kepler8-b
"Who are we when we live through someone else?"
A cyclical work of postmodern, surrealist fiction, shaped primarily by the influences of modernist writers such as Proust, Joyce, Woolf and Pynchon, Not So Distant Horizons asks as many questions as it answers. Simultaneously dense and concise, the writing puts a spin the stream-of-consciousness style, which was popular during the first half of the twentieth century. It's worth noting that all the traits of this book are not exclusively postmodern or surrealist. It also builds upon the style of contemporary writers. Being stuck in the past is something both the narrator and the author despise.
Elements of philosophical fiction are also abundant. Tending to become someone else, the narrator chases so-called specters, perfect images of himself that he sculpted during his lifetime. Having drowned in self-pity and loneliness in the surrealist setting of the book, The Garden, the narrator begins his writing by starting to question everything from his past lifetime. Hundreds of years pass in just a few sentences. In the Garden, not a single object is reminiscent of the world he had left behind years ago in exchange for eternal solitude. It is the arrival of his childhood friend, Juno, that changes everything.
Juno, acting as the driving force for the book's plot, brings with her a lot more than change.
Long-buried questions resurface. They are not exclusive to the narrator; both the reader and he can ask themselves the same question: is what I am writing true? Can I rely on the story being consistent?
Find out by reading the work. Still in progress and to be continued.