PositiveThe RumpusMy copy of Catherine Lacey’s debut novel is dog-eared to the degree of making all those folded corners pointless. The book is one large dog-eared page, because you don’t have to flip far to find sentences and sentiments that make you pause and stare at the words, those simple marvels, and emit the sort of soft \'oh\' that usually comes after finishing a poem ... We’re deeply immersed in Elyria’s mind. We experience the untethering of her thoughts, the loose grasping for a world that grows increasingly bizarre to her. Yet the immersion is so complete and persistent that it makes her actions—the plot, her outward journey through the hills and cities of New Zealand—inconsequential .... The novel is about the why and not the what. That’s fine, but the poetic, imaginative qualities of Elyria’s musings also ask for a reader’s patience. Metaphors abound ... The overall effect is like a Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations: beautiful and smart observations about what it means to be human, but more like a list than a coherent whole. The reader may eventually burn out.
