Crystal From The Hills

In this literary novel, Daniels (The Big No, 2010, etc.) follows Chris Leavitt, a former meth addict trying to rescue his once again unraveling life.

After a car accident leaves his truck and his friend Weed sinking in a river, Chris flees his apartment. Suspended from his job as a surgical assistant, he drifts among his filmmaker friend, Sweet; his girlfriend, Jill; and his autocratic Aunt Jenny, all while dodging mysterious entities he calls “shadows,” which may allow him to predict the future. That said, aside from a flurry of exposition at the beginning and end of the novel, very little happens; the book is largely given over to wheel-spinning passages of dialogue or internal monologue. Some inclusions are baffling: for example, about six pages given over to a phone conversation Chris has with a patent attorney, soon followed by about four pages of his attempt to be connected with the right department at his nursing school. Misplaced or irrelevant flashbacks abound, and point-of-view shifts happen constantly without clear markers, further muddying the narrative flow. It’s possible the intention is a novel of minutiae à la Proust or Joyce; at one point, Sweet defends his amorphous film in what may double as a description of the novel: “That’s reality. People’s lives are...disconnected; they have interests, obligations, and you don’t just get a happy ending after two hours.” Undoubtedly, there’s an audience for plotless fiction, but most readers tend to require fascinating characters or lush prose to sustain their interest. The latter is particularly lacking here. Daniels is fond of multisyllabic words, which he awkwardly stacks to create unwieldy sentences: “Her quasi-endearment consolidated détente.” A late-stage disclosure reveals that a previously mentioned sexual encounter between Chris and Jill in a supply room at work was what could be characterized as an attempted rape—a detail that retroactively colors their entire relationship. The “shadows” also make little sense; perhaps readers are meant to wonder whether they’re real or pathological, but they’re too vague to be anything but distracting.

Sprawling, muddled and often hard to follow.