It is early 2017 in New York City, Donald Trump is President, and Solomon Fields, a young Jewish journalist-turned-advertising hack, finds himself disillusioned by the hollowness and conformity of American life and language. Once brimming with dreams and ideals instilled in him by his eternally bohemian grandmother, a survivor of the Holocaust who has dedicated her life to passion and pleasure, Sol now finds the senseless jargon he produces at work seeping into all aspects of the world around him-and most disturbingly, into the art that his beloved grandmother taught him to revere.
A personal tragedy drives Sol to leave New York and accept an invitation to The Coded Garden, an artists' colony on a tropical island, whose mysterious patron, Sebastian Light, seems to offer the very escape Sol desperately needs. But the longer he remains in the Garden, the more Light comes to resemble Trump himself, and the games he plays with Sol become more dangerous. Slowly lines begin to blur-between reality and performance, sincerity and manipulation, art and life, beauty and emptiness-until Sol finds that he must question everything: his past, his convictions, and his very sanity.
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Not long after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States of America and all the fires he lit were just beginning to burn, Charity-Joy Strickler dragged me to yet another concrete-floored room where I was expected to conduct myself in such a manner as would not embarrass her. 1
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(@EuropaEditions, 17 May 2022, ebook, 288 pages, #ARC from the publisher)
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I enjoyed some aspects of The Long Corner but not everything about the book worked for me and I struggled to get through some of it. The book is split into three parts and I preferred part 2 and 3. I have to admit part 1 left me cold and I found it over-written and rambling at times. It was very dry and droll which I didn't like. I enjoyed the rest of the book much better when Sol arrives at The Coded Garden and meets a range of dodgy, nefarious characters. The lacklustre start spoiled the book a little for me.
