When Parker Cullen, a disenchanted copywriter, squashes a fly with a copy of The Life of Pi, then walks away from a very lucrative job that he considers meaningless, he catapults himself through various unnerving memories as well as through other times and places meant to enlighten him, in their own ambiguous languages, to the true meaning of Life.
Told in six Acts and five Echoes, Write My Name in Dust sends young Parker Cullen backward and forward through time as he is forced to confront not only personal traumas from his past but also the truths of multiple realities, karma, the true nature of our material reality, and eternity.
The novel’s nontraditional formatting – intentional comma placement, extended pauses signaled by double-spacing, and a ragged right margin – mirrors Parker’s metaphysical journey. These choices invite the reader to experience his disorientation, reflection, and transformation not only through language, but through rhythm, breath, and visual form. The unjustified text resists the neatness of conventional narrative, echoing Parker’s own refusal to conform to a world that demands symmetry where none exists.
In this slender book, The Alchemist meets Cloud Atlas, with a hearty measure of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland thrown in. Silvis accomplishes this with both solemnity and humor. Write My Name in Dust is a unique and spiritually charged novel that explores the porous boundary between the seen and unseen, the remembered and the imagined. It is a meditation on grief, grace, and the quiet miracle of becoming. For readers drawn to stories that illuminate universal truths, Parker Cullen’s journey offers a haunting and redemptive experience.
Once again, Randall Silvis extends the boundaries of American fiction by dealing with a subject few writers will tackle, and he does so with panache. Write My Name in Dust just might be one of the most important books of fiction published in a very long time.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Told in six Acts and five Echoes, Write My Name in Dust sends young Parker Cullen backward and forward through time as he is forced to confront not only personal traumas from his past but also the truths of multiple realities, karma, the true nature of our material reality, and eternity.
The novel’s nontraditional formatting – intentional comma placement, extended pauses signaled by double-spacing, and a ragged right margin – mirrors Parker’s metaphysical journey. These choices invite the reader to experience his disorientation, reflection, and transformation not only through language, but through rhythm, breath, and visual form. The unjustified text resists the neatness of conventional narrative, echoing Parker’s own refusal to conform to a world that demands symmetry where none exists.
In this slender book, The Alchemist meets Cloud Atlas, with a hearty measure of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland thrown in. Silvis accomplishes this with both solemnity and humor. Write My Name in Dust is a unique and spiritually charged novel that explores the porous boundary between the seen and unseen, the remembered and the imagined. It is a meditation on grief, grace, and the quiet miracle of becoming. For readers drawn to stories that illuminate universal truths, Parker Cullen’s journey offers a haunting and redemptive experience.
Once again, Randall Silvis extends the boundaries of American fiction by dealing with a subject few writers will tackle, and he does so with panache. Write My Name in Dust just might be one of the most important books of fiction published in a very long time.
Genre: Literary Fiction
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