I think it's interesting to look at the literature coming out now that has to do with building a mythology. Is it because of the incredible works of people like Angela Carter, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino and others who have influenced so strongly this generation? Or is it that as we become increasingly godless and mythless, there is something to the human that needs the myth to survive. I am reminded by the knitting and food preserving revolutions that have exploded, something that used to be what our grandmothers did that a generation took back from parents who left it behind when microwaves and machines made the practices unpractical. Novels like this seem to be a rebellion to the John Updikes and Raymond Carvers of literature. So many of the first novels coming out now are filled with ghosts and dybbuks that it's hard to imagine that graduate students won't have many theses to write about this subject. I happen to love the myth-making, but then I am a part of this generation.

The myths here are generated from a grandfather to his granddaughter. Obreht handles the transition from belief expertly. In the end, there isn't anything resolute to make a judgement on the validity to the grandfather's stories, but the heroes of the book are the ones who, with compassion, allow the myths to prevail, even if they aren't myths at all but the science of the afterlife.