The Illumination Hardcover | Pages: 272 pages

Identify Books Supposing The Illumination

Original Title:	The Illumination
ISBN:	0375425314 (ISBN13: 9780375425318)
Edition Language:	English
Literary Awards:	St. Francis College Literary Prize Nominee (2011)

Description During Books The Illumination

From best-selling and award-winning author Kevin Brockmeier: a new novel of stunning artistry and imagination about the wounds we bear and the light that radiates from us all.

What if our pain was the most beautiful thing about us? In the aftermath of a fatal car accident, a private journal of love notes written by a husband to his wife passes into the keeping of a hospital patient, and from there through the hands of five other suffering people, touching each of them uniquely. I love the soft blue veins on your wrist. I love your lopsided smile. I love watching TV and shelling sunflower seeds with you.

The six recipients - a data analyst, a photojour­nalist, a schoolchild, a missionary, a writer, and a street vendor - inhabit an acutely observed, beauti­fully familiar yet particularly strange universe, as only Kevin Brockmeier could imagine it: a world in which human pain is expressed as illumination, so that one's wounds glitter, fluoresce, and blaze with light. As we follow the journey of the book from stranger to stranger, we come to understand how intricately and brilliantly they are connected, in all their human in­jury and experience.

Be Specific About Out Of Books The Illumination

Title	:	The Illumination
Author	:	Kevin Brockmeier
Book Format	:	Hardcover
Book Edition	:	Anniversary Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 272 pages
Published	:	February 1st 2011 by Pantheon (first published 2011)
Categories	:	Fiction. Fantasy. Magical Realism. Contemporary. Novels

Rating Out Of Books The Illumination

Ratings: 3.39 From 3350 Users | 678 Reviews

Write Up Out Of Books The Illumination

Humanity suddenly changes as emotional and physical pain begins to shine out of our bodies like light. How would a shift like that change culture? And what does it all mean?Kevin Brockmeier examines these questions through six different lives that are tied together through a diary filled with love notes from a husband to his wife.Rarely has a book stuck in my mind like The Illumination. Since putting it down, I've found myself thinking about it and asking myself what the author was saying.

The premise of this novel is that all our wounds, our pain, our diseases are illuminated with light. So, walking down the street, we can see all the people around us and their afflictions. There is no hiding it. Does this make us have more compassion? More understanding, perhaps? Do we become beautiful through our pain and suffering? These are questions this novel asks and it plays out through a series of characters and their viewpoints, who are all connected by one book full of love notes that

Kenneth Brockmeier is so frustrating. His eye for detail is arresting, and I found myself constantly on the brink of tears during the first half of the book because it just seemed so true and real. His writing is gorgeous. But he can't seem to structure a novel; the entire concept of this one seems better suited to a short story (light pours from wounds!) than multiple chapters. He simply runs out of ways to say the one thing he wants to say. The links between the short story-like chapters are

Humanity suddenly changes as emotional and physical pain begins to shine out of our bodies like light. How would a shift like that change culture? And what does it all mean?Kevin Brockmeier examines these questions through six different lives that are tied together through a diary filled with love notes from a husband to his wife.Rarely has a book stuck in my mind like The Illumination. Since putting it down, I've found myself thinking about it and asking myself what the author was saying.

I am conflicted about giving this book a star rating, because it was so unremarkable. Neither great nor bad, and yet the obligatory 3 stars makes it seem like I had an opinion. I'm about as tired of linked stories as I am of precocious child narrators. This book has both. The links in The Illumination are extremely tenuous, to the point that it feels like the journal that follows all six had to be inserted just to give us a vague sense of continuity. Similarly, the illumination itself (injuries

This book had two fascinating central ideas: (a) the concept of hidden pain becoming visible; and (b) the power of something precious passing from one person to another.So the first chapter of The Illumination had me hooked I couldnt wait to see how things unraveled. But now that Ive reached the end, Im left with an overwhelming sense of disillusionment forgive the pun. My disappointments are threefold:(1) Despite the intriguing framing, I was bored of these same two ideas being recycled for the

Readers of my reviews may have noticed that I am attracted to the whimsical, the magical, the fantastic, in novels. Kevin Brockmeier surprised and startled me with his first novel, A Brief History of the Dead. I wondered how he would do that again in his second. The Illumination is another work of sheer imagination laid over the gritty reality of modern life. Brockmeier uses the device of an object which passes through the hands of six characters, in this case a book of love quotes. It is a