What if we could see each other's pain? What if every toothache and backache announced itself with a beacon of light? Kevin Brockmeier examines these questions with stark originality and lyrical grace in his latest novel, "The Illumination".
The novel follows six people and weaves each narrative together with an object that each one of them encounters at some point: a journal filled with a husband's daily compliments to his wife. The husband, photojournalist Jason Williford, is one of the six protagonists himself. Every day he would leave his wife Patricia a phrase describing something he loved about her: "I love the ball you curl into when you wake up in the morning but don't want to get out from under the covers." She gradually copied each phrase down in a journal. Then Jason and Patricia get in a car accident. Before dying on her hospital bed, Patricia gives the journal to a fellow patient -- another one of the six main characters named Carol Ann Page.
The word "Illumination" refers to the global phenomenon that occurs "at 8:17 on a Friday night" and makes everyone's wounds glow with a hazy, otherworldly light. The light from Carol Ann's thumb wound -- acquired while attempting to open a box with a razor -- was "steady and uniform, a silvery-white disk that showed even through her thumbnail, as bright and finely edged as the light in a Hopper painting."
But it's not just Carol Ann's thumb that's aglow. Anyone with a headache, back pain, scraped knee or terminal disease emits that peculiar light from his or her points of pain. Discomfort can no longer be kept secret. But this doesn't necessarily spur an increase in empathy.
As Carol Ann notices about her workplace, "They all tried their best not to acknowledge one another's suffering. Even when one of the receptionists came in with belt-strap bruises radiating through the front of her shirt, wincing each time she reached to open the filing cabinet, the rest of the staff avoided saying anything to her."
The six main characters in Brockmeier's book deal with both physical and emotional stress. But it's often their bright injuries that belie their complicated emotional lives. Chuck Carter, an empathetic school child, lives with his absent-minded mother and "pretend dad" (Chuck believes a real father wouldn't be so mean to his son), while enduring frequent bullying at school. Unlike most of the adults in the novel, Chuck feels little surprise at the "Illumination." Chuck had always perceived others' suffering easily.
"When you hit people, or pushed them, something terrible happened. Their bodies changed underneath the skin, straining, tightening like ropes. Cats and dogs and horses reacted the same way. It looked like something inside them was trying to escape. It looked like a ghost wanted out of their bones. ... So when the light came, he wasn't surprised one bit."
Chuck also perceives the suffering of inanimate objects. "Even objects felt pain if you struck or ignored them. Jars of peanut butter could be hurt just like people. Dirt bikes, toys, shopping carts, cereal boxes: they all could. Chuck knew -- and had always known -- that it was true."
Chuck's sympathy for the pain of objects leads him to steal the journal from Jason Williford's house one day. Chuck had been spying on his older neighbor and noticed the peculiar glow coming from the book -- it seemed sad and he wanted to rescue it. Inside its pages, Chuck finds comfort in the warm phrases Jason wrote to his wife. Although he doesn't understand most of them, Chuck senses their deep feeling and benign nature. "There were many strange, confusing sentences in the book. Yet it seemed gentle to Chuck, not sad or angry. He wished he could understand why it shone so brightly."
Every sentence of "The Illumination" is lovely. From wound descriptions to explanations of a child's perspectives to depictions of life on the street as seen through the eyes of a book vendor, Brockmeier always seems to have a clear goal in mind. The book's dialogue is natural and unobtrusive, but interior monologues and exposition show the novel's strengths. With a section devoted to each character, we get a solid inside perspective of each protagonist's life.
Unlike other authors who may devise an intriguing premise but then fail to carry it to fruition, Brockmeier succeeds in both theory and execution: "The Illumination" is a fantastic read.