A precisely told, emotional, and intimate journey. When I say emotional, I mean: I found myself crying intermittently while listening to this during my public transit commute. The power in this small novel comes from that concise narration, and uttered wonderfully in the audiobook by Andrews. The narrator's best friend and Marine colleague, Eden, lies in a hospital bed years after a bombing injured him during deployment. The narrator lost his life in the bombing, but he's still watching the unconscious Eden, and Eden's wife Mary, as she grapples with the current state of her marriage, life—and the past that brought them to current circumstances.

There were so many beautiful scenes; and most were morbid, too. I think there's something special about the ability to create beauty out of morbidity. There is so much I remember, and hold on to, from reading this: the white room, the cockroach, Eden's skin, the boy on the plane, the out-of-focus Christmas tree, Andromeda, the cell phone, the tattoo, the first sentence that echoes through the rest of the book, the END END END.

The sadness edged towards horror, and you'll understand why when you read it, though it spoke to some of my personal fears. It was described so elegantly my brain could hardly choose between the senses of heartache or fright. Perhaps its only weakness is some of Ackerman's rendering of Mary; the living, surviving Mary. A gorgeous novel, nonethless.