Scott O'Connor

Set in 1970s Los Angeles, this novel follows the story of Jess, a artist who creates installations, rooms that visitors can enter. There was a death at one of her installations, a room in the desert along a hiking trail that cuts through an old atomic testing site. She's slowly easing back into art, with a new project, but her past needs to be addressed if she's to move on.

This was a fascinating book, full of the feel of the time and place, touching on identity, art, belonging and the appeal of annihilation. O'Connor moves the story back and forth through time in a way that enhances the story he's telling, as it moves from art galleries in Los Angeles to the dusty edges of Twentynine Palms to a smoky casino floor. I enjoyed the way O'Connor wrote his settings, integrated into the story he was telling and making the story richer with it, without bogging down in detail. I'm happy to have discovered this author and will certainly be hunting down his other books. I'd say more, but this is a book that deserves to be discovered without knowing much about it.… (meer)