This was a such a beautiful book. House has this gorgeous storytelling that offers up minimal information, but draws you into the characters and their stories. I devoured this in a day was obsessed.

I struggled with the writing style. It's told in present tense with the main character looking back on his young adulthood many years ago, so it creates a great deal of distance for the reader. As much as I loved the story, I didn't feel very close to it. Like I was seeing what they experienced, but not feeling the immediacy of it.

I loved the characters. I think one of my favorite types of stories is an adult coming of age novel, and this was that to perfection. Lark is in his twenties, but still just a kid in so many ways. You don't get to see him in the wider world and only brief scenes of his past, but you still know him so well. It's masterful writing. You got such little information on all of the characters. I couldn't have told you almost anything about his companion's life, but I still felt like I knew her as a person so well.

House has called this book a meditation on grief, and I felt that. This book is more about the ideas of grieving and hope and what it means to be human that it is any concrete story. While I enjoyed that for the most part and I felt like House did a fantastic job writing that story, it was missing a little something for me. Like I just wanted it to be a little more literal, a little more information about everything and everyone. It was so close to amazing for me, but not quite there.

I'll definitely be reading Silas House in the future. I'm hoping some of his realistic fiction might offer the more concrete feeling that I needed here. I would highly recommend this. It's such a wonderful story.