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With this third novel Mark Haber has proven that he is one of our best authors. The voice in this Bernhardian style novel is so compelling it’s hard to pause the narrative, so I read it in one sitting.

The protagonist has just lost his beloved wife to a terrible disease, but feels that this will give him time to finally complete his life’s work-a book long essay on Montaigne. Initially, I felt a kinship with the narrator as he bemoans the constant interruptions in his life, the chirping of his detested smartphone being the main distraction. But as the book progresses we see the biggest hindrance to time for reading, writing, and slow thinking are his own discursive thoughts, among them his obsession with coffee.

Haber claims Bernard as an influence and this novel does feature a community college humanities professor losing his grip on life as he obsesses about his now dead wife’s death and illness, goes down rabbit holes researching peripheral characters in the life of Montaigne, ponders Jewishness after the Holocaust and what art can and cannot say about the horrors of death camps, but the breadth of knowledge about art and artists, philosophy, literature, history, the observations on the human condition, the humor, and, uniquely, the finer points of house music aka underground techno music, are wholly original to Mark Haber.

I was initially worried that 234 pages of this style was too long, but the pace and cohesive flow of this wide ranging meditation is nothing short of brilliant.

Highly recommended