Summary
The mind belongs to Trace Pennington, a college student who keeps a dream journal, excerpts of which partially narrate Iodine, !race's (and the novel's) first sentence reads: "I never had sex with my father but I would have, if he had agreed.'' Trace then takes the reader with her to woozy, impenetrable observations like this one, made at the end of a routine exchange with a stranger "!look back at him; he is gripping his pen to wound the daughter waiting for him at home, in front of the television. Give that little anima projection the ink pen she deserves!'hi one scene she imagines her sister falling into a mass grave, which she queerty compares to "a hijacked swimming pool under the California sun." Her mother's red hair is "the cobr of a ripe cantaloupe mixed with biood."
Yet "Dace is also capable of transmitting finely tuned perceptions, feeling in one moment "the gut sensation of slowness, die rubbery stretch anticipation adds to time"; or precisely describing a whole category of people when she notes her classmate "wanted to be a performer but had been given no particular talent" And Kimmel repeatedly demonstrates a sharp, almost lacerating pen when it comes to people-watching (at a faculty cocktail party, "laces had begun to blend into a single academic jowl"). Some kinds of madness are brilliance without bearings, and many of Trace's errant arrows hit bull's-eyes we didn't even know were there.See the full content of this document
Extract
Off the Map
Off the map An Indiana of the mind in Haven Kimmel's new novel BY ADAM SOBSEY IODINE BY HAVEN KIMMEL Free Press, 200 pp.
The word crazy mustn't be thrown around casually. It contains all sorts of vague assumptions about what constitutes normalcy, it ostracizes genius; and it confines peo...See the full content of this document
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