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    The Illumination
    The Illumination
    The Illumination
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Illumination

    Written by Kevin Brockmeier

    Narrated by Graham Rowat

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Author Kevin Brockmeier counts the O. Henry Prize among the many accolades his speculative fiction has earned. In The Illumination he offers "an inspiring take on suffering and the often fleeting nature of connection" (Publishers Weekly, starred review). When physical pain suddenly manifests itself as shining light, the wounded nature of humanity is revealed. "This is a radiant, bewitching, and profoundly inquisitive novel of sorrow, perseverance, and wonderment."-Booklist, starred review
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJul 1, 2011
    ISBN9781461804031
    The Illumination
    Author

    Kevin Brockmeier

    Kevin Brockmeier is the author of five novels for adults and two children's novels. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, McSweeney's, The Oxford American, The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories and Granta's Best of Young American Novelists, among other publications. He has taught at the Iowa Writer's Workshop.

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    Reviews for The Illumination

    3.5/5

    139 ratings21 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Started off well and captured my attention for the first 150 pages or so, but then began to dwindle in quality until the end, at which point I simply didn't care very much about the characters or the story. Five stars for the first half, two stars for the second.
    • 3/5
      While a fascinating premise I think that it was under-done. This book had some wonderfully well-done parts (the entire middle was fabulous and was truly painful- a good tribute to the premise). However, there were parts that were lacking and I think it really could have benefited from a section that was not based on an individual. However, it's an easy (though emotional) read and certainly interesting enough
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this a lot. I picked it up because I saw it on a 'best linked stories' list somewhere. Although written as a novel (or, at least, packaged as a novel), i think i would have enjoyed it better knowing up front it was a series of short stories that were linked. I know - I should have realized that from the start, but again, it's packaged/described as a novel! Had I read it as a series of short stories, I wouldn't have spent as much time thinking...I wonder how she ended up? And did he ever?? There were definitely some characters that intrigued me, had me caring for them. Not to belabor the point, but if I treated each as a short story, I would have rather enjoyed imagining how things turned out for them, instead of waiting/hoping/expecting resolution to come later in the book.
    • 5/5
      I love everything that I have read by Kevin Brockmeier, but I think this is my favorite so far. There are some tremendously beautiful passages here. It would have been easy to make the central plot device--the idea that pain shows up as bright light ("illumination")--cheesy or sentimental, but Brockmeier avoids easy platitudes here. The finest chapter is the fourth, told from the perspective of a somewhat reluctant missionary. Highly, highly recommended -- this is easily one of the best books I've read this year.
    • 3/5
      I feel horribly disloyal to admit I didn’t care for this book after standing in line and having him autograph it. It is not really a novel, rather an interconnected series of short stories… and gloomy, depressing ones at that. (In that way it reminded me of Let the Great World Spin.)

      Brockmeier’s elegant prose really blew me away, his writing talent is incomparable. However, the premise was exhausted very quickly, and he didn’t explore aspects that would have made it more interesting to me.
    • 2/5
      This book lacks a lot. I enjoyed the story being told through short stories as really it wasn't about the people so much as the event. A book like this means it should have some insight into society or the world. I may not have been intelligent enough to derive anything more than life goes on when things change and people still only see what they want to. I liked the first couple of sections but after that it lost any resemblance of a concise plot. From then it added too much too quickly without much explanation. It essentially follows a book of love letters but really the plot skips so much there really is no clear path to an end. An end which left me asking why? why did the book end this way it has no connection to the remainder of the story which was slightly disappointing to say the least.
    • 4/5
      Interwoven short stories following an event where all pain shines with light. A journal of daily love notes written by a husband to his wife follows each character, becoming more worn until it is destroyed. Very nice writing but sometimes a but dense and couldn't finish th self harm story.
    • 3/5
      A beautifully rendered book, although I found it unsatisfying in the end. Perhaps because the primary link between what amounts to a collection of short stories is an object and not a person, the through-line wasn't gratifying enough. The premise--that people might suddenly see one another's pain--failed for me because it didn't result in any moral movement. People perhaps understood one another better as a result, but did not love better. I do appreciate the idea that simple love has large ramifications. I just wish the love that the journal represented was a bit more fully realized.
    • 5/5
      WOW. Powerful, intriguing, gripping - I just finished it, and I think I want to start over and read it again right now.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed the topic of this book more than anything else..the idea is that somehow our wounds-be them cuts, bruises, or cancerous tumors radiate light...some feel it's beautiful and some try to disguise it. The novel explores a few different perspectives of people finding out then living with this oddity, which is what becomes termed "The Illumination" itself. We meet a photographer, an author, a young boy who refuses to speak, an evangelist, and a homeless bookseller as well as all of the people they interact with. The writing is above average but I felt at times he needed to continue with a person or chapter before ending it. I did like the way their lives intersect or I should say some of the aspects of their lives if not themselves specifically.

      When books like this succeed, they do so by virtue of their ease in combining a fantastical like situation in the world with enough reality to make it a believable scenario and offer insights into humanity by look at the way people might (again, realistically) deal with something of this bizarre nature. I think Brockmeier succeeded with this in a number of ways but was lacking in a few areas, especially with the first section. However, I did find the way he carried an aspect of the first section, a journal where a wife has written down every thing her husband revealed he loved about her, into the remainder of the novel. It comes off as very honest and sweet, not shmaltzy as one might think.

      I found this novel to be creative and insightful, well worth reading. I did not, however, find it life changing and absolutely brilliant, which is what I reserve 5/5 stars for. I am probably a harsh critic but not all books are written and read equally. Also, fyi this novel reminded me slightly of Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma, another novel I really enjoyed.


      Some memorable quotes:

      ppg 15-16 "Were we outlived by our pain? How long did it cling to this world?"

      (VIA WHITTAKER CHAMBERS) pg. 43 "The reality cuts across our minds like a wound whose edges crave to heal, but cannot. Thus, one of the great sins, perhaps *the* great sin, is to say: It will heal; it has healed; there is no wound; there is something more important than this wound. There is nothing more important than this wound.


      pg. 127 "Chuck would be an orphan with the sad parts included."

      pg. 150 "...she read the verse printed at the top. 'Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun. Ecclesiastes 11:7.' 'Well, that's fine and all," Felenthia said, 'but you're forgetting Ecclesiastes 11:8: 'If a man lives many years, let him rejoices in them all, but let him remember the days of darkness for they shall be many. All that comes is vanity.'"

      ppg 184-185 "Her signature slowly changed beneath her fingers, rearranging itself, purifying itself, plunge by plunge and bend by bend until it was no longer a set of letters at all but a curious abstract design. It was like the pattern she had once watched a moth draw with its wings in the condensation of her bathroom mirror. She remembered switching off the lights and opening the window so that it would fly away and the, when it did, calling Wallace in to see the strange hieroglyph of swesps and flickers it had left behind.

      'I bet it was trying to communicate with you,' he mused. 'Maybe it was dad, reincarnated as a moth, and the only way he knew how to get in touch with us was to write something with his wings.' He looked more carefully at the mark. 'Except he's illiterate'"

      pg. 188 "Esque-ish. It's a word me and Coop came up with. First esque then ish. Something that reminds you of something that reminds you of something."

      pg. 197 "I love that game where you draw a picture on my back with your finger and I try to guess what it is."

      pg 211 "In Phoenix the streets ran flat and straight, and the jacaranda blossoms made strange ghosts in the slipstreams of the cars..."

      pg 212 "One of the managers gave her a t-shirt with the words FICTIONAL CHARACTER printed on the front."


      pg. 214 "Once there was a country where it rained for most of the year, and everyone resided underground, and no one was quite sure who was dead and who was living. But id did not matter because they were happy. And they were ever. And they were after."

      (VIA FRANZ KAFKA) "It is enough that the arrows fit exactly in the wounds they have made."


      pg. 225 "Sometimes, on the gray soaked days of February and March, when the sun seemed to dissolve into the clouds like an antacid tablet, h would peer down the street and see nothing but a gleaming field of injuries, as if the traumas and diseased which people suffered had become so powerful, so hardy, that they no longer needed their bodies to survive. From the doors of shops and art galleries came strange floating candles of heart pain and arthritis. Stray muscle cramps spilled across the sidewalk like sparks scattering from a bonfire. Neural diseases fluttered in the air like leaves falling through a shaft of light. A great fanning network of leukemia rose out of a taxi and drifted incandescently into an office building, and he watched as it vanished into bricks, a shining angel of cancer."

      pg. 256 "Their thesis-and the Hval equations had already borne this out-was that there was no such thing as photonic degradation, that light was effectively immortal, or at least as immoral as the universe itself.



    • 4/5
      Brockmeier is a master! The major premise is that suddenly people's pains appear as illuminations. Slashes of light appear from a wound, a skeleton glows with cancer. Yet people don't really change, in spite of this miracle. The books strings together the relatively separate stories of several characters based on a diary that touches on their lives. It is a collection of love notes a man wrote to his wife each day and that she recorded. Each of the characters is profoundly effected by the diary. Brockmeier's characters are complex and often outside the norm. His insights are profound. His views of religion here, as in A Brief History of the Dead, are unconventional, imaginative.
    • 5/5
      I picked up an advance copy of this book for $1.00 at a library and it may be the best $1.00 purchase I've made so far. I love the author's elegant style, coupled with a kind of raw sentimentality. I like that the unusual, alternate reality situation present in the book is secondary to the plot. And I love the idea of a book making it's way through many people's hands through a series of random events. Enjoyed the ride on this one very much indeed.
    • 4/5
      Suddenly one day, for no discernible reason, pain generates light. A paper cut, lung cancer, a headache, a broken bone, a bruise hidden under a shirt all glow. Everyone can see everyone else's pain.A couple is in a traffic accident as the illumination is beginning. He has written her a one-line love note every day. She has written them down in a journal. Before she dies of her injuries, she passes the journal to her hospital roommate.The book follows the journal from the hands of one person to the next. Each person has their own pain, although more emotional than physical. Each chapter in the book examines that person's pain, with glimpses of how the journal of love notes illuminates their pain, either adding to it or helping them to heal.Well done, enjoyed it.
    • 2/5
      I am a new reader and to keep me motivated to finish the book, it needs to get interesting from chapter 1. I borrowed this book from library and kept it for more than 2 months and tried to read it but just couldn't get into mood. May be some other time I will come back to it in future. But it was pretty boring in the beginning, may be gets interesting later on...
    • 2/5
      I found this book disjointed with sections ending just when things were getting interesting. These characters are built up and are ready to be fleshed out, but it never happens. I understand that he had an underlying thread through the book, but it lost it's significance after the first few sections and then seemed thrown in just to tie everything together. I would have enjoyed the book more if it has been based on one or two characters.
    • 4/5
      This was a story that sucked me in early - I was enchanted with the writing and the constantly changing perspectives. It is a beautifully written book. I have never heard of Kevin Brockmeier before, but now I will be watching for his other books. This book is filled with pain, humanity and wonder. I fully expected the story to be corny and silly (based on the premise that pain suddenly starts to emit light in this world) but found that Kevin's writing made the potentially silly turn into something believable. I also found that I wanted to know more about the characters you run into - each and every one of them won a place in my heart. I can understand how people want to know more about the "why is this illumination happening" and "what does it mean". Several people here have given it poor markings because it is not explained. Personally, I enjoyed following the thread and peaking into the series of vignettes. I didn't walk away at the end saying "now I understand", but I did close the book feeling like I have experienced something fundamentally human. I felt compassion for the human condition - what more should one want from a story?
    • 3/5
      I loved [The Brief History of the Dead] by this author so was a bit disappointed in this book. I wanted the characters and the "illumination" to come together and mean something by the end, but either I missed the connection completely, or it just didn't happen. I almost gave up on it, but thought if I finished I would finally be able to say "oh, okay, now I get it." I didn't get it.
    • 4/5
      'Tender' is a word that might get thrown around a lot when this book is discussed. Brockmeier shows authorly attentiveness and compassion in developing his characters, but beyond that, the emotional tenor of the whole thing is... bruised. I warn you that this is not a book with a driving narrative arc. The experience is more like being dropped into a recognizable but radically different world -- i.e., one where bodily trauma is visible as illumination -- and puttering about in there, trying to understand what this odd feature of life might mean. Brockmeier's thesis seems to be that even if pain were visible in this way, compassion would continue to be scarce and communicating with other people would remain incredibly difficult.
    • 2/5
      Stopped reading this at 80%. This novel follows six different people and the common thread that binds them: a journal in which a deceased woman recorded the single-sentence love notes her husband wrote her each morning. Simultaneously, the world has undergone a remarkable change. Pain is now directly visible. Wounds glow in silver or golden light. Cancers shine through their victims like beacons. This novel shows great promise in the beginning, particularly in Jason's (the widower of the deceased woman) story. But after a while it seemed that the journal became an unnecessary plot device and actually worked against the other main device, the illumination. After some particularly clunky writing in Nina's story (her supernatural experiences seemed one device too many), I stopped reading.To be fair, this isn't a horrible book. It is a victim of the parts being greater than the sum.
    • 3/5
      This book has an intriguing concept: it looks at life in a world in which pain emits light. The execution of this idea, however, leaves something to be desired. The book follows six people, tied together by a book full of love notes, which passes into each of their hands. They come from all walks of life: a homeless man, a young author, an abused child, a widower. The book is actually much more about the notebook full of love notes than about the illumination of pain. This is one of my most significant criticisms of the book. If everyone's pain began emitting light, the consequences would be significant. No one would be able to hide their physical ailments. Yet, Brockmeier doesn't explore the effects of the illumination, it is merely background for the stories about the love notes. I was never as taken with the the love notes as were the people in the book. The concept of the book of love notes seemed trite: one note written every day in the form of "I love when you..." That sounds like the sort of thing that newlyweds might do, and which would make everyone else gag. The idea of peering into the most intimate details of a person's life is interesting, but the book of "I love yous" just did not do that for me. This book is also heavily laden with human misery. The misery never seemed to be abated; reading it was sometimes like constantly picking a scab off a wound. Ultimately I see this book as an opportunity missed.
    • 4/5
      The idea of physical pain being visible, embodied by light, seems breathtaking to me. In “the Illumination”, author Kevin Brockmeier gives the reader an idea of what the world might be like if suddenly even the types of pain that people bear silently were apparent to everyone.“The Illumination had overturned all the old categories of thought. For a while Ryan had believed, along with the crystal healers and the televangelists, that the light that had come to their injuries would herald a new age of reconciliation and earthly brotherhood. You would think that taking the pain of every human being and making it so starkly visible – every drunken headache and frayed cuticle, every punctured lung and bowel pocked with cancer – would inspire waves of fellow feeling all over the world, or at least ripples of pity…”Exactly what I thought when I started this book. That the phenomenon that Brockmeier creates would lead to a change of the world, of the way people interact with each other. And yet, “…and for a while maybe it had, but now there were children who had come of age knowing nothing else, running to their mothers to have a Band-Aid put on their flickers, asking why is the sky blue? and why does the sun hurt?, and still they grew in their destructiveness, and still they learned whose hurt to assuage and whose to disregard…”I was disappointed that this major element of the book, the title element, seemed to be pushed aside. It is a part of all of the six characters’ stories, but a sideline part in most cases. Where the Illumination seemed like it would have been almost a character itself, it ends up being more of an anecdote.The other major facet of these six stories is their interaction with a journal in which a husband tells his wife in hundreds of different ways how much he loves her. This too, was such a beautiful idea and drew me into the first two stories – those of the characters most closely involved with the book.A woman who ends up with the journal after an accident is captivated by the sentiment of it. “The truth was that she could extract any line from the book, any line at all, and find more kindness in it than she had heard from her husband in their four years of marriage.”And the husband whose wife had created the journal out of the love notes he left for her every day. “There were days when everything seemed to have a beautiful underwater lucidity to it, the banks and the traffic lights, the billboards and parking meters, all of them tilting through their planes until something bent or contorted inside them and they shimmered back together.”I am realizing that this review is not making much sense. It is coming across (at least to me) as an appreciation of some beautiful words and ideas – many of which seem disparate from one another. Which summarizes my feelings about this book. There is such beauty here, such simply and poetically described human emotion…but most of it seems disconnected. Where the possession of the journal might have provided a tighter link between the characters, or if not that, their reaction to this new feature of their world – the ability for all to see pain as light and the changes in their lives and in the world… But “the Illumination” tries to be all of these things and more. It tries to take on so many things, so many issues. The stories are so heartbreaking – but their link to one another becomes more and more tenuous as the book progresses. I lost the thread of the ideas…and started to lose my connection to the characters.So beautiful, like the neglected schoolchild, “This was just what the world was like, he thought. This was how the rest of his life would be. He was the boy who couldn’t learn to defend himself. The boy who stood outside waving his tiny fists around.”This book takes on many things, from the frailty of the human body, to the strength of human love, to how and if God loves the creatures of his creation, to how people might react if they were unable to ignore the pain of other human beings…and so many other things.Taken one by one, these ideas could fill a book. Taken all together, they dilute the magnitude of each until the reader ends almost as the final character does, lost in a world beyond understanding.