This book was tough to get through. I really loved the plot: I thought the story was incredible and interesting. I also really liked the narrative structure: the way that a single story is pieced together by non-consecutive slices really makes it feel like you are working with and through someone else’s memory, and adds a great layer of suspense. What made the book hard to read was how the semi-lyrical writing style worked against the plot and the narrative structure. It felt like, throughout the book, the author was constantly leaving things in deep ambiguity, and it was always hard to know if it was being left ambiguous because it related to the supernatural plot line, if it was a being left ambiguous because it was going to be filled in later, or if it was being left ambiguous as an artistic choice, and I should hold open space for multiple outcomes. Leaving ambiguity in storytelling is awesome, and useful. But not knowing how I was meant to use that ambiguity - adding a layer of meta-ambiguity, I suppose - was new for me, and hard.

About fifteen pages in, I realized how deeply this book must have inspired Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward, which I read last year. When I reviewed that book, I said “I want to read more stories like this,” and I certainly accomplished that goal. I didn’t necessarily find myself looking forward to reading or finishing this book as I read it, but it’s such a foundational modern classic; I’m sure that it’ll help me understand other books (like Jesmyn Ward) now that I’ve made it through.