Throwback Thursday – The History of Luminous Motion by Scott Bradfield

Throwback Thursday is a weekly feature to highlight books from the past. It can honestly be anything as long as its not a book that is a current release. Maybe its a book that I read and reviewed and just want to highlight, maybe its a book I read before I started reviewing or maybe its a book that has a sequel coming out soon or maybe its a backlist book from my TBR that I just want to revisit and decide if I will make the time to read. Pretty much, anything goes. 

If you have a backlist book you want to feature in someway, please feel free to join in! 

This week’s choice is The History of Luminous Motion by Scott Bradfield. I read this in college at a time where I was not reading much and definitely way before I even thought about reviewing. Since its been so long, I have been curious if it would hold up as well on a re-read, but at the time I absolutely loved it. It’s a book that has stuck with me for over 20 years, so to say it was an emotional and impressive read is an understatement. Also, I’m not sure what it says about me that my roommate bought this for me because she thought of me when she read the description (because it has a very disturbed 8 year old as the protagonist), but I am glad she did.

Phillip is eight years old. He experiences material reality as a hindrance, so he tries to stay in an inner realm composed only of abstract concepts like gravity, motion, sound and light. He lives with Mom, who stays alone in her bedroom. Once he killed a man with gleaming tools from a hardware store. He has a friend with whom he does burglary and drugs and seances. Then Dad comes to stay, and Phillip descends to a subterranean otherworld where he makes contact with “dead black things, obloid and featureless, like faintly disembodied laundry hampers.” A sad, beautiful book.

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Have you read this one? Let me know if you agree it deserves more attention!