But the other players of the game also move through this inner world, and carry their version of it within themselves. North lies Nebraska.”Īt first the “you” Sean addresses in the game is, of course, himself – though a self, now, with a different face – a young man building a refuge where he can control all the different possibilities and forking paths that follow from each decision in a way he cannot in the real world. He goes on to make a career for himself running the game by mail order, posting out turns to players who send in their SAEs: “ You see men in gas masks sweeping the highway … you know that the time has come for you to act.” “ Bounty hunters will be here within the hour. That’s when he develops the idea for the Trace Italian, a post-apocalyptic choose-your-adventure role-play game set, like some inverted Land of Oz, in the blasted deserts of Kansas, in which players make their way towards the “sanctuary of the interior” to be found in the immense star-shaped fort after which the game is named. In the aftermath of his horrific injury, Sean spends a lot of time staring at hospital ceilings – face wrapped in bandages, ears ringing unbearably. Like Darnielle’s lyrics for his band the Mountain Goats, the prose is spare yet fervent, both distant and rawly exposed, making for an eerie, awkward and compelling novel that immediately demands a second read.
Along the way it explores isolation, creativity and the permeable membrane between outer and inner worlds how childhood dreams and teenage obsessions colour the infinite expanses of the mind and how far we can share our interior journeys. John Darnielle’s elliptical debut novel, which was longlisted for a National book award in the US, circles around the question of what Sean knows, and what he is able or willing to tell us. And then of course the child asks why, and Sean has to say he doesn’t know. But when a five-year-old approaches him as he sits in the park, he finds himself explaining what happened.
Most people can’t look at him, let alone ask about the “glistening folds and reconstructed arches” he is left with. ‘What did you do to your face?” Sean has led a solitary existence since the catastrophic incident half a lifetime ago, in a teenage bedroom in suburban California.
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