The thoughts expressed by our protagonist here are absolutely sumptuous. I’m sure the show-don’t-tell crowd absolutely hate this novel, but I found absolutely riveting from the start. Interiority done right. And, most difficult to find of all, possibly, the articulation of a complex individual distilled into solely the most interesting processes. Meaning verisimilitude similarly handled well—not absolutely every human function for the sake of filling a page.

True, I often want a much more active plot, which this decidedly does not have. A Sri Lankan man heads North to see attend the funeral of his grandmothers caretaker. He also receives email from a former relationship with. What follows feels exactly in keeping with the tone and contours of the effects a death has on some individuals. He is ruminative and pensive, voicing thoughts he generally tramps down. Even the innocuousness of some of the journey felt slightly profound. Contemplating the personalities and lives of people driving, sometimes angrily, performatively stoking an inner spark before falling asleep, acquiescing to a banal existence. Red ants marching into the night.

Honestly, if I’d read a physical copy of this I believe it would be tabbed and underlined. This is a case of—in stark contrast to Son of the House, which I just read—the author being interested in the same things that I am. My mind works similarly, I have the same/similar thoughts, and as a result the feeling of being connected to a person that never one grows, constantly shaped with every paragraph.

There is, I feel, an understanding expressed for how memory works, what the effects of death can have on the interiority of a person, and the beauty in the specificity of a seemingly simple interaction, which is actually the stuff of life.