The Great Night / Chris Adrian 292 p.

It isn't often that I read a novel in which I genuinely can't understand what's happening much of the time, but this one was a definite challenge. Inspired by A Midsummer Night's Dream, Adrian tells the stories of Molly, Henry, and Will, all of whom wander into a San Francisco park on the night of the solstice and get stuck there once Puck is let loose. Impossible (for me) to summarize, I will say that the striking feature of this story is that it's saturated with grief. All of the characters are deeply mourning something or someone, and, in spite of the incessant and graphic rutting taking place everywhere, they never seem to overcome this. Some passages are breathtakingly lovely, but as a novel this didn't work for me.

An interesting aside is that Chris Adrian is a pediatric oncologist as well as a novelist; this could certainly explain the grief. In spite of everything I've just written, I'd be willing to try another by him. Definite potential.