Glowrushes

Starred review from October 15, 2023
In a Turkey both real and imagined, a doting father commissions a renowned painter to show his ailing son the world. Sickened by fresh air, soil, and sunlight, young Madurer is confined to his three white-walled rooms, books and pictures his only window to the world beyond. The painter Sakumat pours his lifeblood into his work, each landscape and invention like an act of holy creation. Together, they devise a great work that will become Madurer's world--mountains and villages, sea and sky, and a meadow full of flowers and glowrushes that light up at night, ever changing and growing even as the light of Madurer's life fades away. Translated from the original Italian, half this story's beauty lies in the tenderness of the love that grows between its three central characters, familial and familiar, like a careworn blanket. The other half comes from the language. Each word is chosen and placed with reverent care, creating a rich, textured landscape that, like a prayer, or Sakumat's paintings, seems like the stuff of dreams given physical form. There's something utterly spellbinding about how gently, and inexorably, the story flows on toward a conclusion that's both heartbreaking and hopeful. Character descriptions, fittingly, are left largely to the imagination, though both father and son have dark hair. An elegy, timeless and entrancing. (Fiction. 9-13)

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