He has a journalistic eye for detail, snapping word-images in lieu of photos and placing scene after scene in front of the reader with aplomb.
Williams writes with exacting precision-mapping the interior emotional journey of his narrator as carefully as he describes his geographical progress through France.
This tension resulting from being camera-less clings to the narrative, as we watch the narrator struggle to engage with his surroundings-taking as many steps backward as forward in this endeavor-as he moves from place to place. An erstwhile photographer, the unnamed narrator feels alternately liberated and hamstrung by the absence of his Leica-the camera offering a valid excuse to be present at a remove while also preventing true engagement in any given experience. Taking cues in part from the work of Georges Perec, this novel is simultaneously a celebration of French culture as seen through the Francophilic eyes of a post-collegiate young man, and a keen look into the headspace of a person far from home, isolated by way of a language barrier he is only partly able to breach and yearning for human connections beyond what he often feels capable of. The prose found within is equally well crafted, with the book’s design complementing it nicely. The book as an object is striking to behold: three perfect-bound A4-sized volumes smartly dressed in the colors of the French flag and packaged in a screenprinted and letterpressed case-all designed and produced by Tim Hopkins of London’s The Half Pint Press. A tripartite journey-both geographical and emotional-Daniel Williams’s debut novel The Edge of the Object follows the highs and lows of a young Englishman living in France for a period of six months.
0 kommentar(er)
