Writing to the Tenth Power

My friend Tom Rayfiel has a terrific new book out called In Pinelight. It’s one of the most impressive novels to come across my desk this year. It’s also one of the most innovative, engaging and well structured books, too. The story? 270 pages of an elderly man speaking to a stranger who has come to visit. What unfolds is the story of man’s life in a small town in upstate New York.

That summary, of course, might suggest it’s not a thrilling story, but it is. As you listen to the elderly man share snippets of his family, his friendships and his struggles, unspoken truths begin to emerge and the novel’s last 100 pages just barrel on, revealing details that bring relationships and alternate meanings into focus with a real sense of momentum and energy. I had to finish it.

In Pinelight is not, at the start, an easy read. It’s a stream of conscious novel and Rayfiel does away entirely with any punctuation that isn’t a period. This forces you to focus, as you follow the run-on sentences, the changes in subjects, the careening monologues. But the result is a totally immersive and hypnotic.

So, if you are in the market for a perfectly executed, Faulkner-like character study, a virtuoso performance rendering a voice (Rayfiel is an expert at this; in his acclaimed novel Colony Girl, he channels a teen-age girl’s voice with astounding accuracy), a re-creation of a vanishing world, and a tale that breaks your heart, then this is a book for you.