drkottke 's review for:

Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke

2.0

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Please note, my feelings about this book are out of step with the critical and popular consensus. First, the image on the cover (which appears in the narrative) isn't possible. There's no spot inside Detroit Metro airport that yields a view of the Detroit skyline, and to get this particular arrangement of buildings, one has to be across the river in Windsor. Minor complaint? Yeah, maybe, but given that the book is so sincerely grounded in documentary and a strong sense of place - particularly abandoned places - with architecturally precise renderings of settlements and post-human ruins, taking poetic license for creative geography on the cover feels a violation. There's a cool emotional distancing throughout the book that's emphasized by the precise linework that unfortunately strays toward the clipart-esque. The narrator is frequently emotionally detached, from people, from herself, from the abandoned places she documents. There are some stirring epiphanies about humanity's relationship with its own creations as it seeks an illusory sense of permanence in the world in the final pages that are haiku-like in their profundity. To get there, though, takes patience with some cold, emotionally opaque memoir that is not my cup of tea.