Too-Brief Chronicle of Judah Lowe

The formal playfulness of Christopher Carter Sanderson's novel is visually apparent at a glance. It consists of two parts, each composed of a series of short fragments. The first part, 79/79/'79, has 79 titled sections of 79 words each, and is set in 1979. The second, @1000thenovel, is set in 1980, and consists of roughly 1000 tweets of 140 characters each; the story also has 140 characters. The book is far more, however, than a formalist game. It is a deeply affecting Bildungsroman in which an adolescent explores many different windows into himself and his emerging world, and where the unity and plurality of experience are vividly encountered together. It's a masterful experiment in the best sense, and a deeply affecting story.