I hadn’t read Max Porter before this one jumped off the shelf at me in my local bookshop. I read it in one sitting…then read most of it again in the same sitting.
It’s a short book but it has depth. It’s the story of a family in a small town – Lanny is a teenager who is a bit of a local weirdo, artistic, sensitive and curious in a way that sets him apart from the small-town folk that surround him. Lanny’s mother worries over him constantly, and his dad is a finance guy who comes from the school of ‘man up’. Lanny begins to take art lessons from a washed local who was once a household name.
At the same time, Dead Papa Toothwort is lurking – a bogeyman, a local legend used to scare children into doing as they’re told. His sections are sinister, looming and typeset in a very unusual way.
That’s all I can really say without spoiling it.
The book itself is compelling enough just on initial flip-through, the type is sparse, or weird, or both, depending on the focus or narrator. The storytelling style changes a couple of times throughout the book in keeping with the eeriness of the story – the reader is never comfortable, there is always some little puzzle to solve or lyrical code to break.
Lyrical is appropriate as a descriptor for the whole thing – Porter writes in a way that’s poetic and beautiful, even when it’s creepy, tense, and cryptic.
I’ll seek out his other books for sure.