"The Failure Six" by Shane Jones

I read The Failure Six yesterday and today I am thinking about it a lot, which equals Success.

In some ways, I like TFS more than Light Boxes, and that's as far as I'll go to compare them. (Actually I compare them once more two paragraphs down)

TFS is six stories that kind of bleed into each other, elements reintroduce themselves in each of the six making sure a reader has got everything [square]ly in their head when considering the book as separate stories and as a whole.

More than the plot (which itself brings up things to think about forever but that I won't comment much on here), it's really the aesthetic and the way the story is told that allowed me to fall into it. These are the kind of books I want to read more of, that have the unlimited imagination of a children's book but with a momentum and surreality that never tries to explain itself. Unapologetic! Confidence! LB was the same, but TFS is doing this more concretely to me, or is more grounded in something. TFS is closer to fiction, where LB is closer to poetry.

Reading TFS as a writer is like a lesson in writing magic realism. I hate 'magic realism' as words, but for lack of a better term. What I mean by this is fiction that challenges a reader to suspend disbelief extraordinarily. TFS is acheiving this on a level that I strive for when I try to write. There is so much author-confidence here, a sense that the author really knows this all exists absolutely, because it's hard to believe a human being could actually imagine this.

Another thing that makes the book a relief to read is that it doesn't feel modern. I emailed Shane a bit about the book, and he used the term 'old-world' and I think that nails it. It is set in a time and place that feels very old, like 19th century old, and that historical feeling helps ground it all I think. The book feels bigger than a hundred pages. It feels like an entirely new world/atmosphere where different laws of physics apply, driven by all the little descriptions that are pure imagination. I have the same sensation of being twelve and reading Raold Dahl for the first time.

Part of me doesn't like writing this and reviews in general because they seem self-serving in a way, but this is one of my favorite books I've read this year, and i think more people should buy it and read it and talk about it. TFS is a perfect example of what I like the most about Shane Jones's writing.

buy it