Devotion

I give this three stars only because they won't let me give it all the numbers of stars at once. I cannot decide what this is I hold in my hand. It could be a rare little gem, or some gem-shaped bits of plastic from the giant tub at the back of the party store.

It sits somehow balanced between a cultured and erudite, but deeply felt, beauty, and an eyerolling festival of name-dropping travelogue and pretentious, needlessly dramatic, fiction. I don't know which it is, or both, or perhaps categories and criticism are always lies, and I've just now noticed.

I mean, what?

An unusual triptych: a story—an unsettling one of loneliness and obsession—bracketed by an enigmatic prelude and a coda. The prelude stands alone as an essay on creativity and the pursuit of ideals; but many of the references in it are incomprehensible without having first read the story. This is, I believe, deliberate: Smith tantalizes us with snippets of her inspiration, we then see what her mind has wrought with those, and then, having finished, we shut the book, ponder a few moments, and start it again at the beginning. Be sure to allocate time for two readings: you will appreciate it.