Endpapers — Jonathan Strong

Across a career that has spanned more than fifty years and produced more than a dozen novels, Jonathan Strong has long ruminated on the passing of time in relation to our experiences of youth and of aging. In Endpapers, he brings these themes together, face to face, in the characters of two short novels, Discourses, with Donkey and Playful and Thoughtful. Here, youth and age come into close contact and understanding, even while made to cope with the concerns of a larger world: from global pandemic to local gentrification; from impending political and natural disasters, to ruinous events already well underway. To wit, one character prompts us to wonder “if we’ re coming to think of our pasts as still happening, even when we’ re awake. Maybe decline is a process of mixing up time, past and present, of seeing our lives simultaneously as a whole thing.”