Harrow

A seething, heartbreaking, often hilarious book about the emptiness at the heart of the human urge to make transformative, systemic change, to have an impact, to have life mean something in the face of absolute indifference. Throughout HARROW there is a powerful feeling of rage– at being voiceless, at wanting to DO SOMETHING (!!) in the face of relentless stupidity– which is made manifest in direct action which this book does not flinch in exposing as empty, narcissistic fantasy.

I experienced a deep connection to these feelings while reading the book, to the bleak humor that sits atop a wrenching feeling of helplessness in the face of preventable, man-made catastrophe, and I think HARROW truly captures the feeling of impotence– despite our words, our ideas, our hopes, our beliefs– that sits at the center of contemporary experience. I really loved this book and found it immensely comforting to discover so much of my own darkly comic despair reflected in the story (speaking of narcissism ha). It took me a minute to get into its rhythms and style, but this is definitely a book I'll be thinking about for a long, long time.

SPOILER-ISH SIDE NOTE:

The feeling of the book called to mind, for me, an echo of THE LITTLE PRINCE, if that makes any sense at all, with Khristen in the position of the narrator, “crash landing” in a hostile landscape, and brought into a world of loss and isolation before being ultimately left behind prior to her final meeting with Jeffrey, who represented (for me) the infantile, arbitrary self-satisfaction of the state with which she ambiguously reconciles(?). This is more tonal than narrative, but I couldn't shake it.