The Lightning Jar

by Christian Felt

The Lightning Jar is about lonely children. It may be more about lonely children than any other book. These children are good at making imaginary friends but have trouble keeping them. For instance, there’s the Morra, who plunges the world into eternal winter. But she also teaches Mons the meaning of love and helps him burn down his house after some Gypsies turn it into a middle school.  Then there’s the Gorbel. Amanda invented it to scare the Guest, but it ended up liking him best. A bit like a cat but more like a spider, it turned out a lot cuter than she’d intended.  And the Wisps—they’re pretty unhappy about being dead. Karl accidentally turned his smallest cousin into a Wisp. They were trying to catch some lightning in a jar, but they caught the smallest cousin’s ghost instead. Karl had to drown it for its own good. Something similar happened with his grandma Astrid and a rock named Melisande.  But the loneliest character is probably Christian. He insists on being from Jämtland, where Karl and Amanda live. When his cousin Eskild got married, Christian rewrote their past so it’s like The Little Mermaid, except Eskild drowns and Christian doesn’t earn a soul.  In the spirit of Tove Jansson, William Blake, and Calvin & Hobbes, The Lightning Jar contains a volatile mix of innocence and experience, faith and doubt, nostalgia and a sense of all there is to gain by accepting reality on fresh terms. 

Genres: Fiction

142 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2018

About the author

Christian Felt is a scholar of great literature and classical music, a writer, musician, and monk living on the shores of Bear Lake, Idaho. He reads fluently in English, Swedish, French, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Danish, Norwegian, and Latin. His email address is christianlewisfelt@gmail.com

The Lightning Jar (linked story collection) is available on Amazon.

The Brown Butterfly (novel) is available on Amazon and as a free ebook on archive.org.

"The Snoopy Orphan" (short story) is available as a free ebook on archive.org.

Reviews

[Niki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty bizzare and VERY symbolic/ vaguely abstract and allegoric, kinda too much for me, but still inventive and interesting. I liked it, I think it took me back to seeing the world through a kid's eyes.

**Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this book**

[Sarah B · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was not what I had expected. I had thought it would be one long story but it seemed to be a collection of stories, some of them coming in chapters.

The ones I liked the most were the ones about the kids: the one that starts with the "The Smallest Cousin" and ends with "Notes From the Bottom Drawer" plus the other similar one that goes from "The Whale Tax" to "The Housewarming Party". Both of these series feature kids using their imagination where everyday objects become priceless jewels. Or you could consider them fairy tales. They are original, impossible to guess and very random. I would have been very happy if the entire book had been full of these types of stories. They are very whimsical.

In the first series you have kids who try to catch lightning in a jar, meet gypsies and refer to their cousins as "it" plus a scary story about a tomato. The children in this series is Amanda and Karl. The second series is a bit longer and it stars a boy named Mons. He faces a mythological creature called the Morra, deals with a huge blizzard, does a census of sealife and talks to something called a Sooty among other adventures. The stories also include poetry.

I really did not like "Snow on Snow" and found it too dry for my tastes. The others really did not interest me either.

[Sonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like Tove Jansson, you'll love this. There's actually a quote from The Summer Book at the beginning of the last story. It's very easy for me to identify with the odd, shy protagonists: the adult-like children and childlike adults. The plots are very lightweight and "symbolic," but more entertaining than that sounds. The stories are mostly connected to each other; it's not just an arbitrary collection. The language is just gorgeous, in a very subtle way. There aren't a lot of overtly poetic effects, but I felt like I was reading narrative poems, like Ovid's metamorphoses. The fantasy is definitely of a literary, not a genre-fiction kind. "The Beauty Contest" was so funny and touching, but there's something wrong with the plot of that part of the book as a whole. The Cannibal queen is gratuitously creepy. I don't really like the first-person essays, either, though perhaps it's nice to see how the fantasy relates to the real world. They sound a little bit like they're trying to show off how smart and Swedish and rich the author is. Still, this book has stayed with me more than any other recent short fiction collection I've read.

[Mike Carolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book jumped right out at me when I spotted it at the library, and it certainly was an interesting read. It's surreal, and there's some beautiful, mystical vignettes. However, it toed the line between a disjointed collection while flirting with a story, and I would have preferred full separation or tighter cohesion.

I have a feeling that I want to like this book more than I did. It opened so intriguingly and brilliantly with "The Smallest Cousin," but I kept waiting to see if the magical dreamlike words would crystallize into something more or just remain a gimmick. It didn't really deliver how I wanted. I found it similar to "Whale Fall" with its island setting and intense, unique imagery, but I liked "Whale Fall" so much better because of the story.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved Christian Felt's prose. He has a knack for writing in a way that captures the childlike: both very innocent and very wise at the same time. His imagery was at times frightening or disturbing, and at others made me laugh out louds. I think this imbues his tales with a certain folk tale-esque quality, which really drew me in. I do, however, have a minor complaint with the way this book is presented. I feel like there are distinct short tales, but they all run together in a distracting way, because the book is formatted in simple chapters, although some of the tales are made up of several chapters, and others are made up of only one or two. I found this so jarring upon first encountering the shift between tales, that I feel I mostly overlooked (and didn't really enjoy) the entire second tale. I was too busy looking so hard for how it was a continuation, rather than a new story. This bothered me until nearing the very end of the book; I had almost convinced myself that the stories were, in fact, directly connected (not just generally tied together by style, feel, or theme) and were intentionally building on one another, only to come to feel at the last that they may not be, after all, actually. If this is perplexing to read about, imagine my state of mind at the time. Ha. But, aside from the confusion at the second tale, the stories themselves were wonderfully evocative of childhood and lifetime seasons and watching tides roll in on a bright, quiet day. The writing was so good, in fact, that perhaps it points to the reality that I am just grown too obtuse for this kind of abstraction. Wouldn't surprise me to discover my opinion about the formatting is an unpopular one among the more educated set. Regardless of my minor complaints, though, I would love to see more from this author!

[Pop Bop · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, Sweet Mystery of Youth


Thinking about postmodern short story writers, (Barthelme, Calvino, and so on), I'm hard pressed to come up with any who have given more than passing thought to childhood. Barthelme did in a few exceptional stories, but always from the vaguely disapproving or disappointed point of view of an adult. That's where this wonderful collection comes in. Adults are of no consequence. Instead, we learn that all children apparently start out as post modernists, absurdists, and Dadaists, and then become less interesting as they mature.

This book will reward you on at least three levels. As you read you will encounter individual lines of exquisite grace and clarity; they will stop you in your reading so that you can pause and admire the author's craft. In a larger sense, you will encounter a few stories and story arcs that will capture your imagination. In the largest sense the overall impression of the book will leave you a little off balance, but in a good way.

Read it in bits and pieces; it's like an elegant box of chocolates. I'm pretty sure the words "innocence" and "terror" and maybe "William Blake" should have appeared in this review.

(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

[Darcysmom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley and the University of Iowa Press for free in exchange for an honest review.
The Lightning Jar is a hallucinogenic trip into childhood. All the loneliness and imaginative play that comes from it is at the heart of this collection. The stories encourage the reader to experience the landscape of the stories as if they were children again - with a child's logic and guileless belief in a magical world.
The Lightning Jar often had me shaking my head, but I enjoyed visiting the topsy turvy worlds of the characters.

[Katrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

I suspect The Lightning Jar is one of these books that can be revisited years down the line and there will be something that was missed the first time around. A book about childhood that's not for children, I thoroughly enjoyed this one; touching, imaginative, as well as entertaining, and all wrapped up in a blanket of nostalgia.

Recommended.

With thanks to Netgalley and Iowa Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Lizard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Full of beautiful imagery and fantastical happenings of a lucid child. This was more of a exercise in sanity trying to piece together who is human, who is a figment, who's creature, where they are and what it is they are actually doing. There was very little coherence from one chapter to the next and sometimes, from one paragraph to the next. That being said, it paints beautiful and nostalgic scenes that you didn't remembered you remembered but it comes in the form of a 105* fever dream.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to give it 5 stars for the first set of stories, which are the most moving and quietly original piece of contemporary literature I’ve ever read. But much of the rest of the book sounds like it came out of a creative writing program.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of this writing was really beautiful and simple, so great to read, but the flow of narration was almost a little confusing bc of the child POV/logic/etc, at times the plot was jarring, but fun to read

[MadMadameMarch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this as if they are all different stories but connected in very minor ways. Surreal descriptions that are viewed through the child's eyes make the stories ring true to the folklore/fairytale genre. As a whole they were great though of course I have my favorites.

[Yunis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first half very much

[Tim Bailen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Totally dream-like while still feeling rooted in reality. Engrossing in its creativity and unexpectedness.

[Annarella · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! It was poetic, moving, and entertaining at the same time.
It was like being child again reliving again through the book.
It was a wonderful experience.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to University of Iowa Press and Netgalley for this ARC