Customer Reviews

Have You Seen The Horizon Lately?

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Reviewed by AJ Cooper for Reader Views (10/07)


This is a dark novel that has a main vein of suicide with some hope of romance and the future. Percy, a world-renowned author, mysteriously disappears after his wife Iris can no longer live with the attentions Percy receives from all of his admirers. Iris waits until they are out at a party and leaves prior to Percy's departure so that she can commit the act of suicide and be dead before his arrival at home. This discovery sends Percy over the edge and he disappears with his assistant in the hopes of never being found.

Val, his servant and assistant, has gone to great lengths to dissuade and trick Percy's fans from locating his true location. Julia, a meandering college student and fan of Percy's, has traveled far to discover Percy's hiding place in China. She is able to persuade her way into the home in China and has promised Val if she leaves she will not be able to return. Julia works her way into Percy's heart and attention by simple acts of just being with him and his numerous cats in his garden. Julia has come with only the clothes on her back. She has to persuade Val to buy her personal items, but never any clothing. Julia lives for months in the same clothes and takes opportunities to wash them when Val has left the house and Percy is secluded in his room listening to music and reading books.

I was somewhat interested in "Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?", but found it hard to follow because each chapter jumped to a different time period for Percy or Julia. The depression and talk of suicide throughout the entire book was not interesting and many times very cumbersome to read. The novel included excerpts from the characters writings and from interviews with the characters. I found no interest in these portions and skimmed through them.

Received book free of charge.

After reading Jamie Rich's The Everlasting, I had expected the follow up (billed as the third chapter in a thematic trilogy) to be another extremely enjoyable light indie-unrequited-love-story. While the book does indeed deal with unrequited love it's anything but another light indie love story. Have You Seen The Horizon Lately? is a deeply philosophical and gut wrenchingly emotional book dealing with loss, the search for self and how we try to connect or disconnect with the people and world around us.

In The Everlasting Jamie Rich used everything but the kitchen sink narratively to tell his story (from emails to articles... just imagine it, it's in there). Here he uses a much more sophisticated narrative structure that volleys between the individual past of the two main characters and their current intertwined present. It's a narrative style that works brilliantly, giving you glimpses to how and why these two characters came to be where they are.

Have You Seen The Horizon Lately? is a very intimate book, set within the tiny walls of a foreign retreat, enclosed so much you can actually feel the walls.

A core theme of the book is suicide, and it's presented in both a stark philosophical perspective and jaw droopingly emotional. It's that combination of thinking and feeling that come together in this book. Just when you think it's going to fly off into pretentious pontifications about life, the universe and everything it spins back around and grounds itself in the real implications of these things and how they really effect and impact people and their relationships with each other.

The greatest tragedy of Have You Seen The Horizon Lately? is that it may be missed by most people. Like Rich's previous books it's been released by Oni Press (best known for their graphic novels and comics). Have You Seen The Horizon Lately? is a piece of fine literature, and given the right exposure it could be listed up there with Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar as a truly great book that deals with the impact of suicide on those who survive.