Thursday, January 15, 2009

The Theory of Light and Matter

I've written a short review for the new issue of Bookforum:

"Hole," the opening story in Andrew Porter's debut collection, The Theory of Light and Matter, draws a blueprint for the nine that follow: A young man looks back on his suburban childhood, recalling the strange hole in his neighbor's driveway and the day, a decade before, his friend climbed into it and died. The book's other narrators struggle with the metaphoric gaps that manifest themselves in otherwise ordinary lives. "As he entered me for the first time," a woman says about her soon-to-be fiancé, "it seemed that I had just opened up a hole in my life." "A father's decision to leave home had left a hole in our lives," says a boy, "though we did not talk about that hole."