Light Boxes

A small town is besieged by “February.” The winter month, yes, but also a powerful, godlike being of the same name who won’t allow the sun to return. Something else is going on: Ever since February came, flight has been banned, and children have gone missing.

At the center is a balloonist named Thaddeus, whose daughter has disappeared and whose wife drowned herself in the marsh. The fever-dream fable winding its way through Jones’s debut novel takes many detours, but the town’s fruitless, ambitious battle against winter propels it. They attempt to wipe out the snow by pouring troughs of hot water downhill, but February counters with a prodigious moss crop that covers houses and chokes animals. When a horde of children living in underground tunnels presents a war plan, February’s wife tricks Thaddeus into believing it’s spring.

We expect a vibrant imagination in our authors, but charm is an underrated quality, and Jones has both in spades. Light Boxes twists through a waking nightmare, where violence slashes through characters but vines and flowers emerge in blood’s stead. The macabre feels more mischievous than menacing, which allows Jones to occasionally overindulge his precious side, though never enough to make us wince. Tempted though we were to read the endless winter as strict metaphor, Jones is a little too freewheeling to let anything stick. Instead, we end up with a sweet, surreal battle in the snow.

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