Scan barcode
A review by bjr2022
The Report by Jessica Francis Kane
5.0
Like Jessica Francis Kane’s recent book, [b:Rules for Visiting|41880608|Rules for Visiting|Jessica Francis Kane|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1543636791l/41880608._SY75_.jpg|65372790], The Report has a controlled energy that slowed my own. In the beginning I stopped reading after each short chapter, not because I wasn’t interested—on the contrary, I was mesmerized—but because I was sated. I needed to metabolize and not think. But as the tension built, I found myself reading beyond satiation, and somehow I handled it.
The Report is the story of the workings of crowds through a horrific historic event. A very different book than Rules for Visiting, yet it shares a motif: both books are essentially reports. The events play out, they are reported, the facts accrue into a story. And the art of this writing makes them into an experience that is hard to explain. But let me try.
The cover of The Report (designed by Kyle G. Hunter) gives a metaphor for what happened to me as a reader, but for the longest time I didn’t even notice it: The picture is a dark AP photo. Whether it is of the actual incident of people in an underground bomb shelter in the East End of London (Bethnal Green) during WWII doesn’t matter. It is what I envisioned. But so subtle that you don’t even see it unless the cover happens to be tilted up so the light hits it in just the right way is typeface superimposed onto the photo—the report of this incident. That is a perfect depiction of Kane’s style.
There is nothing flashy, no sentences you can quote to illustrate poetic beauty, no obvious “writer’s technique.” Nevertheless, the writing enters your psyche, commanding that you slow down and see and feel every detail; I swear my heartbeat synced with something larger that I surmise directs Kane’s writing. Likewise the elegance—a meticulous elegance to every word and sentence—is so understated you might miss it.
I am obsessed with the responsibility of people in crowds and crowd movements, so I love the content of this book. And I love this writing!
The Report is the story of the workings of crowds through a horrific historic event. A very different book than Rules for Visiting, yet it shares a motif: both books are essentially reports. The events play out, they are reported, the facts accrue into a story. And the art of this writing makes them into an experience that is hard to explain. But let me try.
The cover of The Report (designed by Kyle G. Hunter) gives a metaphor for what happened to me as a reader, but for the longest time I didn’t even notice it: The picture is a dark AP photo. Whether it is of the actual incident of people in an underground bomb shelter in the East End of London (Bethnal Green) during WWII doesn’t matter. It is what I envisioned. But so subtle that you don’t even see it unless the cover happens to be tilted up so the light hits it in just the right way is typeface superimposed onto the photo—the report of this incident. That is a perfect depiction of Kane’s style.
There is nothing flashy, no sentences you can quote to illustrate poetic beauty, no obvious “writer’s technique.” Nevertheless, the writing enters your psyche, commanding that you slow down and see and feel every detail; I swear my heartbeat synced with something larger that I surmise directs Kane’s writing. Likewise the elegance—a meticulous elegance to every word and sentence—is so understated you might miss it.
I am obsessed with the responsibility of people in crowds and crowd movements, so I love the content of this book. And I love this writing!