A Walking Shadow

by Gary Bolick

Overview

JONAS BELLIGNHAM AYRE is always looking out of his own eyes, as though seated in the last row of a movie theatre. On the screen? The outside world and the part he plays in interacting with it. Uprooted from his native South, Jonas finds himself working in Las Vegas. A college friend introduces him to his father who owns a real estate business. J.B. quickly learns the business and opens us his own clothing manufacturing plant. Great success and all its trappings soon follow.

J.B.’s success and life are short-circuited when he is involved in a psychologically horrific traffic accident. Physically untouched, but suffering from a psychological split, Jonas sells the company, divorces his wife and moves to the desert. There his shadow splits off of him, becoming a foil for his every thought and action; and an obnoxious foil, at that.

In the desert J.B. begins to translate the text of an eighth century alchemist, Jabir. The ancient text becomes a mirror held up to his own life. His time in the desert becomes an actual experiment. In Las Vegas, where he retreats from the summer heat, he sees a psychologist attempting to resolve the detachment he feels from the world.

One night, late, back in the desert, a burlap sack is thrown from a passing train. Untying it, Jonas finds a young, nearly dead, Mexican woman, Eva.

In nursing Eva back to health, reuniting her with her daughter, J.B. finds a measure of peace and redemption.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940155858850
Publisher:	Unsolicited Press
Publication date:	10/25/2018
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	250 KB

About the Author

Born and raised in Winston-Salem/Clemmons, NC. Lived and studied in Paris for a year before graduating from Wake Forest. It was at Wake I had the honor of studying under and being mentored by Germaine Bree. Amazing woman and scholar. Writing A WALKING SHADOW was a true labor of love. When I was living in Paris, I was able to track down a copy of the first ten treatises of Jabir's "Book of Sixty-Nine Treatises". Finally, it seemed, studying French was paying off. No English translation existed of Jabir's work. I could read antiquity's greatest alchemist in his own words. When Jonas' shadow splits off and begins to both comfort and mock him it was, as Carl Jung speaks of in "Psychology and Alchemy," the conscious and unconscious attempting to find balance. Of course a few random events, a couple of love interests and the ever-present vulture flying overhead, helped out.

Editorial Reviews

here is an exceptionally fine line between intense introspection and prolonged navel-gazing. That line is a tightrope author Bolick walks precariously in this tale of one man’s unyielding search for enlightenment. Bolick’s protagonist desperately wants to come to grips with personal answers to profound questions such as why are we here, what does consciousness really mean, and can we ever truly understand one another or, for that matter, ourselves. The author encases these soul-searching queries in a story that dispenses potential answers much like a time-release capsule—a few now, a bit later, and eventually perhaps enough to ward off congenital melancholia.

Joe Kilgore

From the Publisher

2018-12-21
A catastrophic car accident compels a man to walk away from his life and confront an existential crisis in this debut novel. Jonas Bellingham Ayre—almost everyone calls him J.B.—has all the trappings of a happy life: a remarkable education, a beautiful wife, and a very successful business. But after he survives a terrifying car crash that should have killed him—he walks away unscathed—he leaves his wife, sells his business, and retreats into the desolation of the desert to wrestle with a revelation: The cosmos is entirely indifferent to his existence. While secluded in a dilapidated shack, he sees a woman, Eva, encased in a potato sack, casually tossed from a moving train, and discovers her own pitiable plight—her monstrous mother sold her to a drug cartel to be subjected to unspeakable abuse. As a result, she was separated from her own child, Tela. J.B. and Eva become locked in a kind of dual destiny—he joins her in the search for Tela, and she helps him chasten the pain of alienation he's suffered since he was a young boy. J.B. discusses his "absence-of-life experience" with his therapist, Malcom Lowenstein, in various sessions. Lowenstein anxiously worries that J.B. suffers from a serious and worsening condition, possibly multiple personalities. But the therapist holds off committing J.B. to a safe, inpatient facility—as his mentor strenuously advises—because he just seems endlessly fascinated with his patient. J.B. offers him a deal—he wants six more weeks in the desert and then Lowenstein can "send in the cavalry"—a compromise the therapist inexplicably accepts. Bolick's premise is intriguing and his aims are ambitiously impressive—to pull off a dramatically poignant story constructed around profound philosophical themes. But the themes are hardly new, nor are their formulations here—one could find a fresher and more searching presentation of them in a variety of French existentialist novels of the 1940s. But more importantly, the author's writing is punishingly ponderous, especially the dialogue: "When we're making love, we're still separate, but at least we're suspended—together—for a while, close, real close, but will we ever cross over together? Find each other in there? Not gonna happen, doc. Not on my watch. How 'bout yours?" The plot, too, is deeply implausible. Even after J.B. channels an ancient alchemist and introduces his shadow, named Sparky—he has a speaking part in the tale—Lowenstein still refrains from having him committed. The central difficulty of the book isn't that it traverses well-traveled philosophical territory, but that its belabored intellectualism bars any emotional access to the characters' lives. To make matters worse, Bolick often includes cinematography instructions—fade in, fade out, for example—which only serve to further yank readers out of the drama, another barrier to immersion. Ultimately, the novel is not satisfying on philosophical or literary grounds. And in case readers don't understand the story's effortful symbolism, Lowenstein's clinical notes explain it all to them. An uneven philosophical tale.

Kirkus Reviews