February Is The Cruellest Month

I don't read much fiction but I admit some of it is quite good. Italo Calvino, Richard Brautigan,..., some others. The shorter and more fantastical the better. Calvino's "Invisible Cities" is an old favourite. You've undoubtedly heard of Calvino but many, many years ago after meeting a literary nun in a small mining town over lunch who sent me Brautigan's "Trout Fishing in America" I was hooked. His other books: "The Abortion", "The Pill vs the Springhill Mine Disaster" and "A Confederate General from Big Sur" sealed my fast love for his brilliant fantastical novellas. Fast because they only took about 2 hours to read (and I am a slow reader). I moved on. G.K.Chesterton's "The Man Who Who Was Thursday" is another. There was a Man. His name was Thursday. Something like that.

Other fantastical books which I enjoyed but which were much longer were Marquez' "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and John Fowles' "The Magus".

But the book I enjoyed the most was Yann Martel's "Life of Pi" because it is one of the few novels whose message I, like, totally got: sometimes it is better to believe in something (God) even when you know it/He doesn't exist than to believe in nothing. Barack Obama has said of "Life of Pi" that it is one of the most compelling arguments for the existence of God he has read, but, apologies Mr President, you got it wrong. It just says you should believe in God, not that He really exists. Invite me to the White House sometime and I'll explain the difference.

Which brings me to Shane Jones' "Light Boxes". A new and short, fantastical novella about a town in the grip of wintery "February" where flight is banished and innocence is stolen under the very (fake bird-beaked) noses of the villagers who are suffering from a crisis of belief. We live in an age where we idolise and demonise politicians like Obama and yet always deny our role in their deification, and the power we give them to hurt us personally when they inevitably fail. This is not a trivial book, despite its short length and apparently fantastical subject.

It is about America of course. And maybe America currently in the grip of an endless economic winter of their own creation. But a lot of novels are about America. If it was about Europe there would be an old bearded guy in a toga sitting in the corner drinking vodka complaining how things were so much better in the old days. But there isn't, quite.

The "light boxes" of the title are used by the residents of the damned village to temporarily escape their dour, wintery prison for one where the seasons are more ameniable. They literally immerse their heads in the light boxes to see their world in Spring and Summer. As a beautiful and apt metaphor for books I am frankly surprised it hasn't been used before.

Well that's all I'll say. Its message is very similar to "Life of Pi" - the truth that's out there isn't as important as what we believe in, but we should be careful what we believe (here he diverges from Martel) lest we misjudge the forces over which we have more control than we realise because...

But I've said enough. Jones name checks Calvino, Brautigan and ee cummings on page 69%(Kindle edition). You could have read "Light Boxes" in the time you've taken to read this review and I hope you do.