I Will Not Come

A creepy beauty suffuses this stark, intense tale from Rykner (The Last Train). Angels plague the unnamed narrator, visiting him by the ones and hundreds, sometimes silently screaming, sometimes sleeping in bed with him and exhaling a cloud of smaller angels from each snore. The apparitions return even when crushed, dismembered, or locked in a cupboard—all strategies the narrator uses in an attempt to rid himself of his visitors. Worse, somehow the angels are just as infuriating when they fail to appear as when they refuse to leave him alone. As the narrator becomes ever more alienated from the larger world (addressing the angels, he says, “Since our first meeting nothing works between me and the world. You fill up my bedroom, and my dreams; outside I see only you”), he writes the angels letters and prepares to leave with them. This psychological progression from aggravation to acceptance takes the place of a traditional plot as Rykner dives deep into the narrator’s mind. The novella’s ephemeral and ever-shifting prose only enhances the strangeness. The result is an unsettling experience that feels difficult to hold on to, but nevertheless leaves a mark. (Dec.)