet spot where I was paying rapt attention to the words, and at the same time was allowing myself to free-associate with their meanings. I even gave myself permission to make up my own meanings, as I wished.
For instance. There is an un-openable box in this novel, and it is very small and nondescript, but, hey, what is inside? Everyone wants to know. It plagues people. They need to know but they can't figure out how to open this box. And this box seemed to fit exactly with how I was plagued to find meaning in the novel, in the words I was reading. I wanted to know exactly what these words were meant to mean. What the heck. I couldn't figure it out because the stories kept leaping and darting forth and then hiding themselves in the grass.
And then I remembered how often I personally imagine words themselves as "boxes." Words-as-boxes fascinates me. Often I find myself thinking about how each word really is just a sound or a string of scribbles, and yet we humans think of words as a kind of container (or box) for a thing we call "meaning," and how weird is that? The way we count on these word-boxes to hold a meaning inside themselves, as they pass from one human ear to the next? It's remarkable. It's not like we can open a word up and see MEANING inside there.
But was I supposed to have had this thought as I read this novel?
Who knows.
The novel travels swiftly along from one vivid scene to the next--but then upends itself, or shifts in a radical way. It was challenging and I loved it but I can't tell you what it was meant to mean. In this review I've used music as a metaphor for my reading experience, but I could just as well have said it was like abstract art. Like a Pollock painting. Beautiful, enigmatic. Whether this work is a messy accident, or completely controlled in its effect, might be a matter for debate. The point is, I never felt guided toward a certain conclusion. I was invited in, to make my own judgments. And that was a wonderful thing.
Does this book make sense?
Does this review make sense?
I don't know. I just don't know.
November 1, 2023
So this novel is constructed of five separate stories, loosely tied together by a blank and woven box (probably) with a sixth story to tie them together. Six sides, like a box, get it.
Each story uses a different trick to work its magic. Some are more successful than others. The first story has very few periods or paragraphs. Erudite words slow the reading down while being pushed by the lack of stops. It could be about the mystery or about how it feels to walk in the snow.
The set up has the feel of a Saramago but with less of the lightness. It snows and snows and snows. This comes up in each story without too much dwelling. It is the packaging in which these folks live, die and go mad. I love magic realism but this stops short. At times, it has the feel of a Paul Auster type novel of place.
Most of the stories minus the last one seem to have the box at a remove. It is only the one that ties it up that feels like it is more about the box as an object. Sure, there are some fun philosophical moments here but the lightness of some classic experimentalists are missing.
For instance, Calvino bleeds from some of these passages but is never explicitly referenced. None of the authors that I think were influences are mentioned in the afterward. One story, Icon, has very similar feeling and premise as The Devil House.
None of these things should be construed as negative criticism. I would argue that this is an author that was working through a grand idea but hasn't quite yet found their own way. In terms of being a first experimental novel, it is good. Some of the experiments are good while others could use a bit more massaging.
I will keep this author on my radar because I am expecting more things to come. I look forward to see how they develop.
Each story uses a different trick to work its magic. Some are more successful than others. The first story has very few periods or paragraphs. Erudite words slow the reading down while being pushed by the lack of stops. It could be about the mystery or about how it feels to walk in the snow.
The set up has the feel of a Saramago but with less of the lightness. It snows and snows and snows. This comes up in each story without too much dwelling. It is the packaging in which these folks live, die and go mad. I love magic realism but this stops short. At times, it has the feel of a Paul Auster type novel of place.
Most of the stories minus the last one seem to have the box at a remove. It is only the one that ties it up that feels like it is more about the box as an object. Sure, there are some fun philosophical moments here but the lightness of some classic experimentalists are missing.
For instance, Calvino bleeds from some of these passages but is never explicitly referenced. None of the authors that I think were influences are mentioned in the afterward. One story, Icon, has very similar feeling and premise as The Devil House.
None of these things should be construed as negative criticism. I would argue that this is an author that was working through a grand idea but hasn't quite yet found their own way. In terms of being a first experimental novel, it is good. Some of the experiments are good while others could use a bit more massaging.
I will keep this author on my radar because I am expecting more things to come. I look forward to see how they develop.
November 26, 2023
I don’t quite know what to think of this book, and maybe would give it a 3.5.
Essentially a short story collection, the interwoven adventures of The Box are told by various narrators, and as in real life, some voices are better narrators than others. I found this book easiest absorbed in small bites instead of as a binge as it can be quite dense. However, in my opinion, you don’t have to dive too deep into each story if you don’t choose to do so. It becomes possible to pull out the common threads and salient points, dismissing the less relevant personal anecdotes of each narrator, as you get familiar with the plots.
i enjoyed individual stories and the overall mystique of the box, but I'm confident I did not fully grasp the book's allegory about our consumption of that which is perceived as disposable (and who gets to make those decisions), and therefore likely missed the collection’s full impact.
Essentially a short story collection, the interwoven adventures of The Box are told by various narrators, and as in real life, some voices are better narrators than others. I found this book easiest absorbed in small bites instead of as a binge as it can be quite dense. However, in my opinion, you don’t have to dive too deep into each story if you don’t choose to do so. It becomes possible to pull out the common threads and salient points, dismissing the less relevant personal anecdotes of each narrator, as you get familiar with the plots.
i enjoyed individual stories and the overall mystique of the box, but I'm confident I did not fully grasp the book's allegory about our consumption of that which is perceived as disposable (and who gets to make those decisions), and therefore likely missed the collection’s full impact.
December 21, 2023
This one was kind of meh for me, but I may be the wrong demographic. The prose is incredibly verbose with lengthy sentences stretching giant passages. When authors do this, it feels like they are trying to impress upon all us peon readers that their extensive grasp of the modern vernacular far exceeds our own…well I tried.
The plot is broken into six parts, following a mysterious box that cannot be opened but is the source constant misery, pain, woe, confusion, regret, and so on. The parts are difficult to follow and I found myself repeating passages several time. The audio production was well done and this helped keep my focus for the most part. However, this is not a book you can listen to while doing anything that will allow your mind to wander. Thank you to NetGalley and RB Media for giving me the opportunity to listen to the audio production of this ARC in exchange for my honest review.
The plot is broken into six parts, following a mysterious box that cannot be opened but is the source constant misery, pain, woe, confusion, regret, and so on. The parts are difficult to follow and I found myself repeating passages several time. The audio production was well done and this helped keep my focus for the most part. However, this is not a book you can listen to while doing anything that will allow your mind to wander. Thank you to NetGalley and RB Media for giving me the opportunity to listen to the audio production of this ARC in exchange for my honest review.
December 21, 2023
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this eARC.
Well, unfortunately, you can't like them all, and although this one has a clever premise and some interesting interaction between the characters (I am reviewing the audiobook) it seemed a bit pretentious to me.
The societal points it was trying to make could have been made more simplistically, and I felt it made a few sweeping generalizations in what I assume to be broad indictments of society as a whole. I had a hard time finishing this one.
Not my cuppa, but it certainly could be yours, to me it was a bit too cynical and sarcastic when I was looking for a bit of escapism and entertainment.
Well, unfortunately, you can't like them all, and although this one has a clever premise and some interesting interaction between the characters (I am reviewing the audiobook) it seemed a bit pretentious to me.
The societal points it was trying to make could have been made more simplistically, and I felt it made a few sweeping generalizations in what I assume to be broad indictments of society as a whole. I had a hard time finishing this one.
Not my cuppa, but it certainly could be yours, to me it was a bit too cynical and sarcastic when I was looking for a bit of escapism and entertainment.
October 16, 2023
I am still not entirely sure whether to put this book in a box of its own to honor it or as a means of keeping it away from me. I am equally enthralled by the concept but repelled by the delivery. I know that mixing the fields of philosophy, affect theory (I can see the Jane Bennett influence), and narrative theory into one novel is supposed to result in art--which I think this is--but as a total dilettante, I think that I've been left a bit afloat by this.
I'm going to save this one for a day when I have a bit more mental agility and see how I feel about it then.
I'm going to save this one for a day when I have a bit more mental agility and see how I feel about it then.
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November 13, 2023I hate not finishing books but I made it halfway through this before finally throwing in the towel. There are some interesting ideas and images here but all of it is buried under horribly meandering, impenetrable (I would argue pretentious) prose. I found it extremely difficult to follow what was happening, or more to the point to care about what was happening, and I consider myself a fairly adept and tenacious reader. I’m all for experimental plotting and writing, but the thing about experiments is sometimes they fail.
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