Every new novel by Maksik is so different from his previous efforts that one's admiration grows for an author with such diverse skills and a determination not to repeat himself. Following novels which explored the life of the heart through teacher/student forbidden relationships in Paris and another set in Greece in Africa about a young Liberian woman's travails in a violent world, his new book, set around Seattle in the 1990s, is a carefully etched tale of mental illness and the darkness that seizes the human heart which closely follows the struggles of Joe March whose life shatters when he is gripped by bipolar disorder, followed by the terrible event of his mother killing a man. Delicately nuanced, this mini saga of an America that lays just behind the headlines is full of emotions, lacerating but true to life in that it is about a recognisable form of everyday life and digs up feelings we all have inevitably had at times.
