The Illumination

by Kevin Brockmeier

From best-selling and award-winning author Kevin Brockmeier: a new novel of stunning artistry and imagination about the wounds we bear and the light that radiates from us all.

What if our pain was the most beautiful thing about us? In the aftermath of a fatal car accident, a private journal of love notes written by a husband to his wife passes into the keeping of a hospital patient, and from there through the hands of five other suffering people, touching each of them uniquely. I love the soft blue veins on your wrist. I love your lopsided smile. I love watching TV and shelling sunflower seeds with you.

The six recipients - a data analyst, a photojour­nalist, a schoolchild, a missionary, a writer, and a street vendor - inhabit an acutely observed, beauti­fully familiar yet particularly strange universe, as only Kevin Brockmeier could imagine it: a world in which human pain is expressed as illumination, so that one's wounds glitter, fluoresce, and blaze with light. As we follow the journey of the book from stranger to stranger, we come to understand how intricately and brilliantly they are connected, in all their human in­jury and experience.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Contemporary, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Novels

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, Brockmeier received his MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop in 1997. His stories have been featured in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Crazyhorse, and The Georgia Review. He is the recipient of an O. Henry Award, the Nelson Algren Award, and a National Endowment of the Arts grant.

Reviews

[DelGal · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't think I've ever been so engrossed in a book like this one, and enjoyed it so much (even recommended it) but then suddenly half way through the story something happened and I got the literary rug pulled out from under me. How can something go from an "awesome wow" to a fizzled bunch of yuck?

Since I happen to be a person who suffers from chronic pain, I found the main premise of this story to not only be intriguing but personally touching - It's about pain suddenly giving off light in everyone's bodies (the illumination). I filled a few days thinking about, and discussing this subject. I even enjoyed the subplot about a "traveling" love journal, tragically lost by the original writer. So having the story suddenly change from an endearing page-turner to a chore of a read, was rather jarring and confusing. I managed to continue reading the entire book to see if it would get better, but alas it never improved. All that was left was repetitive, people had pain and light came shooting out of their skin, yes, I got that point, but I need something more to happily continue on! There was no final explanation or even an ending thought to leave readers something more to think about, nothing. How sad, I think it could have been a great read, but the author couldn't keep up the plot and develop it into anything more substantial.

[Heidi Wiechert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Humanity suddenly changes as emotional and physical pain begins to shine out of our bodies like light. How would a shift like that change culture? And what does it all mean?

Kevin Brockmeier examines these questions through six different lives that are tied together through a diary filled with love notes from a husband to his wife.

Rarely has a book stuck in my mind like The Illumination. Since putting it down, I've found myself thinking about it and asking myself what the author was saying.

"Through the haze of drugs, it seemed to her that the light was not falling over her wound or even infusing it from the inside but radiating through it from another world. She thought that she could live there and be happy." pg 8, ebook

Throughout the centuries, mystics and others considered "holy" or infused with spirit have been depicted with light shining from their bodies and hands. The ineffable connection to God or gods is shown in the artistic shorthand of light, an illumination in the dark.

In the day-to-day business of living, many of us are too busy with our individual lives to stop a second and ask ourselves, what is the purpose of this experience? It feels so random for the most part. Terrible things happen to good people, good things happen to terrible people. It feels arbitrary and, worst of all, meaningless.

So many are in pain and we can't possibly heal them all. We don't acknowledge that. But what if it became so obvious that we couldn't ignore it.

"The world had changed in the wake of the Illumination. No one could disguise his pain anymore." pg 29, ebook

The Illumination illustrates another of humanity's foibles - the tendency to demote the miraculous to the mundane once it becomes a common place experience. Babies are born every day. People die every day. Life in its beginnings, endings, and everything in the middle, is extraordinary but I don't think we appreciate the enormousness of it unless something unexpected or earth-shattering happens in our own lives.

"He watched with interest as his body was chafed and torn, thinking, Look what's here inside me. Who ever would have guessed? pg 164, ebook

Maybe, if we truly tried to let it all in, we would all stand around paralyzed by awe.

"It turned out that the world at the end of time was just like the world at the beginning: a single set of footsteps printing the grass, everything lit with its own newness, a brighter and much, much emptier place." pg 48, ebook

In this world, the past is reexamined in the wake of the new light-filled reality. Historic photos are doctored to make the pain visible through light. Hospitals develop new protocols to address the change in reality. Communication and politeness take on new meaning as private pain becomes public knowledge.

"For a few months, church attendance spiked. Some of the seats at Fellowship Bible were taken by visitors, some by the Christmas-and-Easter set. It didn't matter - each new face showed the guilt, fright, or confusion of someone confronted by a game whose rules had suddenly changed." pg 104, ebook

The dystopian worlds of literature present authors' various views on what the world would look like at the end of all things. Brockmeier's world is so very much like ours except for one glaring difference. Perhaps that's the point. The end of the world is much like today - light or no light, we're all wandering around seeking meaning and bumping into each other and causing pain, intentional and unintentional.

The spiritual and religious beg for illumination, a shining light through the confusion, a removal of a metaphysical blindfold. But what would we do if those prayers were answered in a concrete way? Probably nothing once the initial shock wore off.

Recommended for readers who seek the answers to unanswerable questions. Some trigger warnings for cutting, self mutilation, and violence.

[Nicola Balkind · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sometimes a good book is hard to read. Sometimes a hard book is good to read. Sometimes, a book is as good as it is bad. The Illumination was mostly the latter.

'The Illumination' is a phenomenon that suddenly occurs across the world, where physical aches and pains light up for all to see, and suffering becomes visible. The book follows 6 protagonists in a story hand-off that is spectacularly evenly divided and yet totally unsatisfying. Initially, we find ourselves in the company of a data analyst whose bitter ex-husband sends her a difficult package, opening which she slices her finger. While in hospital, a woman who has been in a car crash gives her a journal filled with love notes from her husband, who is presumed dead. The journal becomes the thread that runs through the book as it finds its way into the hands of each protagonist. But it's all been constructed by an amateur seamstress, and the result is pretty dodgy.

The idea behind all of this is that there is beauty in pain, but as the lives of these characters interweave in subtle ways, it never feels fully satisfying. Passages are filled with endless beautiful prose, but it's essentially the same scene sewn together in slightly different permutations over and over. The result is a novel that feels like the same short story narrated by six different characters read in quick succession.

If it made any sense, I'd recommend reading the first two-and-a-half chapters of this book. Instead, I'm going to have to say that The Illumination simply isn't fully-formed, and definitely won't blow your mind.

http://unculturedcritic.com

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Readers of my reviews may have noticed that I am attracted to the whimsical, the magical, the fantastic, in novels. Kevin Brockmeier surprised and startled me with his first novel, A Brief History of the Dead. I wondered how he would do that again in his second.

The Illumination is another work of sheer imagination laid over the gritty reality of modern life. Brockmeier uses the device of an object which passes through the hands of six characters, in this case a book of love quotes. It is a journal kept by a young married woman whose husband left her a love note everyday. "I love the way you kiss. I love the way you shake your head when you yawn. I love the way you alphabetize the CDs, but arrange the books by height." She copied his notes into her journal each day. But then she dies and the journal is taken by another woman who had shared the hospital room where she died.

Meanwhile, during the hospital stay, a phenomenon occurs all over the world. Each person's bodily pain shows up as light, causing wounds and illnesses to glow and glitter. One might wonder if such an aesthetic limning of pain would bring about a more compassionate world. As the love journal passes through the hands of five more characters in the following months, the answer proves to be: not necessarily.

A story featuring so much pain and adversity does not induce cheerfulness. I found myself feeling sorrowful and even horrified at the loneliness, the unfulfilled dreams, the hopeless nature of so many people's lives. All the imagery of injury, disease, pain; all the illumination of flesh, organs, muscles, cells and nerves were almost too much. Some characters deal with pain by numbing it, some attempt to rise above it, some even inflict pain on themselves or others to block out existing suffering.

The blurb on the back cover of The Illumination says, "What if our pain was the most beautiful thing about us?" I emphatically do not agree that Kevin Brockmeier believes any such thing. He leaves each of his six characters with their stories unresolved, just as he leaves the questions he raises about pain without clear answers. What he did for me was open new ways of thinking about the Buddhist precept that life is suffering. Most of all, due to his beautiful writing and his ability to infuse the tedious world with magic, he took me away for a while and left me with a renewed sense of wonder. What if there is more to life than pain?

[Lark Benobi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kevin Brockmeier has a remarkable and unique talent for writing stories that are simultaneously uplifting and heartbreaking. He did it again.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

The world had changed in the wake of the Illumination. No one could disguise his pain anymore. You could hardly step out in public without noticing the white blaze of someone’s impacted heel showing through her slingbacks; and over there, hailing a taxi, a woman with shimmering pressure marks where her pants cut into her gut; and behind her, beneath the awning of the flower shop, a man lit all over in a glory of leukemia.


***


An interesting thing happens when reading Kevin Brockmeier’s The Illumination: you quickly become lost in the painterly way he covers his world in light; using thin needlework stitching, thick roll-on strokes, or igniting someone’s skeleton in a million points of the brightest white imaginable, their core shining through their skin as if stripped clean of their top layer, Brockmeier deceives the reader in a subtle, but immensely affecting way. After so many pages of lovingly constructed imagery you realize, as I’m sure he intended, that you’ve been deriving pleasure from nothing less than the agony and suffering of others—revelling in the one-of-a-kind beauty of experience that is found only through pain, described with carefully constructed and moving use of metaphor.

Adopting a structure similar to David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten, The Illumination is a novel told in six modestly connected parts. At exactly 8:17 one Friday night, every wound, every sore, every broken or damaged part of every broken and damaged human on the planet begins to shine from within with a luminous white light. In that instant, all the pain we’ve worked so hard to keep to ourselves—all the agonies, large and small, we fight to bury and repress—is made visible, as obvious as the stars in the night sky. Pain, a constant in everyone’s life to varying degrees, becomes a measurable quantity in the eyes of others.

Structured loosely around a journal of love notes from a husband to his wife that makes its way through the hands of the novel’s six protagonists, The Illumination is a study of expectations and juxtapositions: the journal, an object meant for the two lovers and no one else, remains an artefact of something they’ve lost since the Illumination took hold of the world—the need to express a beauty that is pure and untainted. The journal is ratty, faded, falling apart, yet it retains its original intent—to express love and devotion. The Illumination, on the other hand, is the performance art of an unseen, unspoken higher power—an unexplainable phenomenon gifted to the world as a helping hand, to encourage the expression of one’s inner beauty and repressed pain amongst a society that has forgotten what it means to be open and honest about the terrible, amazing, stunning atrocities we take joy in and feel repulsed by at the same time:




Now the worshippers were on their feet, performing a hymn he knew by heart, their voices flowing just alongside the melody, as if tracing the banks of a stream. And if a bomb were to land on them as they sang so humbly and sincerely, the splendor of their bodies would bathe the town in silver. And if every bomb flew from its arsenal, every body displayed its pain, the globe would catch fire in a Hiroshima of light. And maybe, from somewhere far away, God would notice it and return, and the cinders would receive Him like a hillside washed in the sun.




In some ways, the novel feels a themed mosaic of short narratives. The six lives contained within are drastically different from one another, but as the journal passes through them—either overtly, as an object with life-altering reverence, or subtly, as something that passes through their lives like a metaphor in three-dimensions—Brockmeier uses the Illumination as a counterweight, carving his characters’ pain in swatches, slivers, and harsh-light-of-day strokes. While beautiful in the way they forge connective threads between all people of all races in every corner of the world, the light that shines from within is also disturbing, threatening, and in the end, nowhere near as beautiful as the thousand little ways one man managed to express his love to his wife with nothing but a pen and some paper.

The Illumination is not as spiritual a book as its name might imply. It’s not devoid of such connotations, but its merit is in its artistry—in the way it paints the world as a Terry Riley-esque chance-oriented symphony, the light from within playing against other people, other surfaces, with different chord and key combinations. As one person’s entire being is lit up like the lights at a movie premiere—a power chord to break one’s mind from all distractions—the slow trill of a snake of light arcing through a carefully stitched incision cuts through the cacophony, presenting a light just as bright as any other. Because all pain is not equal, but no amount of pain can be dismissed.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It's a series of linked stories held together by the phenomenon of the "illumination" and by a journal of daily love notes from a husband to his wife. The Illumination causes pain to appear as an emanation of light from the part of the body where the pain occurs. Each of the characters experiences this phenomenon in some way, and each connects in some way or other with the character whose story follows theirs. But this connection is ephemeral, it's really the book that is the protagonist, as one reviewer pointed out. What puzzled me was the relationship of the husband and wife who create the book. Is it truly a love connection or is there some (almost) unspoken burden the book creates? There seem to be hints about this, especially when one character, a writer, makes use of the idea of love notes in a fable she writes. That got me thinking that the book is much about fiction and the way authors can create imaginary worlds in which we begin to believe wholeheartedly. What is real in the universe of the book, and what is created by a character inside the book, and how do we believe in those worlds in different ways. So, the book became a book not only about compassion and love and loneliness and silence, but also about writing and the imagination itself. The ending left me even more puzzled, but in a good way. I want to read this book again and talk about it, and read more of Brockmeyer.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am conflicted about giving this book a star rating, because it was so unremarkable. Neither great nor bad, and yet the obligatory 3 stars makes it seem like I had an opinion.

I'm about as tired of linked stories as I am of precocious child narrators. This book has both. The links in The Illumination are extremely tenuous, to the point that it feels like the journal that follows all six had to be inserted just to give us a vague sense of continuity. Similarly, the illumination itself (injuries in the book cause the sufferer to give off a glow where they hurt) doesn't seem particularly necessary, even though it lends the book its title.

I liked the idea of a man who writes a reason he loves his wife every day of their marriage, and I even adopted it for my husband (so far, my reasons aren't quite as poetic as Brockmeier's). I was fascinated when I realized the structure of the third section was dictated by the character's love of the number ten. But I hated the second section, and I was bored by most of the others.

I just wish this was another Brief History of the Dead. Loved that one, am terribly lackluster about this one.

[Caitlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kenneth Brockmeier is so frustrating. His eye for detail is arresting, and I found myself constantly on the brink of tears during the first half of the book because it just seemed so true and real. His writing is gorgeous. But he can't seem to structure a novel; the entire concept of this one seems better suited to a short story (light pours from wounds!) than multiple chapters. He simply runs out of ways to say the one thing he wants to say. The links between the short story-like chapters are barely there, and the stories get waaay less gripping as the book progresses (reminiscent of Let the Great World Spin in that sense). He has ideas that are cool, and fascinatingly weird, and you sort of marvel at them for a while, but by the end you're bored and confused and I think he is too. What's the point of the illumination, in the end? Fascination with others' pain isn't really a message.

[Helen Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't explain why, but I love Kevin Brockmeier's writing. It's sad and beautiful and oddly soothing.

The story is strange - about a world where pain glows with light - and his characters are all troubled and riddled with pain. Their stories are loosely intertwined in a way that reminded me that the world is smaller than we think.

I wish I knew what happened to all these people after the book ended.

[Melanie Lamaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Illumination is a literary novel with only one fantastic element, but it’s a doozy: one day, inexplicably, the bodily pain of each and every human being on earth begins to manifest as a white light. Everything from a headache to leukemia shines out of the body like a beacon for all to see.

The story follows a sequence of people who come into possession of a journal of love notes, transcribed by a woman named Patricia, from the notes her husband left her on the fridge every day of their marriage. She and her husband get in a car wreck just before the phenomenon called the Illumination begins. Thinking that her husband is dead, grieving and fatally injured, Patricia gives the journal to her hospital roommate, Carol Ann.

Carol Ann has landed in the hospital after she accidentally sliced off the tip of her finger. After a day or so, she realizes that she is not hallucinating the white light streaming from her fingertip; nor is the phenomenon hers alone. Her doctor says “Funny how quickly a person can get used to a miracle… if that’s what this is. The problem is, we’re in a hospital. Not exactly and environment conducive to quiet reflection.”

But it seems that perhaps the entire world must be “an environment not conducive to quiet reflection.” Once people have adjusted to the fact of the Illumination (including the naming of it) they politely pretend they can’t see the anguish blatantly displayed by one another’s bodies, and life continues pretty much as it did before.

Given that, the journal seems to take on a greater significance. It is perhaps everything the Illumination should have been but isn’t. The love to balance the pain.

Each person who comes into possession of the journal ponders the people who wrote and received the love notes (even Jason, the writer of the notes, ponders the man he was when he wrote them), and the existence of such an object in relation to themselves.

Once a character’s time with the journal is done, we leave them: Carol Ann with her cut finger and malicious ex-husband; Jason, the writer of the love notes, who falls in with a group of self-mutilating teens as a way to cope with the unbearable loss of his wife; Chuck, the emotionally abandoned, savant boy who sees life in inanimate objects and steals the journal to protect it from harm; Ryan, an uninspired missionary; Nina, a writer with chronic pain; and Morse, an emotionally disturbed homeless man who sells books on the street.

Each character’s story is compelling, though naturally I found some to be more so than others. There are no tidy endings to the individual stories, but cumulatively they build to a meditation on the metaphysical nature of human suffering.

This is not a novel that lends itself to easy readings. But for me, despite the flashy premise (pun!), The Illumination is at heart about the search for the profound in the mundane. The goofy, sweet sentiments expressed in the journal bear this theory out. For unlike the rest of the prose in this novel, which is gorgeously crafted, poetic without being ostentatious, and clearly the work of a master, the love notes taken from the journal seem entirely realistic, thoughts and observations that could have been written by any husband: odes to the beauty of small, personal moments whose significance and pathos transcend language.

[Holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Before page 65 I was already growing impatient with the premise: I didn't require any more extended descriptions of light pouring from wounds. I also found the writing/story a little sentimental, romantic, cheap, and obvious. Brockmeier's earlier novel A Brief History of the Dead, had an intriguing premise, but there the reader projected the inevitable conclusion the concept requires/contains (a Bardo-like city where the dead carry on their lives until all the humans on Earth who remember them are dead too) - and that propelled the story (at least for me - I was caught up in that novel and turned the pages quickly, and then thought about the story for a good while after finishing). The conceit in The Illumination is very interesting, but Brockmeier revels for pages in describing different manifestations of this light; he is in love with the concept. What is he going to do with this? Explore the implications! What about privacy? What about newfound empathy? Suffering as beauty, okay - that's been explored in Christianity and Buddhism. But the glorification of human pain for what purpose? It became unsettling for me. Why the bizarre extended lesson in self-mutilation? WHAT IS THE POINT? The characters don't become more empathetic. Saramago characters can see better than those in The Illumination! The Bookforum reviewer said this well: "The beautiful light spilling from people's bodies only emphasizes what many of us already believe: that we find other people's suffering fascinating, but not so fascinating that we'll do anything about it."

[Grace Herndon · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I first read the back of the book I was very intrigued and interested, however as I read the book I became less and less enthralled in the story. This book is written
very simply and there isn't much depth to any of the characters. I didn't feel a connection with any of the characters and I think this is partly because this book follows the story line of several different people. I also didn't feel as though this book had a purpose or a point to make to the readers.
One of the main aspects of this story was that at a certain point in time every time a human being was feeling pain, light would emanate from the area in pain. I thought this was interesting at first but it strangely this phenomenon was not a central part of the story line. The book just followed the lives of several characters and surprisingly their lives were relatively unaffected by the release of light from their bodies. Overall I think the ideas in this book are very creative but not worth writing a whole book about.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

An almost meditative read. Stylistically beautiful, but gently -- not strikingly gorgeous, but flowing and constantly so. The stories are disjointed and occasionally convenient, but: so is life, and this book is big on life snapshots. Deus ex machina gets a bad rap -- but we've all experienced it, in some capacity, in our lives. To exclude that kind of experience completely would be disingenuous, unrealistic.

The undercurrent of pain-as-light was so cool, but not dealt with in as much depth as I would have liked -- just kind of happens, and life goes on (but again --- realism, realism) -- and I found the love note journal rather irritating ---- but despite these being central to the text, there's much more to find here. A soft, lovely book.

[Kirstie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the topic of this book more than anything else..the idea is that somehow our wounds-be them cuts, bruises, or cancerous tumors radiate light...some feel it's beautiful and some try to disguise it. The novel explores a few different perspectives of people finding out then living with this oddity, which is what becomes termed "The Illumination" itself. We meet a photographer, an author, a young boy who refuses to speak, an evangelist, and a homeless bookseller as well as all of the people they interact with. The writing is above average but I felt at times he needed to continue with a person or chapter before ending it. I did like the way their lives intersect or I should say some of the aspects of their lives if not themselves specifically.

When books like this succeed, they do so by virtue of their ease in combining a fantastical like situation in the world with enough reality to make it a believable scenario and offer insights into humanity by look at the way people might (again, realistically) deal with something of this bizarre nature. I think Brockmeier succeeded with this in a number of ways but was lacking in a few areas, especially with the first section. However, I did find the way he carried an aspect of the first section, a journal where a wife has written down every thing her husband revealed he loved about her, into the remainder of the novel. It comes off as very honest and sweet, not shmaltzy as one might think.

I found this novel to be creative and insightful, well worth reading. I did not, however, find it life changing and absolutely brilliant, which is what I reserve 5/5 stars for. I am probably a harsh critic but not all books are written and read equally. Also, fyi this novel reminded me slightly of Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma, another novel I really enjoyed.


Some memorable quotes:

ppg 15-16 "Were we outlived by our pain? How long did it cling to this world?"

(VIA WHITTAKER CHAMBERS) pg. 43 "The reality cuts across our minds like a wound whose edges crave to heal, but cannot. Thus, one of the great sins, perhaps *the* great sin, is to say: It will heal; it has healed; there is no wound; there is something more important than this wound. There is nothing more important than this wound.


pg. 127 "Chuck would be an orphan with the sad parts included."

pg. 150 "...she read the verse printed at the top. 'Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun. Ecclesiastes 11:7.' 'Well, that's fine and all," Felenthia said, 'but you're forgetting Ecclesiastes 11:8: 'If a man lives many years, let him rejoices in them all, but let him remember the days of darkness for they shall be many. All that comes is vanity.'"

ppg 184-185 "Her signature slowly changed beneath her fingers, rearranging itself, purifying itself, plunge by plunge and bend by bend until it was no longer a set of letters at all but a curious abstract design. It was like the pattern she had once watched a moth draw with its wings in the condensation of her bathroom mirror. She remembered switching off the lights and opening the window so that it would fly away and the, when it did, calling Wallace in to see the strange hieroglyph of swesps and flickers it had left behind.

'I bet it was trying to communicate with you,' he mused. 'Maybe it was dad, reincarnated as a moth, and the only way he knew how to get in touch with us was to write something with his wings.' He looked more carefully at the mark. 'Except he's illiterate'"

pg. 188 "Esque-ish. It's a word me and Coop came up with. First esque then ish. Something that reminds you of something that reminds you of something."

pg. 197 "I love that game where you draw a picture on my back with your finger and I try to guess what it is."

pg 211 "In Phoenix the streets ran flat and straight, and the jacaranda blossoms made strange ghosts in the slipstreams of the cars..."

pg 212 "One of the managers gave her a t-shirt with the words FICTIONAL CHARACTER printed on the front."


pg. 214 "Once there was a country where it rained for most of the year, and everyone resided underground, and no one was quite sure who was dead and who was living. But id did not matter because they were happy. And they were ever. And they were after."

(VIA FRANZ KAFKA) "It is enough that the arrows fit exactly in the wounds they have made."


pg. 225 "Sometimes, on the gray soaked days of February and March, when the sun seemed to dissolve into the clouds like an antacid tablet, h would peer down the street and see nothing but a gleaming field of injuries, as if the traumas and diseased which people suffered had become so powerful, so hardy, that they no longer needed their bodies to survive. From the doors of shops and art galleries came strange floating candles of heart pain and arthritis. Stray muscle cramps spilled across the sidewalk like sparks scattering from a bonfire. Neural diseases fluttered in the air like leaves falling through a shaft of light. A great fanning network of leukemia rose out of a taxi and drifted incandescently into an office building, and he watched as it vanished into bricks, a shining angel of cancer."

pg. 256 "Their thesis-and the Hval equations had already borne this out-was that there was no such thing as photonic degradation, that light was effectively immortal, or at least as immoral as the universe itself.

[☕Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of this book was intriguing but I never felt its potential was realized.

Ratings:

Writing 4
Story line 3
Characters 3
Impact 3

Overall rating 3.25

[Kinsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually finished this book several hours ago but I’ve spent the subsequent time with my head in my hands, trying to figure out the rating it deserves.

I’ll start with the good points: this book was emotionally devastating on a level I was entirely unprepared for. The story is composed of several different characters (whose point of view each make up a “chapter”) and how they all interconnect thanks to a single item: a journal full of love notes written from a husband to his wife. Each character is diverse enough that you don’t feel like you’re reading the same regurgitated storyline six different times. “The Illumination” – the namesake of the book – is a spontaneous event where the wounds of people begin to shine with an inner light. This light highlights everything from cuts to cancers to an “aura” (indicating emotional/mental distress), and each character regards this “Illumination” in vastly different ways.

Now the downsides: this book is by far the strongest with its first three characters and the weakest with its last three. Whereas the journal directly impacts the lives of the first three characters, by the last three it becomes little more than a continuously used prop. The first three chapters occur within very little time of each other as well as the genesis of the Illumination, while the last three chapters cover events that occur years later and gets stuck in the literary mire because of that.

I’ve decided to give this book 3 stars simply because the first three chapters are just THAT GOOD. I never thought I would say this about a full-length novel, but I think that the idea and spirit of the story would’ve been far better served if the author had decided to write it as a short story. Show the first three “hand-offs” of the journal and then let the reader decide how it continues from there, because where it ultimately ended up was a bit of a disappointment.

[Sarah Cypher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, if it weren't for the last chapter! I fell in love Kevin Brockmeier's writing for its sensitive existentialism (incidentally the same reason I admire Jane McCafferty's First You Try Everything: A Novel). I enjoyed his deft handling of what could be a plodding trope in the hands of a more sensationalist writer: wounds that are rendered into light. He explores his concept with the thoroughness of a genre writer, but follows a literary sensibility through a series of interconnected short stories to show the fine resonance between love and pain.

The novel breaks down in its final chapter, however. His POV character has what seems (to me) to be an unfounded ability to read minds, and the narrator jumps without warning into the heads of passersby. I found the transition irritating, but could have dismissed it as an editorial oversight had the *entire blasted novel* not ended on one of these jumps: There, all the deliciously textured mystery of love and pain is reduced to a scientific observation in the mind of a random academic who is walking down the street. In the final lines, Brockmeier forces an explanation of his concept onto us--perhaps not realizing that when we embraced his magical realist concept in the first pages, we dismissed the need to understand, to compartmentalize, to qualify.

The flaw is so blatant, however, and the rest of the novel so brilliant, that we might still embrace it because of its shortcomings. The disappointment of a bad ending is minimal, too, because the novel is a series of stories; really, it is only one story that fails. Too bad it's the last one, but the others make for a fine journey. And as they say, it's the journey, not the destination.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a beautifully written and affecting book. I can't help but think that if you liked it or not, you would ponder a lot of ideas that are brought up within it. When wounds start displaying themselves through light some media pundit coins it the "Illumination". We're talking any wound from lung cancer to a stubbed toe, sometimes the light might radiate and other times it might sparkle. Now that we can view all of each others physical frailties so clearly a number of things come up. What is the etiquette, do you acknowledge it? Do you outwardly empathize? Do you fetishize it? Do you not let it effect you at all? The book is about all of these things and more.

We follow 6 characters, strangers, as they rummage through their own observations and experiences with this idea. One thing does intertwine us and this, I believe, is the only weakness of the book. It is a journal, a romantic gesture, that even when we learn the prosaic beginning of its existence I started to become weary of it about halfway through the book. The only thing that buoyed me was that it is consistently wrenched from the characters hands in increasingly troublesome ways.

I wouldn't put this book in the uplifting column, I'd put it in the observational column. The writing is a pleasure.

"It was a joy to be alive when it was a joy to be alive, and it was a terror to be alive when it wasn't."

"It seemed to him that he had grown old not in the usual way, day by day, but in a series of sudden jerks."

[Matthew Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had two fascinating central ideas: (a) the concept of hidden pain becoming visible; and (b) the power of something precious passing from one person to another.

So the first chapter of “The Illumination” had me hooked… I couldn’t wait to see how things unraveled. But now that I’ve reached the end, I’m left with an overwhelming sense of disillusionment… forgive the pun. My disappointments are threefold:

(1) Despite the intriguing framing, I was bored of these same two ideas being recycled for the entire duration. By the end, if I had to read one more synonym of light (or bright, shining, illuminating, shimmering etc…), I thought I would scream. Describing the illumination event could have carried a single chapter, not the entire book.
(2) Things get weird at the end. I won’t say anything more than that.
(3) In the end, the biggest frustration was the feeling of unmet potential. I desperately wanted the protagonists to interact more. Or overlap more. Or learn more. Or evolve more. Or anything. I wanted to be immersed in a mystic journey, not just hear a description of a mystic event.

Having said that, Brockmeier sure does have a talent for description. The prose is beautiful. That is one piece of praise I can lavish quite freely. There is no doubt that Kevin Brockmeier is ridiculously talented, with a mind full of great ideas. I will definitely read his next novel, in the hope it retains the central beauty of “The Illumination” but gets packaged in something more ultimately satisfying.

[Kevin Orth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book breaks the rules. The thread character through the whole narrative is a diary. The storyline is neither linear nor logical but the author masterfully makes it work. This is a rare read I was not skimming through details and segments. Highly recommend.

[Wendy Wakeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I put this book down on page 5 in a huff because I disliked the way the author used the word "genuflect." Sometime maybe I'll get around to writing an essay about that word, its use, and misuse, because I have a lot of feelings surrounding it that need to get out. Luckily, I'm lazy. The next book on my list was upstairs, and I wanted to sit outside on the porch and read, so I took it up again.
I love so much about this book. I love the two strangenesses that form its purpose: pain becomes visible and an intimate journal passes amongst a disparate group of people. I love the sentences and the characters and the ordinary way extraordinary happenings are presented.
I nearly put the book down a second time, when the character Chuck gets the journal. Chuck is a young adolescent who at first seems to have an intellectual disability. So many movies and books fall into cliche when a guy like Chuck comes onto the scene. But I persevered despite misgivings, and I'm so glad I did. He's a good character, round and interesting.
Why four stars and not five? (I'm such an easy grader, aren't I? Only dead people and the truly awful fall below four stars.) Primarily, the lost star is for the ending, which doesn't hold up for me. And for the endings of the individual parts, too. And because sometimes I just don't believe people would act the way they act. There's a scene between Carol Ann and the doctor (when he discovers she has the journal) that doesn't ring true to me at all.
But mostly, it's a heckofa book.

[Cari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Six people get their hands on a journal — an actual record kept by a women who copied them from the sticky notes her husband left each day about all the reasons he loves her. We get to know these six in their own novella, so to speak. They don’t know each other, but the journal has a profound effect on each of them during a time when the pain of the human race becomes visible through illuminated light. Arthritis, cancer, sinus infections, toothaches, all are now on display.

If it sounds far fetched or off the wall, well, yeah, we’re dealing with the wildly amazing imagination of Kevin Brockmeier (who should be far more well-known in my opinion). While not my favorite of the three Brockmeier books I’ve read, it is a beautifully written meditation on the human condition and all the loneliness — and yes, pain — that it entails. With each novella I finished, I kept thinking of these characters and wondered how they moved on and how they’re doing. Each of them left me feeling touched. Good writing does have a way of giving you the feels, I guess.

[Amanda Himes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to give this book 5 stars for its beautiful prose: "they turned toward the street and their outlines blurred like plucked wires." --from a random page in the Morse section.

The six stories don't really ever coalesce, despite certain promises made on the back cover. Each are separate, and my favorite was a story-within-a-story, a fable written by Nina with the incurable mouth sores. Here are my rankings, best to worst:
1. Ryan the missionary
2. Morse the homeless guy
3. Nina the writer
4. Jason the photojournalist
5. Carol Ann the patient
6. Chuck the abused kid (doesn't help that I hate the name "Chuck")

[Sheri · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another book of short stories..this summer has been plagued by short story collections that I don't realize are short stories until I start reading them. In my defense I would like to point out that the title of this book is actual "The Illumination: A Novel." BUT IT IS NOT!

This was a collection of stories following a journal of love notes after an event (called the Illumination) which turned pain into visible streams of light. I really enjoyed the first story; I liked the premise and the character and was interesting. When the second chapter opened and I realized that I had followed the notebook and it was a different story I was disappointed (both because of my less than fond feelings toward short story collections and because I did not like the new characters nearly as much as I liked those in the first story). The idea here is that this is a collection of stories about love and loss and pain and while the idea of emotional pain being equivalent to physical pain (and also emitting a certain type of light) is briefly addressed, the bulk of the collection deals with physical pain. I have notes on each of the six stories below.

Carol Ann Page: My favorite story in the collection. I found Carol Ann believable, interesting and sympathetic. We first encounter the Illimination here and I really liked the social difficulties that it presented for Carol Ann: "They all tried their best not to acknowledge one another's suffering." Certainly this theme was brought up again later in the Nina Poggione story; when pain becomes visible it is harder to pretend that one is okay; it is harder not to offer assistance. I also liked the description of unlooked-for happiness; that rare feeling that we all (if we are lucky) stumble upon for no great reason upon occasion: "Sometimes they rose up inside her, these moments of fierce happiness, kindling out of their own substanace liek a spark igniting a mound of grass. It was a joy to be alive, a strange and savage joy, and she stood there in the warmth and destruction of it knowing it could not last." coupled with the wish to avoid unpleasantness: "This is not really happening, and also In an hour this will already have happened."

Jason Williford: Jason is the author of the love notes. He retrieves them from Carol Ann after finding out that his wife accidentally gave them to Carol Ann before she died because she thought that Jason had already died. He essentially is the walking dead, and in fact was dead for a moment after the car accident but was revived. He is simply the sap that cannot move on: "It was his gift to Patricia, his tribute--to create the kind of life he would be willing to burn to ashes." In his grief and his guilt he becomes a sadist who enjoys nothing as much as self mutilation.

Chuck Carter: The kid down the block who is odd and feels sympathetic towards objects. He steals the notebook from Jason because he believes that it has not been treated well. Brockmeier is quick to tell us that Chuck is not mentally deficient, he is just a little odd, but he does come across as slightly autistic and possibly deranged. Morse (later) is also not completely mentally there. I find it odd that Brockmeier gives these two characters "special" powers: Chuck the ability sense objects emotional states and Morse the ability to read other people's minds. Chuck is pretty easy going until Todd (the school bully) tears the journal and then he feels the need to retaliate.

Ryan Shifrin: The door-to-door Christian missionary who inherits the notebook from Chuck. In his remorse for not better protecting the notebook, Chuck gives it to Ryan one day. I found this story to be the least interesting and the one that did not mesh as well with the others. We follow Ryan through 4 decades of missionary work and see all the close calls and have to weed through a bunch of prostelysizing to eventually have him leave the book in a hotel room. Ultimately I was not very interested in this story.

Nina Poggione: Nina finds the notebook in a hotel room drawer and then incorporates the love notes in her next book of short stories. And so, we have a story within a story because we get to "hear" her read the story out loud at book signings. I found Nina to be a sympathetic character, but her pain was annoying. I thought that this would have been a good opportunity for Brockmeier to dwell more on emotional (rather than physical) pain, but he did not. The sci-fi story the used the love notes was interesting, but ultimately not relevant to the love-loss/pain theme of the main stories.

Morse Putnam Strawbridge: Finally, Nina's son swaps the notebook with a homeless (and again slightly mentally deficient) book street-vendor who ultimately loses it when some thugs beat him up. Morse was an interesting character because he had this telepathic ability: "He did not love anyone, he only understood them, and who in this world would choose understanding over love?", but the story about him did not really go anywhere.

Overall it was just a collection of stories. I think it could have been done better as a longer work encompassing one of these characters and building on the premise of the Illumination (which was not really addressed at all other than "hey it's strange that this is happening."). Slight entertaining, but nothing really special.

[Jodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this weird and beautiful book about 3 years ago, but never entered it in here. It came up as a suggestion. This won’t be everyone’s thing, but if it’s yours, it will stick with you. The Illumination attempts to answer the question: “If everyone can see everyone else’s pain, will we learn to become more compassionate or selectively blind?”

[Lisa Muchmore · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to give it 2.5 stars but Goodreads won’t let me. Interesting concept with everyone’s physical pain becoming illuminated. A couple characters I really liked and got me thinking, however the other characters were BORINGGG. Whole book follows this diary of love letters (which was super neat), but I feel like I lost some of it towards the end. Overall was an interesting read.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to say how well crafted this book is ... but it fell apart 2/3 in.

[Pauln · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the first half of the book…(somewhat) believable premise, interesting characters and subtle connections to each other…but about halfway thru, I felt the story got muddled and somewhat confusing. Made it to the end hoping for a reconnection, but…

[Irisjade · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far, it started out really great. Intriguing, lovely writing style, almost poetic, I could almost see the illumination coming out of the book itself. Further into the book, though, it's getting a bit tedious and dragging on. Nothing much has happened, and yet a lot has happened. It's confusing at times who the author is talking about, and it's an adult read so I can't comprehend some of it. Hope it turns out well.
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Well, a lot of reviews warned me, and I knew they would be right. The ending is disappointing. It doesn't end any different than it began. I just don't think I fully understood it. Maybe it was out of my age range, but it just kind of kept going and going and then stopped randomly. It was like a long railroad track with lots of beautiful scenery and then all of a sudden it stops in the middle of nowhere. Other than the ending (which is very important) the book kept me fairly intriguied. But what was the point of the crack opening in the ground with the love notes? I get it's supposed to be some kind of climax, but it was like an idea the writer toyed with and then just threw away. He never explained it and it never went anywhere. I thought it could've been great, but it wasn't and I'm just left wondering where the hell I am. I have to admit, though; I couldn't put it down.
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Okay, so I read a review and think I understand this book a lot better now. I have a newfound appreciation for it, though I do admit it wasn't done as masterfully as it could have been. It was flawed, yes, but beautiful otherwise. I think I'll bump this up a star...