Sean Phillips is a man living with a severe facial disfigurement after a gunshot injury in his teens, and he spends his days alone in Southern California. He earns a living running Trace Italian, a play-by-mail role-playing game in which players send in moves by post and he writes back the results, guiding them through a post-apocalyptic landscape. When two teenagers take the game too literally and one is badly hurt, Sean has to face what happened to him and what his fictional world has cost. The narrative moves backward, circling the moment of his injury.
Darnielle, the songwriter of the Mountain Goats, writes with a musician's sense of rhythm. Readers who like quiet, inward novels about isolation, imagination and the stories people build to survive will find this an affecting, haunting read.
Deep, inward-looking and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Wisdom Collector. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 2014
- Language
- EN
