The Illusion of Separateness
A Novel
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“The uncanny beauty of Van Booy’s prose, and his ability to knife straight to the depths of a character’s heart, fill a reader with wonder.” — San Francisco Chronicle
Award-winning author Simon Van Booy tells a harrowing and enchanting story of how one man’s act of mercy during World War II changed the lives of strangers, and how they each discover the astonishing truth of their connection.
The characters in Van Booy's The Illusion of Separateness discover at their darkest moments of fear and isolation that they are not alone, that they were never alone, that every human being is a link in a chain we cannot see. This gripping novel—inspired by true events—tells the interwoven stories of a deformed German infantryman; a lonely British film director; a young, blind museum curator; two Jewish American newlyweds separated by war; and a caretaker at a retirement home for actors in Santa Monica. They move through the same world but fail to perceive their connections until, through seemingly random acts of selflessness, a veil is lifted to reveal the vital parts they have played in one another's lives, and the illusion of their separateness.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The latest addition to Van Booy's eclectic literary repertoire is a fractured but fine-tuned narrative revealed through the sum of its pieced-together parts. The story is based on actual events and told from the perspective of six distantly related characters in alternating chapters stretching from New York in 1939 to France throughout WWII, and to East Sussex, England, and Los Angeles, Calif., both in 2010; it quietly unfolds around a multigenerational family ravaged by war, loss, and regret. Mr. Hugo is a disfigured Nazi soldier atoning for his crimes; Martin is a French caretaker at a retirement home for aging starlets; Amelia is a blind 20-something searching for love while setting up programs for the sightless at New York's Museum of Modern Art; and John survived the crash of his B-24 plane over Nazi-occupied France to join the French resistance. Using restraint and a subtle dose of foreshadowing, Van Booy (Everything Beautiful Began After) expertly entangles these disparate lives; but it's what he leaves out that captures the imagination. Full of clever staccato sentences ("Most nights, he watches television. Then he falls asleep and the television watches him") bookended by snippets of inner monologue obvious, but ripe with meaning ("We all have different lives... but in the end probably feel the same things, and regret the fear we thought might somehow sustain us"), the writing is what makes this remarkable book soar.
