It was hard for me to put Fog and Car down harder for me to stop thinking about. His gift for ingenious, startling permutations of language and plot make for a memorable, mesmerizing read. In this astonishing, assured first novel Eugene Lim intertwines elegant poetics with a fantastic plot, rife with love, mystery, malaise, and the supernatural. The narrative’s shifting styles finally find an equilibrium in a troubled and subversive escapism. Eventually this symbolic dialectic-which examines a tension in the novel’s tradition, the engineered ride of some narratives versus the associative cloud of others-collapses. An old friend, ignorant himself of his action’s consequences, enables Fog and Car to move through and haunt each other’s lives.Įventually Fog and Car chase this friend, who is disguised to both of them, and the momentum of that chase pushes the two characters out of their static life-cages towards different unreal conclusions.įog & Car begins with the alternating voices and perspectives of a Mr Fog and a Ms Car.
His ex, Sarah Car, has moved to New York City with the ambition of skipping over any mourning for their marriage. Jim Fog is marooned in a small Midwest town shortly after his divorce, succumbing to purposelessness and nostalgia. Hear Eugene Lim read from Fog & Car here. New Coffee House Press Edition: Summer 2024 Finalist in Blatt Book’s 2007 Novel of Novels Contest
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