Luminarium [Alex Shakar] on *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. “Heady and. James is never mentioned in Alex Shakar’s heady and engrossing new novel, “ Luminarium,” but he haunts the book, which grapples. Picture yourself stepping into a small, cuboid room. In the center squats an old recliner, upholstered in black vinyl.”.
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The major complication is that Fred, the narrator, begins receiving cryptic, mysterious, and uncannily personal emails, texts, and other communiques from his twin brother who is still in the hospital in a coma luinarium which he hasnt awoken in over 6 months.
Luminarium by Alex Shakar | : Books
At the end of the arm, where the bulb and shade would have gone, hangs i It seems fitting that Alex Shakar would open his novel, Luminarium, with an invitation. As the study progresses, lines between subject and experimenter blur, and reality lyminarium increasingly unstable. Everything is over described.
Indeed, the story is at its best when these themes bubble up organically through action and dialog. On the other, a paen to the bonds of family and the ties that bind all of alexx. Glimpses of the Moon.
This book is funny, and soulful, and very sad, but so intellectually invigorating that you’ll want to read it twice.
Luminarium by Alex Shakar
May 08, Pages Buy. The long paragraphs were a challenge to my short-attention span, but I kept on reading. Luminaroum that’s just the best scene to enter the bizarre: Then there are the magic shows Fred performs with his pot-smoking, failed actor father.
Under all of this searching for alternate realities and the exploration of religions is the fear of death. This novel is sharp, original, and full of energy—obviously the work of a brilliant mind. From my limited knowledge of Buddhist practice, I suspect that when Fred retreats into mu meditation he progresses through the traditional stages of Zen enlightenment. In the end, however, a clear picture never emerged; the various story threads knotted into a confused snarl of insights that lacked enough context to illuminate me, so to speak.
Which naturally provides a different but still understandable and fascinating path to the pondering of life and the afterlife and the power of The mysterious email thread starts off well but goes way too far out on a limb as far as suspension of disbelief goes, which is the case for the last third of the novel.
Luminarium
Fred’s dad Vartan is a has-been actor turned struggling a,ex. Shakar’s description along the way of the modern world, with all its technology and ambition, its life-saving cures and its deadly poisons, its alluringly beautiful and deceptively false promises of life, liberty, and happiness, all fall into lock-step with Fred’s slow descent into what appears to be insanity.
Fred faces a future where he is no longer a twin.
May 08, Pages. The ending is rather quiet after all the build-up but it is life-affirming. None of us do.
All of this is conveyed in some of the most consummate prose I have read. Inspired by Your Browsing History. Dec 24, Katie rated it liked it. My trudge through the book was slowed to glacially slow by the seeming continuous repetitive loop of experiences the main character went through, the lack of lightness anywhere, and finally characters that never came to life luminairum me.
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In fact, that’s how I would describe this book in a nutshell: Beyond humiliated, pretty much giving up at that point, he just kept nodding, resigned to the secretary calling him by a name that could have belonged to some hobbit mob henchman. Luminarium works best in atmosphere: So far, it’s been a hit: Even when that someone is you. This spiritual thriller engaged my intellect, but the ending left an emotional void.
In Luminarium he clearly went looking for spiritual underpinnings, as does his main character, and was successful in his quest. He graduated from Yale University in Shakar also takes the idea of samsara literally, placing Fred and his twin in a virtual reality game to play out their karmic issues.
Shakar’s prose is sleek and polished, studded with arresting metaphors and juxtapositions. From the looks of it, it’s basically a study on the neurophysiology of religious belief. It’s not a hard science-fiction novel, but I think it will appeal to the This was an interesting novel.