RaveThe Kenyon Review\"The Lightness reminded me, in the days I spent with it, that I love to read ... Olivia sees her role as that of an observer, an analyst’s attempt to understand something from her youth that is impossible to understand. This tonal balance is vital to the book’s success ... What keeps the book from falling back into archetype is Temple’s ability to acknowledge each girl’s respective agenda, even if the narrator is not aware ... Temple avoids vacant tropes because she allows desire to be the driving force of the narrative. The book, and the people within it, cannot be anything other than alive, because only things that are alive can want this much ... many of the book’s major pleasures emerge from the individual lines, emphasizing rhythmic metaphor and delicious image. Temple writes paragraphs like a poet, but plots pages with all the momentum necessary to sustain a longer narrative.\
Joao Gilberto Noll Trans. by Edgar Garbelotto
RaveKenyon Review... the book is short, less than two hundred pages, but contains no chapter or section breaks for the reader or the narrator to catch their breath. Scenes change quickly, and there are several hours- or days-long time jumps, often in a single paragraph. This fast-paced structure feels intentional, however, or at least matches the urgent tone of the book. As the narrator’s mind is unraveling, he spends a lot of time wandering the city without motivation or destination. In matching this purposelessness, the story swirls and loops in increasingly unpredictable and nonsensical patterns, following the narrator on his delirious wanderings ... This is a book driven more by philosophical and thematic questions than it is by narrative impulse. Nonetheless, Lord is engaging, if not always intuitive or understandable. There are multiple scenes to make you gasp ... reminiscent of Lynchian and Kafkaesque traditions, physically trim but intellectually overflowing; though perhaps best enjoyed with a healthy appetite for confusion, Lord is delicious: provocative and evocative and unforgettable.
