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Phantasmic essence3/20/2023 ![]() The book's first half is strangely evocative, but the second half, consisting of a slow drip of details that explain how Kit ended up in a hospital and the consequences of Nathan's death, is alternately opaque and repetitive. Meanwhile, newly voluptuous classmate Sarah decides to make a move on Kit, and he later feels conflicted about having gone "parking" with her, which leads in part to his taking a bizarre and disastrous joyride in a stolen truck. Marcus takes an interest and they meet on weekends to talk about existentialism and go over his poems, but Kit tires of hearing he will have a promising future if he just applies himself. His best friend, Eddie Lichtman, urges Kit to stop acting like a "tragic figure," which has come to define his personality, along with the poetry he's begun writing. As the summer draws to a close, Kit broods about his ex-girlfriend Anna, who just wants to be friends. A year earlier, rising senior Kit Biddle's cousin Nathan was murdered by Nathan's reverend father as a "direct order" from God, and years before that his father died in an accident. In Lewis's ambitious but uneven coming-of-age debut, a teenager casts about for meaning in 1950s Alabama. Beautifully written, profoundly moving, and resplendent with characters destined to remain with you long after the last page is turned, The Essence of Nathan Biddle is unforgettable. ![]() and absurdity.Īn intelligent, clever, and captivating tale, The Essence of Nathan Biddle soars in the spaces that exist between despair and hope, darkness and light, love and loss. Readers will empathize-and celebrate-as the darkness lifts and Kit comes to terms with the necessity of engagement with life’s pain, pleasure. In this exquisite bildungsroman, calamity leads to fresh perspectives and new perceptions: it focuses Kit’s mind and forces him to confront the issues that plague him. But when his irrational decision to steal a maintenance truck and speed aimlessly down the highway ends in a horrific accident and months of both physical and emotional convalescence, Kit is forced to examine his perceptions of his life and his version of reality. ![]() When the brilliant, perhaps phantasmic, Anna dismisses him, Kit quickly spirals into despair and self-destruction. The tragedy haunting his family follows Kit like a dark and foreboding cloud, exacerbating his already compulsive struggle with existential questions about the meaning of his life. Kit’s angst is compounded by a unique psychological burden he is forced to carry: his intelligent but unstable Uncle Nat has committed an unspeakable act on what, according to the Uncle’s deranged account, were direct orders from God. Protagonist Kit Biddle is a rising prep school senior who finds himself tangled in a web of spiritual quandaries and intellectual absurdities. ![]()
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