Remarkable ... The novel is by turns slapstick and sincere in its consideration of digital devices ... Feels like a step toward drama. It is by far his shortest novel—a short novel by anyone’s standards—and much of it is dialogue ... From book to book, his writing crackles with new insights, images, motifs—or are they old? Glass flowers, Beethoven’s stick, your mother’s voice. They all come back around, and the novel is well suited to represent these ruptures in time, to bear the pressures of the past.
This is slighter fare for Lerner but surprisingly potent given its length, interested in the ways that we manufacture our identities and how technology speeds the process along. A tart meditation on narrative and integrity.
