Customer Reviews

Light Boxes

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Based on the Edward Gorey-esque cover illustration, the back cover copy and it's slender profile, I thought Shane Jones's Light Boxes was going to be a quirky, whimsical allegory. But this is no children's tale. As a matter of fact, despite its modest length, it's packed with so many agonizing moments, I found it difficult to get through quickly.

This strange fantasia tells the story of a town being punished by an unseen God-like figure for their love of flying (kites, balloons, even the local birds), which is surely a metaphor for the freedom and joy inherent in the creative urge. The despot sentences them to live eternally in the bleak month that happens to share his name - February. As the month's frigid days drag on into the hundreds, children begin to disappear or turn up dead and several disastrous attempts at revolt only deepen the townsfolk's suffering and leave them in state of black despair. February itself symbolizes the soul-sucking effects of depression on creativity.

The publisher employs some rather precious gimmickry to get the author's point across; most notably changes in typeface and font size to indicate the various different points of view, tones of voice or the relative significance of a particular passage. While I personally found this effective and appealing, other readers might be annoyed by it. Most of the characters are mere sketches, but Jones's prose is evocative enough that I was able to build on them in my imagination as if I was fleshing out a hazy dream. Which is really what this novel most resembles. A gorgeously atmospheric dream that one has to surrender to in order to enjoy its full impact.

While the material is pretty surreal, I still felt emotionally invested in the struggles of these people and was worn out by their repeated failure to bring back Spring, so I was surprised by the almost childlike simplicity to their long-awaited salvation. Jones is perhaps suggesting that we are ultimately the architects of our own happiness. Much like Dorothy's escape from Oz, the power to overcome the bleakest sorrow has been inside us all along.

As soon as you begin reading Light Boxes, you will realize it's a different little book. The story and wonderful writing will hook you right away. What would you do if that terminally, dark, cold month of February never went away? And what would you do if you could never dream of flying again, especially if your is hobby sailing upwards in a hot air balloon, or watching your kite flitter in the wind higher and higher in the sky? You'd probably try and not forget the feeling and beauty and the sensations of flight even as you watch the birds fall from the sky and bees become listless.

The inhabitants of the village in Light Boxes have those things to face because flying has been banned, and it's always cold and dark, day after day and month after month, it's always February and it's February's fault that the children in the village are all disappearing. Where are they going and has February murdered them all?

Shane Jones has written an enchanting book with sparse prose that creates grand imagery of a town in grave danger and how the villagers cope with all of it. This is a magical book that you'll want to read over and over and I am sure each time you do something new will reveal itself in the images and the thoughtfulness created by such a small, powerful book. There is a lot going on in this story and you'll enjoy reading it. There are a few lists in this book that are amazing along with the strong and meaningful writing and impressive imagery. Even if it's not February, make yourself a pot of mint tea and dive into this story. You'll be delighted and enchanted, perplexed and pleased, it will be a most sweet journey into that short but cold, dark time known as February. If you are just getting this book, cracking it open and are beginning to read it for the first time, I envy you.

Ha. I read one review that said this was an "original" idea - but what most people fail to understand is that it's a pure and simple rip off of a MUCH better book by Salvador Plascencia called The People of Paper. This book was written a few years after the People of Paper and is so incredibly close to the premise, format and style that it's embarrassing for Jones.

I tried to actually read this - to give it a shot - and it bored me to tears. Try The People of Paper - it's excellent. And, no, I do not know the author... I just adore the book and hate to see it ripped off in this fashion.

I was really drawn to this book by its beautifully illustrated cover. I flipped through a few pages, and it seemed promising.

I was hoping for a quirky and unusual story with beautiful imagery. What I got was a load of pretentious bs! This reads very much like a collegiate creative writing project, and the lack of punctuation and changes in font, text size, page layout, etc, are annoying and gimmicky. If the author had spent as much time on the story as he did on the typography he MIGHT have written an interesting book!

As a metaphor for Seasonal Affective Disorder, I suppose this book works on a certain level. As a novel, though, I felt that it fell short. It's a slight novel that reminds me a bit of Robert Coover and Steven Millhauser, but without the exquisite use of language employed by either of those authors. Still, there are enough interesting ideas here that I'm curious to see what Jones does next.

I enjoyed reading Light Boxes, but it's not for every reader. If you like the films of Spike Jonze, you'll probably like Light Boxes. Jonze himself liked it enough to option the film rights and it's listed as "In Development" on his IMDB page.

Light Boxes is a fable/fantasy/dreambook about a village oppressed by never-ending February. The chapters are short, the narrative voice shifts, and variations in typography abound.

I have always lived in places where freezing temperatures are rare and never survive more than an hour past sunrise. I can't personally relate to the threat of a never-ending February, but I can imagine how it might lead to personification of the month and a desire to conquer or banish it. Shane Jones has managed to turn his flight of imagination into practical prose for the patient and not-easily-bemused reader.

You will have to go a long way to find a more magical and quirky novella than `Light Boxes'. Set in a far off land, as all good fairy stories should be, the balloon-loving residents suffer a ban on all forms of flight. But the culprit is not some unpronounceable Icelandic volcano, but rather February. And this February - who takes both the form of a person and a season - has lasted for more than three hundred days. And if that wasn't bad enough, he has also started making children disappear. One man, Thaddeus Lowe, is determined to do something about it.

There's a great sense of dark beauty in this little book - and it is little, both in number of pages and its pocket sized format. It's absolutely full of vibrant imagery that is both surreal and ethereal. It's no surprise that Shane Jones is also a poet as this book sits somewhere between poetry and novella. Yes, it does have a plot, but the experience of reading it is strangely one of looking at a picture book in that each short chapter (usually only a page or two) paints a vibrant image, some of which are beautiful, some scary and gruesome and some just plain weird.

It's also full of images of childhood fantasies and literature. So we have balloons, kites, secret passages, ghosts, lanterns, parchment messages and cups of mint tea. On top of that, you've got the personification of February and his wife, the beautifully named `girl who smells of honey and smoke' as well as a mysterious group of balloonists called `The Solution' who go around wearing masks.

Jones uses a variety of typefaces and fonts to tell his story which is told from a variety of first person narrators and a third party narrator. So shouts are in large bold type while whispers are in minuscule font sizes. It all adds to the highly visual sense that this story creates.

I would suggest that it's a book best read in one sitting which is not hard to do. More imaginative older children may well find it interesting - but keep your fingers crossed that they don't ask you to explain any of it! It's certainly an adult book - just very much on the magical end of the magical realism spectrum. Think Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In fact there is at least one part that strongly reminded me of One Hundred Years of Solitude in its imagery.

Incidentally, there was a real life Thaddeus Lowe who was a pioneering balloonist-spy in the American Civil War.

It's a book that shows a deep sympathy for humanity and I can see it being a cult hit. It's well worth checking out.

From the epigraph:
"The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February." -- Joseph Wood Krutch

LIGHT BOXES, a novella, opens as hot-air balloonist Thaddeus Lowe, his wife Selah and young daughter Bianca, and their whole close-knit town are enjoying the last evenings of pleasant weather before February arrives. But then February does descend, and worse than ever -- ordering the destruction of all things and creatures of flight and refusing to vacate and make way for spring -- eventually prompting the town to organize an underground resistance.

It seems an allegory of seasonal affective disorder, and I loved it in the beginning -- intriguing, with poetic imagery and emotion, for example from Thaddeus:

"I closed my eyes. I imagined Selah and Bianca in a canoe so narrow they had to lie down with their arms folded on their stomachs, their heads at opposite ends, their toes touching. I dreamed two miniature suns. I set one each upon their foreheads. I dreamed a waterfall and a calm lake of my arms below to catch them."

I also like its experimental structure (multiple narrators; odd fonts and formatting; chapters comprised of single sentences, partial pages, and lists), which is sometimes used to marvelous effect (and sometimes grows tiresome). I liked the story less as hundreds of days of February pass and things turn from mysterious to dystopian and war-ish, but that's what really happens in February, yes? And that's what fans of dystopian fiction may like the most.

This is a wonderfully lyrical book full of pictorial language. It reads like poetry. The world you become immersed in might not make much sense, but it is so compelling you feel like you must devour the book whole. While I agree with a few other readers the story itself might seem to be slightly lacking the language and vivid, dream-like style of storytelling seem to make up for it. It is a short book, but one I would recommend to almost anyone.

Check out Light Boxes by Shane Jones. Immediately. The story is a simple but powerful one: February, a character as well as a month, has subjected a village to endless cold and made flight impossible. Children begin disappearing. The townspeople band together into a resistance movement. But the remarkable thing about Light Boxes is the prose--beautiful images without sacrificing plot, moving without becoming sentimental. A familiar story, an ancient one, but incredibly rendered.