There’s something uneasily evocative about a character defined by their absence. In the novel I’m working on now, I’m trying to summon up one of the central characters via the narratives of others, and it’s not an easy task. When this is done well, it can be breathtaking: consider Michael Kimball’s Dear Everybody, in which the assemblage of the novel turns the (offscreen) character into as vividly rendered a figure as the book’s ostensible protagonist. The books discussed this week make […]