Here They Come, by Yannick Murphy
Not long ago, on a rainy night, my car's back window was smashed in with a brick. Up and down the street, little cubes of safety glass lay glittering like a sky full of ersatz diamonds. It was brutal, unexpected and surprisingly beautiful - much like Yannick Murphy's novel Here They Come, published by McSweeney's earlier in the year.
Discussing this book with a friend, I was surprised to find that he agreed with the Amazon reviewer who wrote:
I would argue that one's appreciation of Here They Come hinges on the slight difference between an Entwicklungsroman and a Bildungsroman. While Murphy's novel deals with the narrator's development and maturation, her growth is implicitly demonstrated rather than overtly emphasized. To explicitly show the arcs of plot and character development would be to shatter the lucid immediacy of the story and undermine the narrative voice.
Murphy's narration perfectly conveys the tone of adolescence without being a literal transcription of adolescent speech. She sounds like what we thought we sounded like, when we were thirteen and putting words down in our diaries. Both lyrical and deadpan, its freshness often scraped down to rawness, it captures the pathos of childhood's self-centered perspicacity.
In Here They Come, Murphy has done the near-impossible with deceptive alacrity. She has deftly manipulated the conventional elements of plot and storytelling in a way that is completely true to the narrator's way of seeing the world. Rather than lacking craftsmanship, this book is so precisely engineered that its structural supports are nearly invisible to the casual glance. In this sense, she has written a very subversive novel.
Here They Come is a brilliant, remarkable book, and I recommend it highly.
Well, now. Murphy's gift for detailed and powerful imagery is undeniable. Her sentences and paragraphs are complex and deeply affecting. The plot - or seeming lack thereof - appears to be the point at which opinions of this book diverge."Yannick Murphy seems to lack the patience and craftmanship it takes to be a good novelist. Her writing is self-gratifying with no real respect for the craft."
I would argue that one's appreciation of Here They Come hinges on the slight difference between an Entwicklungsroman and a Bildungsroman. While Murphy's novel deals with the narrator's development and maturation, her growth is implicitly demonstrated rather than overtly emphasized. To explicitly show the arcs of plot and character development would be to shatter the lucid immediacy of the story and undermine the narrative voice.
Murphy's narration perfectly conveys the tone of adolescence without being a literal transcription of adolescent speech. She sounds like what we thought we sounded like, when we were thirteen and putting words down in our diaries. Both lyrical and deadpan, its freshness often scraped down to rawness, it captures the pathos of childhood's self-centered perspicacity.
In Here They Come, Murphy has done the near-impossible with deceptive alacrity. She has deftly manipulated the conventional elements of plot and storytelling in a way that is completely true to the narrator's way of seeing the world. Rather than lacking craftsmanship, this book is so precisely engineered that its structural supports are nearly invisible to the casual glance. In this sense, she has written a very subversive novel.
Here They Come is a brilliant, remarkable book, and I recommend it highly.
