Light Boxes: A Novel

By Shane Jones

A poignant and fantastical first novel by a timeless new literary voice.

With all the elements of a classic fable, vivid descriptions, and a wholly unique style, this idiosyncratic debut introduces a new and exciting voice to readers of such authors as George Saunders, Kurt Vonnegut, and Yann Martel.

In Light Boxes, the inhabitants of one closely-knit town are experiencing perpetual February. It turns out that a god-like spirit who lives in the sky, named February, is punishing the town for flying, and bans flight of all kind, including hot air balloons and even children's kites. It's February who makes the sun nothing but a faint memory, who blankets the ground with snow, who freezes the rivers and the lakes. As endless February continues, children go missing and more and more adults become nearly catatonic with depression. But others find the strength to fight back, waging war on February.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: May 25, 2010
• ISBN: 9781101429594

Shane Jones

Shane Jones is a writer living in upstate New York. His previous novels include: Light Boxes, Daniel Fights a Hurricane, and Crystal Eaters.

Reviews for Light Boxes

[electrascaife · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Welp, that was weird. And mostly in a good way, I think (I'm still deciding, to be honest). So, if I'm correct (and I'm not certain that I am, again, to be honest), February (a sort of god-like figure, but also very human in his hang-ups and frailties), gets upset at a small town because the people living there fly balloons and kites, and so punishes them by never leaving. The townspeople start suffering from what - in the mildest of descriptions - is the most intense and insane form of Seasonal Affective Disorder ever imagined, and children start going missing, and there are two holes in the sky, and a buncha other strange happenings. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it, but I'm not sure if I liked it. But it was definitely interesting and not not-well written.

[mstrust · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A small town has been experiencing February with all it's snow and darkness, for two years. The townspeople are fed up enough to fight back, which makes February even more angry, and he begins stealing the town's children. When Thaddeus' young daughter is taken, he and his wife come apart, and all the schemes to stop February fail. Through his grief, Thaddeus makes a plan to confront and end February at any cost.Highly surreal, this story sometimes has to be pieces together. Normally that would annoy me, but not here, as I was so taken with the original style and strange story.

[dandelionroots · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Neat concept - facing eternal February (dead of winter). Especially given I read it in a remote cabin in upper, upper peninsula Michigan trying to decide if my man and I want to be hermits here for the rest of our days. We're heavily leaning towards "yes, please" despite (because of?) the 8 months of snow. However, this novel (novella, who's he kidding?) was strange - and that's coming from me. Still, appreciated the mood to help ponder my life crossroads.#drunkreview

[jnwelch_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Light Boxes features my favorite cover of the year so far, but unfortunately that was the high point of reading it.It's a fable about . . . well, there's a never-ending February (caused, apparently, by an entity named February) that raises issues of oppression, depression and sunlight deprivation, but eventually seems to be about a writer struggling with obstacles to expressing his creativity. Thaddeus, a balloonist, and his wife and daughter ("the girl of honey and smoke") are at the center of the story; the gentlemen on the book cover are a resistance group calling themselves The Solution who wear bird masks. Children have gone missing. The goal is to defeat February and restore June and July (I know, what about March, April and May?), and bring the children back. The title light boxes fit over the head and seem analogous to the SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) lamps you can get.“They held me and told me everything would be fine, that sadness would rise from our bones and evaporate in sunlight the way morning fog burned off the river in summer. My mother rubbed the kites {tattooed} on my hands and arms and told me to think of my lungs as balloons.I just want to feel safe, I said.”The story is surreal, and not awful, but for me it was too light and self-consciously enigmatic. Some will probably enjoy its oddness. Reportedly Spike Jonze bought the movie rights. It's unfortunate that this book can't be judged by its inviting cover.

[spiritedstardust · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This would have to be one of the most bizarre books I have ever read, and yet, I rather enjoyed it. The way it was written, both visually and with the different POV's kept my interest piqued. I also had no idea at any moment where this story was even going.

[captainsunbeam · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Strange and wonderful

[yougotamber · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This book was not my cup of tea. I'm all for a little fantasy and allegory but this book is one giant dream-like story FILLED to the brim with symbolism and metaphor. Maybe I just didn't fully understand what the Author was trying to say but I'm not quite sure if I want to. I couldn't even follow the characters or even get a sense of attachment to the story at all. The Author clearly knows how to write but I can't appreciate a story that gives nothing. Maybe this is why I'm not a poetry fan.

[proustitute_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Poetic, prescient, almost mythic in its simplicity. Unlike any book I've ever read: Jones is a genius for mood, allegory, poetic prose, and dissident voices.

[diovival · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I loathe winter. The gray days. The snow. The cold. Mostly, I hate being cold. My whole body tenses up the minute I step out of the house. There's no relief until I can return to the warmth of the indoors and patiently wait for the feeling to return to my extremities. I bide my time and eagerly await the coming of spring. But what if spring never came? What if we were left with the horror of perpetual February? This is what the inhabits of the unnamed town in the book are facing. Soon, the community has to deal with not only the harsh winter weather, but the banishment of flight and an increasing number of missing children.

It's an odd little book. Reminded me a bit of the movie Stranger Than Fiction. The story is told from a multitude of perspectives and the author plays around with the font here and there. A fast read. Maybe I zipped through this too quickly? I found it difficult to connect with the characters. I felt too far removed from the events that occurred in the novel. Pure coincidence that I read this book about the destructive force of February in the month of February. I really wanted to like this one but it fell flat for me.

[h_d_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a quirky and strange little book. I absolutely loved everything about it and this is despite the oddly sad little feeling I felt as I made my way through the story. It's the kind of book that makes you tap into the maudlin February feelings as well as taking a flight of imagination. A great reading experience.

[earthforms · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Yeah I read it again already. Even better in the real book.

[thetwods · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A fable? A prose poem? A novella? Certainly not a novel. But then, this is but a label.In a strange, unspecified town, winter never ends. It seems the god February has decided that it shall always be February. Along with this decree, he has banned all forms of flight, resulting in the destruction of hot air balloons, the shredding of paper airplanes, the removal of books or pages of books that reference flight, even the genocide of the bird population. The townspeople have grown tired of this and have decided to revolt. February retaliates by kidnapping the children.All in all, a fanciful, though quite dark at times, fairy tale. The strange typography, reminiscent of Mark Danielewski, detracts from the story. In Danielewski's work, the play of the text on the page illustrates the story, the sensations the characters experience. Here it seems more of a gimmick.A quick read, depending on your bent, you may or may not want to read it in the depths of winter.

[akikorye · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Light Boxes is about a town experiencing a perpetual winter and an end to flight (birds, balloons) at the hand of February.

I enjoyed this book. It was really sweet, gentle, soothing even. Although I did at one time get confused with February.

Some of the typography decisions really worked and added to the feel of the novel, while others I could have done without. I liked more of the atypical typography than I disliked, however. The chapters start in various ways and sometimes it's first person while others there is a narrator, which I didn't feel added to the story in any other way than to make it different.

It's a quick read and it's definitely different than the majority of books out there, so if you're looking to shake up your reading habits, you can't go wrong with this novel.

[narwhaltortellini · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Why I read it: Randomly plucked from the library. It was short. It concerned hot air balloons, something that have always struck me as buoyant whimsical things well suited to fantasy/fairy tales.Pros: Inventive, original, weird. Prose sometimes more poetry-like than normal exposition. Didn't know it was going to be so allegorical, but liked how that grew into it a lot.Cons: More odd than anything else (“anything else” being things like “fun, sad, happy, engaging”). More weird than fairy tale-like. Unconventional structure interesting but didn't particularly add anything for me. Hot air balloons not as involved as I thought. Low on whimsy.Conclusion: One of those reads where my enjoyment comes mostly from marveling at the author's imagination than enjoying the work for what it is exactly. It'd make a really unnerving and very cool looking movie, probably directed by Terry Gilliam. Wouldn't want to spend long on something like this, but considering how short it was, it was nice for a change of pace. I wish I could read things with worlds and images this unique and inventive that also had the kinds of characters/prose style that engage me.

[plenilune · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's called a novel, I suppose because it has to be classified as something for the sake of marketing, but it really defies genre. It is poetry, flash fiction, a fable, a fairy tale for grown-ups, like Grimm's tales before they were sanitized for children. The language is gorgeous, the images are vivid and clearly wrought, the story is engrossing. I must admit, I'm not entirely sure what the message is: something to do with freedom, but also I couldn't help but read a critique on both capitalism (as societal control) and religion (particularly Christianity) in it; I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, but it is lovely, exquisite and worth a closer reading in the future.

[lailahanna · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Almost like he (Jones) written with no effort. Yet we can feel him as we go through each page. This is a kind of contemporary literature youth nowadays should start learn to appreciate. An ultimate game of words, design and plot.

[heikem_13 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

 This is a puzzling little book, but it is also quite, quite wonderful. Reading it I felt it was more poetry than novel - maybe a poetic novel? Or a prosaic poem? Whatever - it is amazing. A very strange story though - February has taken over the town and is stealing the children. After 300 days of darkness and snow the citizens are declaring war. Holes in the sky, a girl that smells of honey and smoke, the Solution - men in bird-masks - the ban on all things flying and the constant snow, it makes indeed for strange reading, but the prose is so beautifully crafted and the story very absorbing that soon you are drawn into the township and hope and feel and suffer with the people within it. I read it in an hour, but still, it's worth having. A little gem in my library.

[blakefraina · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Based on the Edward Gorey-esque cover illustration, the back cover copy and it’s slender profile, I thought Shane Jones’s Light Boxes was going to be a quirky, whimsical allegory. But this is no children’s tale. As a matter of fact, despite its modest length, it’s packed with so many agonizing moments, I found it difficult to get through quickly. This strange fantasia tells the story of a town being punished by an unseen God-like figure for their love of flying (kites, balloons, even the local birds), which is surely a metaphor for the freedom and joy inherent in the creative urge. The despot sentences them to live eternally in the bleak month that happens to share his name - February. As the month’s frigid days drag on into the hundreds, children begin to disappear or turn up dead and several disastrous attempts at revolt only deepen the townsfolk’s suffering and leave them in state of black despair. February itself symbolizes the soul-sucking effects of depression on creativity.The publisher employs some rather precious gimmickry to get the author’s point across; most notably changes in typeface and font size to indicate the various different points of view, tones of voice or the relative significance of a particular passage. While I personally found this effective and appealing, other readers might be annoyed by it. Most of the characters are mere sketches, but Jones’s prose is evocative enough that I was able to build on them in my imagination as if I was fleshing out a hazy dream. Which is really what this novel most resembles. A gorgeously atmospheric dream that one has to surrender to in order to enjoy its full impact.While the material is pretty surreal, I still felt emotionally invested in the struggles of these people and was worn out by their repeated failure to bring back Spring, so I was surprised by the almost childlike simplicity to their long-awaited salvation. Jones is perhaps suggesting that we are ultimately the architects of our own happiness. Much like Dorothy’s escape from Oz, the power to overcome the bleakest sorrow has been inside us all along.

[detailmuse · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

From the epigraph:The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February. -- Joseph Wood KrutchLight Boxes opens as hot-air balloonist Thaddeus Lowe, his wife Selah and young daughter Bianca, and their whole close-knit town are enjoying the last evenings of pleasant weather before February arrives. But then February does descend, and worse than ever -- ordering the destruction of all forms and creatures of flight and refusing to vacate and make way for spring -- eventually prompting the town to organize an underground resistance.It seems an allegory of seasonal affective disorder, and I loved it in the beginning -- intriguing, with poetic imagery and emotion, for example from Thaddeus:“I closed my eyes. I imagined Selah and Bianca in a canoe so narrow they had to lie down with their arms folded on their stomachs, their heads at opposite ends, their toes touching. I dreamed two miniature suns. I set one each upon their foreheads. I dreamed a waterfall and a calm lake of my arms below to catch them.”I also like its experimental structure (multiple narrators; odd fonts and formatting; chapters comprised of single sentences, partial pages, and lists), which is sometimes used to marvelous effect (and sometimes grows tiresome). I liked the story less as hundreds of days of February pass and things turn from mysterious to dystopian and war-ish -- but that’s what really happens in February, yes? And that's what fans of dystopian fiction may like the most.(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.)

[gonzobrarian · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Light Boxes is a peculiar book. By all accounts it can be easily misidentified as a children's book, given its fanciful illustrated cover as well as overly short chapters, containing an often poetic yet simplified tone. Careful reading suggests otherwise, for it better resembles the cold, lonely and desperate circumstances found by those with firsthand knowledge of the cruelest month, February. Indeed, for well within the work the reader is confronted with death by winter; kidnappings, hangings, throats stuffed full of snow and death by icy lichen. Quite unsettling, really, for the novella symbolizes not only with harshness of winter and death, but also the dissolution it causes, among families and community.Jones well portrays the mystery, tenderness and frailty of a family's desperation to escape an incessant cloud-filled sky in favor of a warm blue, most suited to the flight of their balloons. While central character Thaddeus is somewhat one-dimensional in his love for his daughter, Jones introduces several interesting characters to confuse the reader as to whether there is even a villain in this story. The shadowy Solution, a conglomerate of those willing to aid in the destruction of February, are always on the periphery and equally cryptic as the shaggy February itself. The psychology of humanity is the resonating beacon here; Jones writes of humans who are quick to act, but of those above who are too slow to be forced into their own movement. The stagnation of winter, February, affects everyone.Jones has written a very ethereal, cryptic and melancholy novella in Light Boxes. The surrealism is not always fully realized when addressing the development of the characters, especially being such a brief work, but it is artfully crafted and extremely thoughtful.