Beast

Wake, the first book in Welsh author Kingsnorth's (Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays) generation- and genre-spanning trilogy, dizzyingly delved into the mind of lone protagonist "Buccmaster of Holland." Here, in the second book, the narrative bounces around the head of hermetic mystic Edward Buckmaster. Isolated in a dilapidated barn somewhere in England, Buckmaster is on a quest for an awakened state of consciousness. The story constantly shifts in and out of Buckmaster's dream state, blurring his descriptions and accounts of the world around him. When he spots an amorphous beast on one of his daily walks, his initial fear morphs into an obsessive, maniacal hunt for the creature. Kingsnorth's constant use of run-on sentences and dense prose pushes the reader deeper into the frenetic mind of the protagonist, heightening the novel's first-person point of view.