The Illumination

Starred review from October 25, 2010
In Brockmeier's spectacular latest (after The View from the Seventh Layer), pain manifests itself as visible light after a mysterious event called "the Illumination," revealing humanity to be mortally wounded, and yet Brockmeier finds in these overlapping, storylike narratives, beauty amid the suffering. Jason Williford, a photojournalist, loses his wife in a traffic accident and fixates on a troubled teenage girl who teaches him to cultivate pain "in a dreamlike vesper." Chuck Carter, a battered and bullied neighbor boy, steals a journal of love notes from Jason's house, and later gives the journal to door-knocking evangelist Ryan Shifrin, who found his faith after watching his younger sister die from cancer. Telescoping into his decades of service to the church, Ryan wonders at the civil strife and disasters that "produce a holocaust of light." Through accounts of quotidian suffering depict humanity's quiet desperation—the agony of a severed thumb, the torture of chronic mouth ulcers—Brockmeier's careful reading of his characters' hearts and minds gives readers an inspiring take on suffering and the often fleeting nature of connection.

November 1, 2010

A soft-hearted spiritual parable that aims for beguiling but succumbs to cloying.

The author's first novel since The Brief History of the Dead (2006) is another vaguely futuristic fable with meditations on mortality, which explore the beauty and redemption in suffering. The title refers to an inexplicable phenomenon that might have lasted for decades or forever. One day, peoples' injuries start glowing or even blazing with light. And not only their physical injuries but their emotional wounds as well. And not just humans but even inanimate objects. ("Jars of peanut butter could be hurt just like people.") A surgeon in the operating room shouts, "Sunglasses! I need some sunglasses here!" However imaginative the reader finds that vision, the plot pivots on an oft-used convention: the object that passes from one stranger to the next and transforms their lives. The object in this case is a book of one-sentence love notes from a husband to his wife, which starts changing hands in the hospital, after she dies from an auto accident that leaves him physically and emotionally debilitated. First claimed by a divorced woman who had shared a hospital room with the wife, and who thought the husband had also died, it then passes back to him, as he attempts to return to some semblance of normal life through his job as a newspaper photographer. Plainly the  "The Illumination," as the phenomenon has quickly been dubbed, is a photographic boon, with the photographer wrestling with his conscience over whether he's exploiting those who mutilate themselves just to see the light or simply capturing those images (until he himself succumbs to the temptation of self-inflicted wounds). Others who briefly obtain possession of the book range from "a crazy little retard"—a silent boy, likely autistic—to a female author of fables and parables (like this one?) whose mouth ulcer makes the readings she gives a painful experience.

More illumination than revelation.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 15, 2010

In a familiar but parallel universe, the wounds, diseases, sores, and tumors of the inhabitants begin emitting light, evidently in varying colors and shades. It seems they still hurt but are now visible to others. This work covers the stories of several individuals, from a woman who stabs herself accidently to a photographer who has a car accident; a writer suffering from sores in her mouth to a young boy who is a victim of brutal abuse. Linking the tales is a book, originally compiled by the photographer, of love notes to his now deceased wife, which is passed from one character to the next and conveys a message to each according to their painful circumstances. The novel ends with a homeless man getting thoroughly beaten up by local hoods. VERDICT A capable writer, Brockmeier (The Brief History of the Dead) succeeds in describing the depressing circumstances of the characters, along with passing observations of a fragmentary and disorienting nature. Some readers may find this uplifting and inspiring, but others will feel pained by the suffering the novel seeks to illuminate. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/10.]--Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. at Oneonta

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 15, 2010
Suddenly, beams of light begin to shoot out of peoples bodies. Wounds are incandescent. Hidden diseases shine through skin in a glittering pathology. Its terrifying, eerie, and sublime. The media convulses. Photographers capture astonishing images. There are no secrets now. Right before the light struck, Carol Ann is hospitalized. The dying woman in the bed next to her gives Carol Ann a journal in which she has transcribed the daily love notes her husband left her. The notes read like poems of passionate attention and are gathered in an entrancing book of hope that becomes a talisman as it is handed from stranger to stranger in an elliptical plot of unforeseen connections. The journal comes into the hands of a teenage girl who has learned to inflict physical pain to ease psychic torment. A gentle boy traumatized by his fathers cruelty. A writer whose mouth ulcers flare like torches. A homeless man. A missionary who travels the world, barely escaping deadly catastrophes. Known for his border-crossings between realistic and speculative fiction, Brockmeier is transcendent here. The Illumination, a dazzling manifestation of torment, seems holy, yet does it engender enlightenment? Can pain be beautiful? Is there meaning in suffering? This is a radiant, bewitching, and profoundly inquisitive novel of sorrow, perseverance, and wonderment.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)