This is a novel that left me with mixed feelings. While it undoubtedly showcases the author's creative talent and willingness to experiment with narrative structures, I found myself struggling to fully connect with the story. I honestly can say I haven't read much like it.

I wish I had a physical copy, I think that would have made it easier to engage with the work. Instead I was met with endless screens with blocks of texts. The sentences were both long and amazing - but was this dense! I'm not sure I got everything I was supposed to out of this and I bet that's more of a me issue than the book. I think it has something to do with stories, narrative, and reading.

A creepy box that reminds me of a haunted doll from an 80's horror movie, the box does nothing yet brings pain to everyone it touches. A creative story, well done.

I got to the end (again) and said to myself, 'Okay, have I read this novel now? Am I done with this novel?'

And I can't answer myself.

More than any other novel (possible exceptions: the novels of Volodine and Can Xue), the reading experience I had was like being at a concert, listening to a live performance. It is a contemporary piece of classical music. I'm hearing it for the first time. Sometimes the music grips me. Sometimes I hear repeating themes that I can grab onto and derive meaning from. But there are also intervals where I'm passively listening, and a little zoned out, having my own thoughts that may or may not be inspired by the music coming through my ears. And in the end I've had an artistic experience that swirls inside me and leaves me feeling deeply satisfied, but the experience I had may not be the experience anyone else had, and the experience was not one I could derive definitive semantic meanings from. It was not to be pinned down by words, or summarized in a synopsis, any more than music can be summarized or described as having certain definitive 'meanings.'

I enjoyed it most when I found a sweet spot where I was paying rapt attention to the words, and at the same time was allowing myself to free-associate with their meanings. I even gave myself permission to make up my own meanings, as I wished.

For instance. There is an un-openable box in this novel, and it is very small and nondescript, but, hey, what is inside? Everyone wants to know. It plagues people. They need to know but they can't figure out how to open this box. And this box seemed to fit exactly with how I was plagued to find meaning in the novel, in the words I was reading. I wanted to know exactly what these words were meant to mean. What the heck. I couldn't figure it out because the stories kept leaping and darting forth and then hiding themselves in the grass.

And then I remembered how often I personally imagine words themselves as "boxes." Words-as-boxes fascinates me. Often I find myself thinking about how each word really is just a sound or a string of scribbles, and yet we humans think of words as a kind of container (or box) for a thing we call "meaning," and how weird is that? The way we count on these word-boxes to hold a meaning inside themselves, as they pass from one human ear to the next? It's remarkable. It's not like we can open a word up and see MEANING inside there.

The novel travels swiftly along from one vivid scene to the next--but then upends itself, or shifts in a radical way. It was challenging and I loved it but I can't tell you what it was meant to mean. In this review I've used music as a metaphor for my reading experience, but I could just as well have said it was like abstract art. Like a Pollock painting. Beautiful, enigmatic. Whether this work is a messy accident, or completely controlled in its effect, might be a matter for debate. The point is, I never felt guided toward a certain conclusion. I was invited in, to make my own judgments. And that was a wonderful thing.

I am typically a fan of dense, erudite books, and this may be the most dense and erudite book I've ever read. It is divided into six parts, each of which is an episode in the life of the eponymous box and each of which is told in a different style. As straightforward as that may sound, it takes a good deal of work to tease out who is speaking, what is happening, and why it matters. There are several ways to read this book. One is to engage with Wong's philosophical-political conversation partners: she cites Jane Bennett, Giorgio Agamben, Adorno, Heidegger, and others as sources. Wong's prior work has included attention to Agamben's writings, and I see a continuation of that attention here. Another way to read the book is to engage with Wong's stylistic influences: here she cites Volodine, Sebald, Lispector, Dostoevsky, and others. Many passages felt like a riff on these influences, rather than a homage. For example, Wong might take the style of, say, Sebald, pepper in some Dostoevsky, and then take the passage in a radically different direction. I was frequently in awe of Wong's prowess and command of the material. Thanks to Graywolf Press for publishing such a challenging work and for making a review copy available in advance of publication.

This has an interesting premise. I can see the author's talent on the page. However, I don't think this will find a big audience. It's missing something, but I'm not smart enough to know what. Nonetheless, this has merit, and I look forward to the author's next work.

Thanks very much for the free copy for review!!

Oof. This was a rough one. The only reason I didn't give up about ~10 pages was because I didn't want my NetGalley % complete score to decline.

The book is told in 6 parts and it follows this mythical box that no one can open (or can they? Maybe?). The story is set in a city where it starts snowing one day and doesn't stop.

It starts with a character finding the box that someone dropped in the snow. They return it to the person who dropped it and the person tells them how their .... daughter.... niece .... someone acquired the box. I'll borrow what another Goodreads reviewer said - "The opening sentence alone [was] Proustian in its length". One sentence went on for 2 Kindle pages (and my font isn't that large). A paragraph would go over 3-4 Kindle pages.

When that section finally ended, we jumped to a new narrator in the future who was a curator for an art exhibit. The writing style changed for each narrator, which was done well, other than that I was not a fan of most of them. This section was another slog and felt very pretentious about art and the meaning of art.

The third section was narrated by an older married couple who own a used bookstore and was telling a 3rd party about the box. This section was confusing at first since it takes a little to realize it's 2 narrators and each paragraph denotes a narrator switch. The box was accidentally/on purpose given to someone when they bought something else - a "changeling". This section started out interesting but then it kept going. They would not shut up about the stupid changeling box and the drama about the stupid changeling and I was ready to throw my Kindle across the room if I read "changeling" one more time.

The fourth section was about a woman hiding out in a hotel after being attacked and raped. She was in love with the hotel building. She worked as a bartender for the hotel and met Mr. Six who was trapped at the hotel (remember that the snow is still going non stop). Mr. Six has a brother who worked at a different hotel puzzle room and then went a bit crazy. He told the story of his brother - that was the strongest part of this book and this was the only chapter where I didn't regret picking up this book.

The fifth section brought me back to regret - it's narrated by a man who is a sub-executive manager at a big box store. It felt like I was stuck in Fox News hell; he kept talking about how people who don't contribute in a productive way (as defined by him) to society don't count, including if they're murdered. He hated a little old woman who worked at the store because she would elaborately wrap presents since, obviously, that's a waste of resources.

The last section is told by an older woman who is trying to get on a train to get out of the city. She and a huge amount of older women live in the train station waiting for a train that will never come. This section is told via emails which the women dictate to a person who has all the batteries so she can send emails on behalf of others. This was the second strongest section of the book. We get some closure on some of the stories but also a lot is left up in the air.

And there you have it! I'm sure some people will like this book, but it was not for me. I was expecting something like The Red Violin movie but instead got an alternate reality with the snow and a magic/sinister/?? box. It felt like it was trying to make a grand point or 4 and I wasn't smart enough to appreciate it.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for this Advance Review Copy.

Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s 2nd novel, “The Box”, is sui generis. It is comprised of multiple stories with unique voices, settings, characters and narratives that are barely held together by a thread.

It is never terribly easy to find your footing. “The Box” is shrouded in mystery, at turns murky, dreary, bleak, and misty. Wong doesn’t provide many signposts. We rarely get to put a name or time to a person or place. Characters come and go, it is usually left to the reader to decide how they interrelate, if at all. It is not always clear if a cast member is dead or alive, or simply a figment of the present narrator’s unreliable imagination.

Each chapter is a new treat, a fresh world that demands close attention and re-reading. The segments are endlessly creative, wildly inventive. Stories cross genre, mixing mystery, crime, allegory, folk- and fairytale, performance art, and drug-aided fantasy. There are puzzles, riddles, illusions to solve, often with the barest minimum of guidance or clues.

And what is it that holds all this mania together? “The Box” that enigmatic, formidable, mysterious, scary object that everyone seems to want, no one can seem to find or hold on to, and everyone is pretty sure that opening it would lead to some advanced form of ruin. You may want to open it, but you do not want to see what's inside. And there is snow, lots and lots of snow.

Wong is clearly a powerhouse writer - hyper imaginative, daring, provocative, bold. I for one can’t wait to see what’s next.

Thanks to Graywolf Press and NetGalley for the eARC

I gave up on this book after five pages, which is a first for me. The opening sentence alone, Proustian in its length, was the first red flag, but when I saw that that was how this author chose to write this book — rambling, stream-of-consciousness - I had to demur. If that’s your thing, you’ll like this book. Unfortunately, it isn’t mine.

The Box
A Novel
by Mandy-Suzanne Wong
This book was pretty good. It was slow and had to really tell at times what kept me going. I did finish, and in the end, the 2 stars were 3 .

I appreciate having had an opportunity to read and review this book. The appeal of this particular book was not evident to me, and if I cannot file a generally positive review I prefer simply to advise the publisher to that effect and file no review at all.