Status Updates From Zen and the Art of Murder (...

Seeing events through the eyes of a woman so wrapped in guilt she can barely move and so often drunk and so plagued by dreams even when awake, makes for a disjointed narrative. Her emotion splash over her thoughts, washing some of them away and blurring others. She knows neither what she wants nor how to stop wanting. It’s real enough to be disturbing but I find it hard to stay engaged.

The detective, in the snow laden woods.as darkess falls on a strange, frustrating day:

“when, she thought, was something finally going to happen?”

I’ve been thinking that for pages now.

Oddly, it’s almost soothing to have so little happening. It makes me listen harder to the detective as she struggles to push back despair.

This is purposely and effectively disquieting. It feels as thoigh it’s moving parallel to the path of a comventional police procedural novel. So far, although there is weirdness, there is no crime. The investigator is lost in remembered trauma that is more real to here than current events. The people feel real. The storytelling style is unstteling.