Books by and for independent women

Light Boxes by Shane Jones

It’s been published in the UK for less than a week, but there’s already been quite a bit of hubbub around Shane Jone‘s debut novel Light Boxes. Originally published last year with a print run of just 600 copies by Baltimore-based Publishing Genius Press, it became a cult classic after rave reviews from sites like Bookslut, with Where the Wild Things Are director Spike Jonze snapping up the film rights and Jones soon signing to the infamously powerful William Morris Agency. The rights have now been sold to publishing houses across Europe, so it’s probably safe to say you can expect to hear Shane Jones’ name for some time to come.

A cinematic and ethereal prose-poetry fairytale, Light Boxes is the tale of Thaddeus Lowe, his wife Selah and their daughter Bianca, who live in a town where it has been February for more than three hundred days. Persecuted by a personified February living on the outskirts of town with a ‘girl who smells of honey and smoke,’ when all forms of flight are banned and children start being kidnapped from their beds in the middle of the night, the townspeople wage a war against winter, led by a sinister group named The Solution who wear long coats, top hats and bird masks.

A richly-textured and multi-layered narrative, Jones’ greatest talent is his beautiful way with language and visual imagery. Although the symbolism used often involves child-like imagery such as teacups, balloons and kites, the dark and melancholic side of Light Boxes is what gives it its power and ensures that the story and fantastical, dreamlike setting and characters resonate with the reader long after the last page. After reading it in one sitting, I found myself captivated.

A book this unique will never be everyone’s cup of mint tea, and some cynics have complained about the neat and tidy resolution at the end of the book, whilst others claim that the layout of the text and changing font sizes are alienating and potentially confusing for readers. Elsewhere, comparisons with The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia, The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw and Richard Brautigan‘s In Watermelon Sugar abound around the internet, but the cynics seem outnumbered  by the hordes of admirers besotted by Light Boxes.

It was published by the Hamish Hamilton imprint of Penguin last week, and you can buy it from Amazon for £7.49. And, thanks to the generous folks from Hamish Hamilton, we have three copies of Light Boxes to give away! To be in with a chance to win, all you need to do is: either comment on this post, email us with the subject line ‘Light Boxes,’ or like the Facebook status. We’ll pick a winner on Friday, so get your entries in before then for a chance to win.

Post by Jane Bradley