The Backwards Folding Mirror

    (Nonlocal, 2005)
™ and © 2995 Jesse Monynihan

Here we have a book that reads like an autobiographical comic as told in dreams, with enough funny one-liners dropped in the right spaces to keep it from getting too heavy.

The end result is a book where people the protagonist loves antagonize him, and the actual antagonists never quite strike because they end up engaged in conversation about their regrets and failed plans. The dreamscape is layered like an onion, peeled back again and again to reveal another fevered imagining. It’s a strangely fun trip, with lines like “I would like to raise [a baby] in a cave. The ghost of my father is watching and I can’t screw up.” Yet for all the rambling consciousness, it’s an accessible book. To put it another way: you’ll get it even when you don’t understand it.

— Brendan McGinley
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