The Illumination - Hardcover

Brockmeier, Kevin

3.4

3,562 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224093371 ISBN 13: 9780224093378

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2011

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Something strange is going on.

All over the world, pain is manifesting itself as light. Cuts and bruises blaze and flash. Arthritic joints glow. Injured troops emit radiant white shards into the desert night. On the news, they're calling it 'The Illumination'.

As this breathtaking phenomenon takes holds, a private journal of love notes passes into the keeping of Carol Ann Page, a lonely hospital patient, and from there through the hands of five other people. Each of them will find their lives changed forever in this masterful novel of human warmth and sheer invention - a story which spans decades and continents, telescopes from the global to the most intimate scale, and shines a spectacular light on the wounds we all bear.

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Review:

"Lush. . . . At once dark and profound. . . . [The Illumination] never fails to be deeply felt and precisely observed." --The New York Times Book Review

"A beautiful novel. . . . Brockmeier is a dazzling stylist." --The Washington Post Book World

"Stunningly original . . . this gorgeously written book will still stay with [readers] long after the last page is turned." --The Oregonian

"Show[s] us the astonishment of life as it is really being lived." --The Boston Globe

"Moving. . . . Skillfully explores the relationship between love and memory." --The New Yorker

"The depth of [Brockmeier's] scrutiny makes his fiction glow." --The Plain Dealer

"Brockmeier's characters are wonderful, and his images are dazzling." --Detroit Free Press

"The Illumination imagines a real universe of pain and pleasure, connection and disconnection, and quest for meaning that defines human experience delightfully anew." --The Miami Herald

"Brockmeier's consistently arresting observations have the throb of lived--rather than merely imagined--experience. . . . In The Illumination it isn't our agonies and discomforts that define us, but the selves we build in response to them." --Salon

"Brockmeier's work has always been characterized by his crystalline and surprising descriptions. . . . Brilliant. . . . Thorough and honest." --Southern Literary Review

"Lyrical. . . . Both the quotidian warmth of the notebook and the increasingly incidental shimmer of physical suffering draw the characters--and us--into the complex and vivid consideration of some of the fundamental questions that come with being human." --The Times Literary Supplement (London)

"[A] sunlit novel." --Time Out Chicago

"Fresh and ingenious. . . . Brockmeier has one of those imaginations that churns out picture-perfect imagery." --Elle

"Brockmeier's book positively sparkles . . . We've never read anything like it." --Daily Candy San Francisco

Book Description:

From best-selling and award-winning American author Kevin Brockmeier, a novel which completely reimagines the world...

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