Review: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
I’m interested in how writers bringing culture of the day into stories to create verisimilitude can wind up distancing readers from the work as time goes by. When I recently read The Turn of the Screw there were several times that the characters left things unsaid that remained unknown to me because I’m not reading in late 18th Century England. I still got something out of Screw, but I wasn’t creeped out the way I was when I read The Church of Dead Girls. It’s been years since I read that and I still get chills.
I bring that up because Hank Green is very much setting An Absolutely Remarkable Thing in the world of late 2010’s internet fame. I can imagine it being steeped enough in that time to become opaque to readers in time. I hope not. For all immersion in the era, I think Green has a lot to say about fame and communities that form around arcane interests that is independent of mechanism.
He also creates a set of characters that I believe. While it’s tempting to try to make characters here stereotypes or symbols, these all feel unique. He does one of my favorite tricks a good writer can pull off: he writes a character who I think is wrong or crazy, but who I like, who I believe, and who I’m rooting for. Even knowing that it’s probably not going to end well.
I like his writing, and he brings the rhythms of the language of the time to life very well. In the same way I like to imagine that people in the 30’s and 40’s spoke like Raymond Chandler characters, I hope people believe we talked this way in the future.
Strongly Recommended.