This book is a memento of pain, a chronicle of loss…a refreshed perspective on what it means to be free.’ Tyler is a Virgil-like, shamanic figure that guides us deeper and deeper into the WHORL-abusing, self-hanging, 4chan-posting underworld of Kinsfiled, Massachusets. “Everyone knew Tyler was going to die young,” Ahmir says at some point, and this pervasive sense of doom, of inevitable heartbreaking end infects the entire novel and every character that comes into touch with Tyler. Yet none of them shy away from this doom, just like they don’t shy away from the overwhelming feelings of love and dread that feel them, or their sexuality and fragmented personalities and identities. They are not likable people, but that doesn’t invalidate their stories. Cristín Leach is The Sunday Times Ireland’s longest serving art critic. She has written about art for the paper since 2003. She is a writer and broadcaster, whose short fiction and personal essays have been published in Winter Papers and on RTE Radio 1 (Keywords 2020). Her art writing has also appeared in Irish Arts Review, on RTE.ie, in artist catalogues, and other publications. In 2018, she was shortlisted for Critic of the Year in the Newsbrands Ireland Journalism Awards. In 2021, she was Writer in Residence for the Hearsay International Audio Arts Festival and was elected President of the Irish branch of AICA (Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art). When you’re learning how to add values to create form, the idea of intentionally leaving areas blank and untouched may seem troublesome. But I’ve learned that with great art, not everything has to follow a set rule or be rendered entirely realistically in a drawing. Negative Space is a whole different beast. While I eventually was able to appreciate what Amydalatropolis did, by reframing 4chan posts as literary art, and revealing the absolute barbarism which lies at the "heart of darkness" which is the free, wild web, and that Yeager is perhaps the first novelist to ever UNDERSTAND the Internet and express this in a text worth reading--I adore Negative Space, because it does something wildly different exploration of a wildly different phenomena.

Prokhorov, Nikita (15 March 2013). Alain Nicolas in Ambigrams revealed. New Riders. ISBN 978-0-13-308646-1 . Retrieved 2021-08-07. As Lovecraft himself explains, all weird stories are characterised by “some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis.” Thus, the terror of Lovecraft’s weird fiction is premised on an external, alien reality (or ‘The Outside’ as it is sometimes called) infiltrating or encroaching upon the known terrestrial-empirical world of humanity, therein causing unfathomable horrors and mind-shattering anomalies to occur within the time-space continuum. Indeed, the metaphysical implication that throbs consistently within all his stories, regardless of character or plot, is the inability of human consciousness to fully grasp the true and essentially monstrous nature of reality itself. To quote the much-cited passage which opens Lovecraft’s most famous short story The Call of CthulhuThe use of negative space in art may be analogous to silence in music, but only when it is juxtaposed with adjacent musical ideas. As such, there is a difference between inert and active silences in music, where the latter is more closely analogous to negative space in art. There are few books that capture so gracefully and so truthfully the way in which art and life weave and bleed together. Negative Space is a beautiful, profound, unique book.’ Learn everything you need to know about book cover design, book formatting, typesetting, and design principles to more effectively navigate the self-publishing industry. It will claw its gravitational grasp, pull you into a dark fever dream, and it won't let go. It will crawl into your thoughts and wrap them in bleeding hallucinations. It's been over a week since I finished reading this book, and I can still hear it whispering like a night wind that blows free through my skull. We go exploring with three main characters – Ahmir, Jill and Lu (who is sometimes Lou, sometimes a he or a she – and nothing about is explained, and neither it should be explained). They barrage the reader with their reality at the intensity of a cover bombing. The trio goes to the same school and is bound with the fourth character – Tyler. Jill and Tyler Ahmir and Tyler are friends, Jill dates Tyler, despite her parents’ displeasure, and Lu is forced to know Tyler because her other two friends know him.

Firstly, it really feels like nothing happens for the entirety of the book. All the kids do for the entire length of the novel is take drugs, be shitty to each other, take part in rituals and occasionally abuse animals. Then they die. There is no overarching plot and there is no build up to anything. I really found it hard to care about anyone because all of the main characters (except Tyler to an extent) was really boring.

I don't think I will be sleeping soundly tonight. Make way for the new generation - B.R. Yeager is at the frontlines, and hopefully, if I can muster the talent and courage to make my voice and the voice of the people with less privilege and similar anxieties to me heard, I'll be right there with him. So much of the book underlines the fact that people are made up of all we consume, feel, and think. Friends and relationships come and go, we fragment ourselves and pass out the pieces to those we get close to; there’s a constant exchange of wet chunks from each other, both physically and spiritually. Time and circumstance can separate, but the indentations on our psyches and marks on our bodies are often permanent. I don't think I've ever read anything that SO accurately expressed my inner mental state all the time? This book feels like it was pulled straight from my own brain.