Status Updates From Omensetter's Luck

call me a simpleton for my prior complaint about losing the plot; by the end of this first and unrelenting Furber segment (not a moment too soon), we get some vibrant details--namely a surreal exchange between him and Omensetter and the suggestion of an unknowable sorcery far from akin to the woowoo poultice that rescued Henry Pimber--that connect Furber's babbling recollection to the present.

two reasonable portions of fluid, peppy, mystical voice, upbeat but not necessarily whimsical style, unabashedly folksy narrative, then 81 pages of Gass doing intermittent stream of consciousness. a lot of it is excellent, so far--he has good, vibrant things to say about how piety takes shape during youth--but the story feels buried under a deluge of plant names and (frankly, cute, but also annoying) singsongy bits