"EVERYTHING GAINS SIGNIFICANCE WHEN YOU PUT IT UP ON AN ALTAR" (274)

Amelia Gray's sentences are altars, propping up objects and moments and sensations. This tongue-tyingly beautiful novel—while threaded with a smooth, albeit mysterious, narrative and a small spot-lit bundle of characters—is truly the sum of thousands of such details, carefully and lovingly and wisely suffused with significance. Gray's writing implicates such a keenly perceptive set of eyes (and ears and nerve endings) for the little things; the things swept under the benumbing rug of over-familiarity, things lost in the shuffle of daily grinds and the sheer abundance of what's on offer for human beings to notice or appreciate or to overlook or take for granted. And there's such a potent imagination and dexterous writerly skill at play with which to transmit these depictions from the inherent privacy of thought to the printed public word. She can follow the lifespan of a speck of dust in a few lines with the emotional depth that The Great Authors spend entire books carrying their Timeless Protagonists through.

There are unexpected turns and oddities and loose ends, but they're not part of some slapdash hodgepodge designed merely to set itself apart from The Normal, rather they coalesce into a larger shape and life and movement all its own, like a school of fish or a flock of birds—in this case the shape is that of a unique tale of love and grief, of confusion, paranoia, and obsession, and of memory and passing time.

"I certainly don't want you to be alarmed," Chico said, "but I'm going to ask you a lot of questions and not provide a lot of answers. I hope you appreciate my candor and relative honesty at this time." (32)

"David didn't appreciate the kind of person who would answer the simplest questions without considering the whole of the problem." (96)

The story is an ominous one. It more or less begins with the death of David's wife Franny, which is not a spoiler since it's mentioned on the back cover synopsis. Despite this major event kicking off the book, the rest is a detective story in all the best ways, both obvious and less so. The reader has to play investigator, as does David, as does as does the actual investigator, Det. Chico, as does the character who, among other things, pores over books trying to discover whether or not "the word 'you' has been linked with more devasting sentences than any other in the English language. But it's possible that 'love' is worse. I'm feeling it out. It requires some reading." (168).

Gray is truly an expert at subtle mood-building; atmospheric construction, whispers, hints, suggestions leaked out of almost imperceptibly moving lips, all balanced and thoroughly blended together with vivid, incisive descriptions. It's not obtuse or cryptic for its own sake, but breathes and radiates a carefully crafted sense of mystery. Ends are left loose in all the right places, generating an intoxicating aura of fascination, not confusion-qua-profundity, like stereotypical caricatures of avant garde art.

I sometimes imagined her, rather than typing, surgically removing all the right details with a fine scalpel and tweezers while peering through a pair of glasses with adjustable microscope lenses, and then carefully ironing over the new spaces and seams with so much well-crafted and sensitively perceived imagery, which is often idiosyncratic, yes, but steeped in so much possible meaning—lavished with the potentiality of intuition—symbology through the gut and the cerebellum alike. Sentences like altars.

The threats that David finds written on little scraps of paper are a real treat to read. And scary in ways you will not predict. I will share one with you. Now imagine finding this tucked into some odd place in your house, which you live in alone:

I WILL CROSS-STITCH AN IMAGE OF YOUR FUTURE HOME BURNING. I WILL HANG THE IMAGE OVER YOUR BED WHILE YOU SLEEP.

Despite the fact that I took down a fair amount of notes about what I wanted to write about, this book really has me stunned into silence in a lot of ways. It was just that good.

"The feeling of being swaddled as an adult was foreign and tender." (30)

This sentence really helped to put the unnamed feeling I got from reading this book into words for me. Foreign and tender. Sorrowful but comforted. What a gift. A book that makes you feel something strongly and then describes that feeling for you.

I'm running out of words, despite wanting to gush and wax poetic and philosophical. Amelia Gray writes books that comfort me and I can't seem to satisfactorily explain why, at least not right now, with it so fresh in my mind and having quickly and impatiently pushed these impressions out and onto the digital ticker-tape.

This book has it all though. It's jam-packed with fantastic descriptions; I wanted to underline just about everything. There's subtle symbolism for the reader to either pay enough attention to or not. Brilliant observations about Grief and Memory and Love and Aging are very unpretentiously woven in at the descriptive and narrative levels. It's unique and sad and beautiful and strange and familiar and all that stuff.

Hold it tight and give it a good close look.