Ray of the Star by Laird Hunt

Matthew Tiffany of The Quarterly Review has an insightful review of Laird Hunt’s latest novel, Ray of the Star. Hunt (Indiana, Indiana, The Exquisite) is not only a preeminent wordsmith, crafting sentences both visually and aurally stunning, but one of the top new postmodern voices of our time:

“Ray of the Star opens with two nods in the direction of French writer Georges Perec. The first, a quotation from his 1967 novel A Man Asleep, serves as entry to the story: Now you must learn how to last. A man named Harry has suffered the unexpected deaths of some people, likely family members, about whom he cares very much. The narrative jumps ahead an unspecified amount of time to Harry abandoning his home, his job, everything. He’s running away from everything with nowhere to go. Like the protagonist of A Man Asleep, this is a man realizing he no longer knows how to live—all that is left now is learning how to last.” (read more)