Stephen Barkley
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Days is weird. Not weird in a Vandermeer or Catling way, though. It’s weird in an Arabian Nights meets Stan Lee meets Aristotle meets the end of the world sort of way. If you’re still reading after that last sentence, you may be interested!
Here’s a sample.
It was on the Wednesday after the great storm that Mr. Geronimo first noticed that his feet no longer touched the ground. . . . He swung his legs out of bed and stood up. Something did feel different then. He was familiar with the texture of the polished wooden floorboards in his bedroom but for some reason he didn’t feel them that Wednesday morning. There was a new softness underfoot, a kind of soothing nothingness. (20–21)
Salman Rushdie is a master storyteller. In Two Years, he created a variety of improbable stories featuring dead philosophers, floating gardeners, invading djinn, and a child whose very presence makes moral corruption present physically before weaving them all together into an apocalyptic tapestry.
Rushdie, Salman. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights. Toronto: Knopf, 2015.
Looks like a tough, though fascinating, read! I might pick it up at the library tomorrow.
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