I Crawl Through It

Gustav is building an invisible red helicopter that Stanzi can see only on Tuesdays; China swallowed herself and is now inside-out; Lansdale’s hair grows when she lies. As their high school prepares its students for standardized testing, a string of bomb threats seems timed to ensure that Stanzi and her friends will never sit for these exams. Meanwhile, Stanzi and Gustav prepare to leave on his helicopter, possibly to The Place of Arrivals (“there are no departures”). Told primarily from the perspectives of Stanzi, China, and Lansdale, King’s novel blends the magical and the mundane in a deadpan delivery that makes it difficult to tell one from the other. This, of course, is the point of her ambitious and affecting work, which suggests that the personal tragedies and traumas we internalize change the ways we see and operate in the world. The main characters have, the novel reveals, been transformed in distinct ways by tragedy, and the effects of these experiences are evident in the narrative, making the story itself a challenging one to discern. “Somewhere in every mind,” the last pages of the book assert, “is an opening to crawl through.” King’s latest novel demands that readers search for this opening. amy pattee

Gustav is building an invisible red helicopter that Stanzi can see only on Tuesdays; China swallowed herself and is now inside-out; Lansdale's hair grows when she lies. King blends the magical and the mundane in a deadpan delivery that makes it difficult to tell one from the other. This, of course, is the point of her ambitious, affecting work about the traumas we internalize.