Christian Carey’s Reviews > The Emperor of Gladness > Status Update

“He wanted to tell her that the body was just this stupid little shovel we use to dig through the hours only to end up surrounded by more empty space than we know what to do with. But the drugs were dissolving in him as hers were dissolving in her, and in this pharmaceutical stupor, all he could hear was the rush of static filling the room.”

“How strange to feel something so close to mercy, whatever that was, and stranger still that it should be found in here of all places, at the end of a road of ruined houses by a toxic river. That among a pile of salvaged trash, he would come closest to all he ever wanted to be: a consciousness sitting under a lightbulb reading his days away, warm and alone, alone and yet, somehow, still somebody’s son.”