A RANTING

which has no business in criticism, but I'm not criticizing, I'm opinionating . . .

Sometimes books just get away from me. In most cases, a book will burrow deeper than similar visual entertainments simply because it requires more of my imagination to sustain it, and more of my time on Earth to understand it.

And, like any encounter, intensity and duration are huge factors in the enjoyment and importance of its reminiscence. We all follow certain reading habits, but sometimes different books require different approaches. Any avid reader remembers the books that determined their own pace and transcended well-rutted patterns. “I couldn't put it down,” they'll say. “I stayed up all night.” It's an experience most readers savor and seek to repeat.

I doubt you'll see 3AM, wide awake with Glimmering propped on your chest. Not that you shouldn't. As per my habit, I saw it in 30-minute to 1-hour bursts, usually once a day, but not always. Everytime I entered its world, I knew I should stay longer, but I didn't. Then one day I realized I knew less even though I was ingesting more.* Characters lost their past; sustenance floundered without remembrances. And, since this devises on End Of The World atmospherics with most of its personas barricaded into physical as well as mental fortresses, I didn't have enough time out in “the hiemal light, at once brilliant and melancholy and ominous” to really feel “that soft hem of terror” (HarperCollins, ISBN 0061008052, c.1997, p.244) monikered The Glimmering. As Act Three (“Regrets Only”) climaxed, I found no heartbeat, no pulse in the accelerated histrionics.

Glimmering belongs on a literary list rather than in the Science Fiction bin, I think. A heavier weight class fostered by genre re-categorization would give the reader a surer hoof out of the starting gate. I'm not trying to gloss over its flaws—and there are a few, especially in the pro- and antagonist synthesis—but a wider, more expansive field allows wiggle room for this novel's tipsy, often somnambulistic pacing, and more tolerance for its character development that too frequently left me head scratching over their mental constipation.

But beyond its curious incongruities, the prose style consistently stuns. Just when the phrasing starts to feel too cumbersome, a hip quip—like “television had become a sort of deranged pachinko game” (p.37) —jumps up. Its landscape of paragraphs and dialogues reveal that Glimmering is more misconception than miscarriage. And, although I bailed at page 331 out of 413, I have more—not less—respect for and desire to further explore Ms. Hand's creations.

* Thanks to the author's blog, TheInferior4+1, here's an interesting article from The Atlantic on the Internet & Reading .

© copyright 06/17/2008 by Larry Crawford