An Impenetrable Screen of Purest Sky

Slipping through time, reality, and fantasy, this inspired novel from Beachy-Quick (A Whaler’s Dictionary) tells the story of Daniel, a college professor adrift in a sea of narratives. “The story has lost its order,” Daniel laments early in the novel, referring both to an autobiographical tome he is attempting to write and to the way he recalls his own bygone experiences: the deaths of his mother and newborn sister, his father’s unhealthy obsession with myth, and his own doomed relationship with Lydia, the love of his life. Under Beachy-Quick’s expert hand, Daniel zigzags across a nonlinear history, occasionally stopping to address elements of classics by authors like Melville, Hawthorne, and Emerson, and to comment on the fairy tales contained within Wonders and Tales, a green leather-bound book that haunted his childhood. Driven by images of pearls, sleeping giants, whales, and volcanoes, Daniel searches for the truth of life while acknowledging the failures of memory; yet his character, shaped by a troubling childhood, is left impenetrable, and he is unable to experience simple pleasures and relationships. As a result, Daniel often rambles, and the outcome is a strange, yet rewarding, experience. (Sept.)