Nothing todo About Nothing
I’m comfortable with ambiguity, and enjoy it as a closer lens to reality than most literature dares provide. But rarely do I get through a book and feel… nothing. Like passing a rock on the highway.
Sometimes I dream that I am walking down a street in Beirut, somewhere unfamiliar, maybe in the southern suburbs. Not especially beautiful, but not ugly either. Just there. Maybe this is a reflection of the ambivalence I have towards the Israeli-Arab conflict. But that is the rhythm this book left me with: walking around, no answers, and no motivation to go looking for them.
If other reviewers are impressed by the nothingness, all I can say is that I feel nothing. Harpman is so restrained from emotion that the closest the book comes is almost a rear-view afterthought:
That line clarifies the project more than it moved me. Perhaps this lands differently if this book is your first post-apocalypse. There is a scale that runs from easy explanation to mystery, and this book is… on that scale. It just did not give me much reason to care where.