I couldn’t go one chapter in this book without at some point putting the book down to think about how beautiful it was. There are so many perfectly captured moments of beauty, describing both nature and humanity alike, that it’s difficult to express how impressive reading this was to me. The only compare for beautiful prose, in my opinion would be Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, or The Peregrine by J.A. Baker.
However, along with that beauty came a subtle repulsiveness that slowly built below the surface. As the story reached its climax, the character’s obsession with an idealized beauty seemed really to be an idolization of death and the unattainable.
I was left with an off-putting feeling in the end, like I’d been staring admiringly at some beautiful stranger napping on a park bench, only to find out later that they’d been dead for hours.
Highly recommended.
Jonas David 