An unparalleled writer and a PERFECT book! 5+++

Didn’t finish

Whether it be Brooklyn or Birmingham I seldom appreciate accounts of banal domesticity, neurosis laden diaries. I have really made poor choices lately. ** I am however a huge fan of Walker Percy, and though I disliked this, I realize that description might fit 50% of his work. ***This was the one that completes my list of every novel he has written. I'm aware The Moviegoer should be one I object to, but I love it. My ultimate WP favorite is The Thanatos Syndrome. (Oh, correction: I just noted that I have not read Lost In the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book) That's a fine thing, it will be my first, last, and only self-help book!

I am a Percy addict, I admit it, and a vein full of this didn't help. Percy's novels are like non-fiction disguised as fiction, which I think throws a lot of people. He has ideas, and fiction is a vehicle for them. But just like with O'Connor, you can read his books without having a clue about the author's ideas and still love them for the literature they are. Percy's turns of phrase alone make his stuff worth reading. And boy, did this one get me. Starts out like a quaint, good-ish book, perfect for a Sunday afternoon between moments of American ease; but then, Percy does his ol' sneak-up and catches you off guard with an ending that feels like you have just witnessed something so astoundingly important that you MUST figure it out. But I read the last section eight more times (after standing up from the table with my hands grasping my head, every emotion possible coursing through me), and I can't say I know EXACTLY what affected me the way it did. But it did. And this surprising, divinely confusing effect is what draws me back to Percy again and again.