Light Boxes: A Novel - Softcover

Jones, Shane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143117785 ISBN 13: 9780143117780

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2010

Synopsis

A poignant and fantastical first novel by a timeless new literary voice.

With all the elements of a classic fable, vivid descriptions, and a wholly unique style, this idiosyncratic debut introduces a new and exciting voice to readers of such authors as George Saunders, Kurt Vonnegut, and Yann Martel.

In Light Boxes, the inhabitants of one closely-knit town are experiencing perpetual February. It turns out that a god-like spirit who lives in the sky, named February, is punishing the town for flying, and bans flight of all kind, including hot air balloons and even children's kites. It's February who makes the sun nothing but a faint memory, who blankets the ground with snow, who freezes the rivers and the lakes. As endless February continues, children go missing and more and more adults become nearly catatonic with depression. But others find the strength to fight back, waging war on February.

About this title

About the Author

Shane Jones was born in February of 1980. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in numerous literary journals, including New York Tyrant, Unsaid, Typo, and Pindeldyboz. He lives in upstate New York. This is his first novel.

Reviews

Jones's brief and bewildering war fable pursues the plight of a town battling to free itself from the brutal hold of the month of February (also sometimes a person or a force or merely a metaphor), a meanie that has not allowed its wintry grip to lift for hundreds of days. When the despairing townspeople, led by valiant Thaddeus Lowe and his wife and daughter, suffer reprisals from February and the priests for trying to break the weather, a group of former balloonists don bird masks and, calling themselves the Solution, instigate a rebellion. Thaddeus's daughter, Bianca, is kidnapped, along with other children, leading Thaddeus to plot ways to deceive February: townspeople walk around pretending it's summer and secure light boxes around their heads to simulate the sun. February, meanwhile, may simply be feeling unloved by his wife, the girl who smells of honey and smoke and who seems eerily like Bianca. It's a quaint and bizarre allegory that explores the perils of equivocation, but it's likely more pleased with its own cleverness than readers will be. (June)
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Originally issued in a limited edition of fewer than 1,000 copies, this unique novel of seasonal affective disorder come to life is now being published by a major house. In spare prose that could almost be considered poetry, Jones tells the story of a town ravaged by endless winter. Well, nearly endless—it’s been February for several hundred days straight. But February isn’t only a relentless month; it’s also the malevolent being holding the town under its sway. Wracked by depression and spurred on when children start to go missing, the townsfolk mount a war against February, who also turns out, well, sort of, to be the author of the story, struggling to romance the “girl who smells of honey and smoke.” Jones’ imagery and layers of metaphor and metafiction are alternately difficult to penetrate and light as air, like wandering in and out of a fever dream where the moment things come into focus they dissipate again. In that vein, this literary gem of metaphysical malaise has that ideally weird blend of offputting sensualism and heartfelt emotion—just the sort of thing to ensure a dedicated, if limited, following. --Ian Chipman

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

View an excerpt from Light Boxes.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0143117785
• ISBN 13: 9780143117780
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 149