The Illumination: Summary and book reviews of The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier, plus links to an excerpt from The Illumination and a biography of Kevin Brockmeier.
The Illumination A Novel
by Kevin Brockmeier
Hardcover: Feb 2011,
272 pages.
Paperback: Feb 2012,
272 pages.
What if our pain was the most beautiful thing about us? In the aftermath of a fatal car accident, a private journal of love notes written by a husband to his wife passes into the keeping of a hospital patient, and from there through the hands of five other suffering people, touching each of them uniquely. I love the soft blue veins on your wrist. I love your lopsided smile. I love watching TV and shelling sunflower seeds with you.
The six recipients - a data analyst, a photojournalist, a schoolchild, a missionary, a writer, and a street vendor - inhabit an acutely observed, beautifully familiar yet particularly strange universe, as only Kevin Brockmeier could imagine it: a world in which human pain is expressed as illumination, so that one's wounds glitter, fluoresce, and blaze with light. As we follow the journey of the book from stranger to stranger, we come to understand how intricately and brilliantly they are connected, in all their human injury and experience.
The Illumination is a work of sheer imagination laid over the gritty reality of modern life. In beautiful sentences, with startling images of injuries, bodies, color and light, Brockmeier creates a symphony in six movements that brings a reader face to face with life in all its harsh reality and unlimited possibility. (Reviewed by Judy Krueger).
Library Journal
A capable writer, Brockmeier... succeeds in describing the depressing circumstances of the characters, along with passing observations of a fragmentary and disorienting nature. Some readers may find this uplifting and inspiring, but others will feel pained by the suffering the novel seeks to illuminate.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Brockmeier's spectacular latest... gives readers an inspiring take on suffering and the often fleeting nature of connection.
Booklist
Starred Review. This is a radiant, bewitching, and profoundly inquisitive novel of sorrow, perseverance, and wonderment.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by lynette collins Loved it! Kevin Brockmeier is a master at storytelling. Each one of his books is better than the last and "The Illumination" is no exception. You feel that you are right there with each of his characters. This is a must read.
Kevin Brockmeier has received the Borders Original Voices Award, three O. Henry Awards (one, a first prize), the PEN USA Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA Grant. He was also named one of Granta Magazine's "Best Young American Novelists". He is known for his imaginative interpretations of modern life, his emphasis on the wonders around us, and the power of human connection. Illumination is his fifth novel; here's a look at some of his other works:
Things That Fall From the Sky (2002): Weaving together loss and anxiety with fantastic elements and literary sleight-of-hand, this collection of short stories views the nagging realities of the world through a hopeful lens. One of the stories, "The Ceiling," won an O Henry Award in 2000.
A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell's - 1Q84 is Haruki Murakami's most ambitious undertaking yet.
Celebrated novelist Francisco Goldman married a beautiful young writer named Aura Estrada in the summer of 2005. Two years later she died of a tragic accident. Say Her Name is a love story, a bold inquiry into destiny and accountability, and a tribute to Aura, who she was and who she would have been.
These are 2 of the 5 readalike suggestions for The Illumination. Members have full access to all readalikes. If you are a member, please login. To find out more about membership, click here.
A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary," the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.
Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
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Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
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Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
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U.S. ebook sales up in 2012, but rate of growth is slowing(May 16 2013) In 2012, trade book sales (i.e. non academic book sales) rose 6.9%, to $15.049 billion, and e-book sales continued to grow, although the rate of growth...
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Things That Fall From the Sky (2002): Weaving together loss and anxiety with fantastic elements and literary sleight-of-hand, this collection of short stories views the nagging realities of the world through a hopeful lens. One of the stories, "The Ceiling," won an O Henry Award in 2000.
