Tortoise

Author: James Lewelling

Publisher: Calamari Press (2008)

Tortoise enacts a kind of prodigal son story gone bad. Having received a mysterious telephone call summoning him home, the protagonist flies half-way around the world to hear what he believes will be the final words of his "accursed progenitor" (as Beckett would have it). Somewhat in the manner of W. G. Sebald, the narrative is driven simultaneously by the journey and the protagonist's increasingly urgent ruminations on the facts of his life and current predicament.

"Lewelling is a patient, crafty writer, building up his story slowly, as if by accidental accretion, the minutia of human experience laid bare with a pleasing revelatory exactitude. Absurd, impossible conclusions are frequent, but only in denouement do events themselves become fully unreal, and by the time they do, reality seems no less strange." 

–Matt Everett