What Are We Reading?: The Gone World, by Tom Sweterlitsch

Updated: Dec 16, 2019

Rating:

5/5 Possible Timelines

Give me the short version:

An infinity of possible futures to scour for clues, existing only when observed, and distorting around the lens of the eye.

Shannon must probe these possible outcomes to solve a murder.

But at the end of them the Terminus, the mysterious and baffling end of all humanity, is drawing nearer.

I was breathless and wide-eyed for every moment of this book. The mournful beauty of Shannon's perspective grounds the story through unconventional pacing and high concepts are made accessible by simple human emotion and consequence.

By degrees the heart of Gone World coyly reveals itself to the reader as noir, a mystery, science fiction, literary fiction, a thriller; as easily as one might slide into an alternate destiny. Definitely recommended to those who like their mind to work a bit, but no barrier to those who don't.

Favourite bit:

"Already the future receded from her, like images half retrieved from dreams or like her memories were waves breaking against the shores of the real, washing away."