intelligent

John Darnielle’s second book is about the space between two separate worlds – the one we live in and the one we think we live in. It’s a place where aspirations are born, where imagination develops . . . also where great loneliness lives.

We follow Sean Philips, who has been in an accident, a bad one, and he’s tracing his way backwards to his younger self to make sense out of it. Sean also follows himself forward from the accident, describing how he designs a game he titles Trace Italian for which players mail him their move and he replies with the next turn. Trace Italian advances