The Location Scout

I have been thinking about re-reading this for a few years but the paper copy is at my parents' house. I just finished Renee Gladman's ‘Event Factory' and that kept reminding me of this book so I went and got the Kindle version and read it while lying on the couch and petting my dog.

I love Kevin's work, and this is maybe my favorite. I'm no good at explaining why I like anything, which is why I so seldom leave reviews here, but I'll try.

I like how desolate ‘Location Scout' feels. From the descriptions of landscapes and locations to the almost complete lack of human interaction (the one real conversation in the book even suggests the one on the other end of the call may not be human), the focus is on a place or person at a time and how vast and lonely the world is and how there's beauty in that.

There is also a love of travel in this book, or maybe more accurately a love of transportation, because I think in the magic of the protagonist and their childhood desire for car rides to not end there is a love of the going more than the going-to (or at least, with the scouting, an assurance that the destination will soon be left for another), which is really about decisions, I think, and I very much identify with this.

I love Chapter 5's series of thought experiments, and I love the mysterious explanation in Chapter 4 (“It's just a scene in a movie”).

This book reads like what the world feels like.