Death to February: Shane Jones’s Light Boxes
[Roxane Gay / May 4th, 2010 / Young Bright Things ]
In honor of Light Boxes being re-released by Penguin Books on May 25, we’re reposting our review of Shane Jones’s Light Boxes. Having just read the Penguin version, I can safely say I love this book even more the second time around. You can buy Light Boxes here. Or at Indiebound. Or at Powell’s.
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A couple weeks ago, Shane Jones had a little contest at his blog, with a grand prize: a copy of his novel Light Boxes. Cue: I never win anything!
“None of this makes sense,” thought Thaddeus.
Light Boxes is not a book that can be reviewed, in the traditional sense.
The left side of my body is Bianca and the right side is Selah. With no body, I have no reason to move from this spot.
Light Boxes is wondrous. It is entrancing. The story takes place in an ethereal world where February has taken hold and refuses to release its grip. Flying has been banned. There’s a family, Thaddeus, Selah and Bianca, a child with kites on her arms, who refuse to forget flying. There is cold and damp misery because February endures. The townspeople decide to fight a war against February, using a range of tactics. There is the light box, a curious invention to simulate sunlight. Children disappear underground, mounting their own, more effective war effort. A woman who smells like honey and smoke sends missives written on parchment through holes in the sky. There is insanity and mystery and death and resurrection and insurrection.
Thaddeus and Selah move away from the group to make love in the naked snow. They tell each other to conentrate on the ocean teasing their toes, the sand in their hair. Selah imagines the melting snow between her legs is sweat. Thaddeus licks the ice from her lashes, pushes into the snow.
Shane Jones has a bizarre, complex imagination and he reveals it well. There are stories set in magical worlds that spend too much time focusing on the magic and not enough time dealing with the story. That does not happen here. The magic of it all and the narrative are interwoven tightly, and smartly. Just when you think that Jones is going to push too far, he pulls you right back. So much of the imagery is beautiful, crisp and poetic even. Both times I read the book, I felt like I was both reading and watching.
Jones builds the world of Light Boxes so expertly that the strangeness of it all quickly makes sense. I also appreciate the wit (and momentary window into our world) as demonstrated through things like A List of Artists Who Created Fantasy Worlds to Try and Cure Bouts of Sadness (the creator of Myspace, among others).
The narrative structure is also innovative–alternating between different perspectives, the use of different font sizes, pages filled with words, pages nearly devoid of words, all contributing to a disorienting yet engaging experience. This book is masterful.
I want to be safe. I want to live inside a turtle shell.
The best thing I can say about this book is that I was moved.