I am not entirely sure were to begin with this novel. It’s a relatively quick read despite the lush and elegant prose, but ends up feeling like you have been sunk into its pages for far longer than you actually have. Endless and timeless, like the imagined plains of Kansas it describes.
Some reviewers have suggested that the novel progresses backwards in time, the same way the back-masking the title is a reference to moves backwards through music, but the novel’s relationship with time is more complicated than that. While it generally moves backwards, it starts with a bright spot in the distant past, and its progression backwards through the life of the narrator after that progresses in fits and starts, rarely feeling entirely linear...perhaps to simulate the barely coherent sound of back-masking, but perhaps more because time has ceased to be an entirely linear experience for the narrator. Not in a mystical sense, but in the way that one becomes lost, a man who lives in memories which are not even always clear from fragments of fantasy and dream, scattered through the endless numbered days that remain as one goes on and on and on.
This isn’t a narrative, so much as it is a slice of life, of a man who partially by consequence of his choices and partially by the world, has decided that this is all he will ever be. Do not look for resolution, solution, or lessons here. And while some will undoubtedly empathize with the narrator, i’m Sure others will judge him...I feel like too strong a reaction in either direction is missing the point though. We all have stories, that follow an internal logic of sorts, and is possible to both accept our logic and that of others even where they collide in sometimes disastrous ways. It is possible to both accept and regret our actions simulateously, to wish things were different but know they can’t be.
I wonder how much Darnielle’s background working with adolescents in a mental hospital figured into the narrator, it’s something I hope to ask him about at an upcoming book signing, because I can potentially see a lot of that experience worming it’s way in. Similarly, the role religion plays here, both overtly and more subtly (in the form of nigh religious role some of the narrators constructs play in his life) is interesting given the author’s relative strong beliefs.
I am probably of precisely the right age and demographic to have fallen for this book, as many of the time sensitive cultural touch stones that are so important to the narrator were also things that played large roles in my life during similar developmental periods. I’m not sure that it would resonate as well with someone too far outside Darnielle’s generation, and from too different of a background. There are clear that could be drawn to experiences in today’s world, but I wonder still how that would effect the connection.