"Distant Light" by Antonio Moresco (Archipelago books, 2016)

Translated by Richard Dixon. 153 square pages. A man's living in an abandoned village. He drives over 20 km when he needs provisions. Alone so much with nature he asks himself and living things many questions -

• "But why are you always so angry" he asks a wasp. "But what sort of life do you have?" he asks toads (p.27-28). They don't answer, but swallows do. They agree they're crazy.
• "What disaster! What horror!", I say, moving away so as not to look. "To be in a hailstorm at the exact moment of flowering! After all that vast strange chemical activity in the bulbs underground [] The mechanical process of blooming can no longer be slowed down, can no longer be stopped. and then, all of a sudden, the lash of cold freezing rain, all those pieces of ice that suddenly bear down from the sky against those white calyxes that had only just been invented ... (p.50)
• Who knows if they know where [swallows] are going? Whether at least one of them knows and is able to tell the others, or whether they decide on the route once they're on their way, in those first immense circles full of myriads of tiny brains (p.78)

He muses -

• "I walk and walk so as to feel this movement of bones and muscles that continues onward in the dark. And nerves and tendons and connective tissues and vertebrae. And the brain matter that sends the signals that trigger this movement which seems involuntary to me, as though it were happening somewhere else" (p.107).
• "Plants go on dying and being reborn, dying again, everything inside the same circle of created pain" (p.147)

Beyond a gorge on a wooded ridge he sees a light each night. A UFO? He discovers a boy living alone there. About halfway through the book the boy says he's not alive, that he goes to night-school. The man checks the boy's story, discovering that several boys leave the unlit village school late at night - "How sad it is for dead children like that when they leave dark schools, at night, alone! But then ... isn't it just as sad for those alive?" (p.100). The boy says that he killed himself.

The man begins to visit the boy frequently. The boy tells him that he's repairing a nearly house for him. One night, back in his house, the man hears knocking. He going downstairs, opens the door. A man (I thought it would be the boy) asks "What's happened?" The reply is "I've killed myself".

Other reviews

• Cory Johnston (It dwells on esoteric questions, but also provides unsettling insight into the darkest depths of the human condition, as well as a uniquely complex rendering of its polarity. There are secrets to be uncovered here, it seems to whisper, if only you can pluck them from the shadows.)
• Terri Lewis (Moresco’s magic is that he is able, through words, to bring the reader to the ineffable. Anyone willing to absorb the language will find many hints about what lies beneath the surface, and thus be prepared for the last chapter, when the tenor of the writing changes and the mystery is revealed. The final unveiling is completely satisfying, even though it is likely that each reader will have a different, personal understanding of the events. Most will put down the book haunted by its beauty and full of lingering questions about the progression of life toward death and our place in the world around us.)
• Stiliana Milkova
• Kirkus Reviews (Though the ending is appropriately inscrutable, it is somewhat disappointing in its tampered uncertainty. Despite this muteness, the imagery and language glow throughout.)