I have a reading crisis – it seemed like something that could only happen in a dream. Before, when I saw rain or any chair, I immediately wanted to grab a book and escape reality for a bit, but now I can’t stand rain, chairs, shelves, or book dust, and I can’t even look at books.

But Scorch Atlas didn’t gather dust on the shelf because I carried it in my inner pocket and read it very rarely. Opening an encyclopedia, for example, I would instantly close it and rush down the corridor towards my jacket to read Butler as a form of salvation. There’s nothing special about this book, I’m more than sure that I loved it purely because of some inexplicable crisis.

The Butler’s writing is slow, simple, with no intentions, no one analyzing anything, no extra information, no flirting with the reader at all – everything is meticulous to the last detail.

This is anti-crisis literature. A doubted reality, where people watching TV are not involved in any matters, where water slowly appears in the bedroom, and the father continues to mumble into the phone, and the mother irons clothes. It would seem there is no point in describing this, and even using the standard postmodernist set (like, a disaster with French fries in hand!), but Butler managed to achieve something.

Human despairs wink so sweetly in this text that I even wanted to accidentally tell a psychoanalyst about it.

What are you looking for in life? When you were born, did you think things wouldn’t be so bad? What was your first word, second or third? Please carry this book in your inner pocket and admit that everything is very bad.

A few fantastic quotes from the book:

She knew the house kept burning because she was in it.

The child’s first word had been rot. He’d been staring at his wrecked head in the mirror when he said it.

August 2016