The Perfect Golden Circle

I have very conflicted feelings about this book.

It is a wonderful book, beautifully written. It shows a modern male adult friendship and how positive and supportive it can be, which is something that I haven't come across hardly at all, and certainly not in today's cultural climate. It talks about regular men intentionally creating beauty, and putting hope out into the world, and I loved every bit of it. Until the end. That ending! The hopelessness of it crushed me; it felt like a betrayal. To leave it like that, no redemption, no closure, just a vast uneasiness that we probably know exactly what will happen between the end of this summer and the start of the next. Hopeless and helpless is how the author left us, and I do not understand why.So then how to see this book, as the beauty or as the betrayal? I finished reading it two days ago and have been trying to sort out my feelings since.

*3.5 stars. Unsettling and melancholic filled with robust writing and big ideas but pulled by an undercurrent of fatalism. I can't say I enjoyed it, but I am also glad that I read it. Myers can certainly write but does seem a bit verbose and intentionally ambiguous, like what he wants most is for his readers to be filled with wonder at their perceived understanding of his intentions rather than their actual response and understanding of whatever it is he is trying to say, if that makes any sense.