Lanny "déjà vu all over again"
Review of the Strange Light paperback edition (May 14, 2019) of the original Faber & Faber hardcover (March 7, 2019).

I was probably fated not to love this book after my experience with the eBook edition which I briefly summarized in Warning Review: Avoid Microscopic Kindle Edition. I did give the book another chance though and was able to source a paperback copy from the library. This was mostly readable, even of most of the bizarre curlicue fonts, except for a sequence of pages 89-91 where the gobbledygook nonsense is even printed superimposed on itself.

See photo at https://scontent-ord5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/434412145_26034430556155717_8...
Photo of pages 90-91 of the paperback edition

That just angered me all over again. The feeling is enhanced when you actually try to read some of that stuff and it is basically meaningless with no relationship to the main plot. I suppose it is meant as the OCD ramblings of the mythological spirit named as Dead Papa Toothwort who plays a possible antagonistic role in the proceedings.

The rest of the story did have its charms. A young boy Lanny is taken under the wing of a resident elderly artist Pete Blythe while his mother Josie is busy writing a crime novel and father Robert is off in the big city doing something in the investment banking field. About 1/2 way through Lanny goes missing and the village joins forces in the search. There is definitely an outstanding sequence where mother Josie interacts in a dialogue & a stream of consciousness back and forth with a cantankerous neighbour woman named Mrs. Larton. That was at least worth the price of admission.

However it is points off for a gratuitous butchery of a hedgehog scene and the stupid use of the unreadable font passages. A 3-rating is my compromise. ( )

Warning Review: Avoid Microscopic Kindle edition
Review of the Strange Light Kindle edition (May 14, 2019) of the Faber & Faber hardcover original (March 7, 2019).

Ok, this is an exception as I almost never do DNF reviews, but I only got 10% or so into this Kindle edition with the microscopic curlicue fonts* which were just irritating and made me angry, so I abandoned the book in this format. This is a review about the format medium and not the book content. Perhaps on a tablet or large screen this would not be a problem but I enjoy the Kindle for its portability and I found it totally unreadable on the relatively small screen. I have put in for a library hold for the physical book instead.
If you are curious as to what I am talking about, here are some sample images:
See screengrab at https://scontent-ord5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/430096908_25959590970306343_5...
See screengrab at https://scontent-ord5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/431879554_25959451003653673_2...
Images are screengrabs from the Kindle mobile phone app as those were easier to screenshot, and not from the actual Kindle screen. The relative sizes between the regular font and the tiny fonts are the same on the slightly larger Kindle screen.

Footnote
* The texts in curlicue font are actually individual graphic images. Enlarging the font of the main text does nothing for the graphic images, they remain tiny. You would have to tap on each word or phrase individually as a graphic to enlarge it. I was not prepared to spend that amount of time on it. ( )

A strange and beautiful prose poem. A fable about the hypocrisy of life in a small community, a mother’s love, and the magic of unbridled childhood imagination. ( )

I along with many critics loved Porter's unique debut a couple of years ago, Grief is the Thing With Feathers, which used the mythological crow figure and a prose-poetry style to tell the emotional struggle of two children and their father after the sudden death of their mother/spouse. So when Porter's second novel was published, I was first in line on the library's holds list for it.

Porter's style is much the same, a storytelling mode that blends prose and poetry. This blend is more even in the first part of the book, where Porter includes phrases of text (snippets of conversation said to be being spoken in the story's village) arranged visually like a modernist poem might be. The prose meanwhile takes a stronger hand in the latter part of the book.

Similarly also we have a mythological being brought to life at the center of the story, pulling many of the strings. Here though the character, Dead Papa Toothwort, is considerably more difficult to understand and get a grip on than Crow was. Dead Papa Toothwort is something out of the dark and primitive woods, rural and uncivilized, strange and unfamiliar, triggering humanity's fears and anxieties. He's something out of England's pagan past, with uncertain motives.

The story also centers again on children, this time just one really. Lanny is an only child, and has an eerie connection to nature. The village, and sometimes his parents, are unnerved by him; he's considered a weirdo, "off with the fairies". In part 2 of the book, he disappears, and at that point the book gets a touch more conventional, showing "what really happens" in the minds of people when a child goes missing and suspicion and emotions run high. The story finally takes a wild swerve in part 3, with a set piece that reminds me of something out of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, before resolving the storyline.

All in all, not as compelling as Grief is the Thing With Feathers, but a good second publication from an author worth reading. ( )

This book reads like Jon McGregor; each chapter from the perspective of each character living in the village centred around a boy with learning difficulties who is well loved. The character which makes the book stand out is Toothwort, an old English folklore Green Man, who observes everything. Mentions of mermaids, spring-heeled Jack, the Green Children of Woolpit.
He also uses Sisyphus, Atlas and Echo as a comparison of the neverending pain in narratives, to being the parent of a missing child.
Quotes:"Say your prayers and be good too, Or dead papa Toothwort is coming for you"
The language poetic: "Deep inside a silvicultured English wood there's an old man sitting on a stump gazing at the roots of a fallen tree." and "Crepuscular" (appearing or active in twilight). ( )