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Chloe Thurlow's Reviews > The Light in the Sound
The Light in the Sound
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Does life have meaning? Or is random, absurd, a dead shooting star with its light still glimmering in the abyss? Surely the US election campaigns are an allegory for the chaos and violence eating out the heart of politics, business, the banks and family life – in the United States of America, as in the rest of the world, the downside of globalization?
How do we find meaning? How do we discover who we are, what we want, what we should do and how we should live when we feel as if “we have been conditioned for a climate-controlled life in a storage box with an apron and the Book of Mormon?”
This is a contemporary dilemma; from before the industrial revolution until the end of the Second World War, most families across the planet worked to survive and there was no time for existential inquiry, casual sex, casual drug taking.
Modern life creates modern puzzles, which Vanessa Gonzales sets out to explore in her mesmerizing début novel ‘The Light in the Sound,’ a title that awoke in me memories of ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being,’ Milan Kundera’s superlative opus, both in the rhythm of the title and the struggle Rachel Richardson takes on to make sense of it all.
And author Vanessa Gonzales makes her protagonist’s life harder than it may have been by putting her before the displays of sex aids, porn videos, crotchless panties, uniforms and edible underwear in a porn shop in, by contrast, Seattle, Washington – one of the prettiest places in the world to set a story.
Family miles away, shaky friendships with drop-outs, chancers, the lost and downtrodden, Rachel sleepwalks through life feeling isolated, feeling that there is something she should so, she has to do, but she can’t get her head around what it is.
Rachel’s insomnia develops into night terrors, her few friendships grow more fragile and she sees about her an apocalyptic world that is greying, decaying, going off course. She wanders the dark streets, finds a moment’s relief in bars among characters who may feel half dead but come alive off the page, people the reader will relate to, revile and, sometimes, want to gather up in their arms.
Are there millions of lonesome young women wandering the misty night spots that litter America’s city streets and broken highways with heads full of dreams and uncertainty? ‘The Light in the Sound’ will answer that question and, on reading it, you will grow slowly, grudgingly, to admire Rachel Richardson as she fights to make sense of it all and to find that part of herself that will give her strength to carry on. Is this an easy book to read? No. But what comes too easy is rarely worthwhile. Vanessa Gonzales has a fine ear for dialogue, a sense of pace and is a writer to look out for.
How do we find meaning? How do we discover who we are, what we want, what we should do and how we should live when we feel as if “we have been conditioned for a climate-controlled life in a storage box with an apron and the Book of Mormon?”
This is a contemporary dilemma; from before the industrial revolution until the end of the Second World War, most families across the planet worked to survive and there was no time for existential inquiry, casual sex, casual drug taking.
Modern life creates modern puzzles, which Vanessa Gonzales sets out to explore in her mesmerizing début novel ‘The Light in the Sound,’ a title that awoke in me memories of ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being,’ Milan Kundera’s superlative opus, both in the rhythm of the title and the struggle Rachel Richardson takes on to make sense of it all.
And author Vanessa Gonzales makes her protagonist’s life harder than it may have been by putting her before the displays of sex aids, porn videos, crotchless panties, uniforms and edible underwear in a porn shop in, by contrast, Seattle, Washington – one of the prettiest places in the world to set a story.
Family miles away, shaky friendships with drop-outs, chancers, the lost and downtrodden, Rachel sleepwalks through life feeling isolated, feeling that there is something she should so, she has to do, but she can’t get her head around what it is.
Rachel’s insomnia develops into night terrors, her few friendships grow more fragile and she sees about her an apocalyptic world that is greying, decaying, going off course. She wanders the dark streets, finds a moment’s relief in bars among characters who may feel half dead but come alive off the page, people the reader will relate to, revile and, sometimes, want to gather up in their arms.
Are there millions of lonesome young women wandering the misty night spots that litter America’s city streets and broken highways with heads full of dreams and uncertainty? ‘The Light in the Sound’ will answer that question and, on reading it, you will grow slowly, grudgingly, to admire Rachel Richardson as she fights to make sense of it all and to find that part of herself that will give her strength to carry on. Is this an easy book to read? No. But what comes too easy is rarely worthwhile. Vanessa Gonzales has a fine ear for dialogue, a sense of pace and is a writer to look out for.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
March 15, 2016
– Shelved
March 15, 2016
–
Finished Reading
