Angelwings and Finerthings

Paul Jessup?s Angelwings & Finerthings begins on ?the island of Edan?, where the beautiful are persecuted by ?Glass Walkers?, figures on the order of the Sandmen from Logan?s Run. Catherine (one of the beautiful) is caught by the Glass Walkers and sent to a sort of concentration camp where she endures the most extreme acts of brutality. À la Lautréamont, Jessup relishes the creation of intensely horrific imagery (?And that was when the flies came, by the hundreds, invisible in the dark but biting and stinging nonetheless, crawling under her flesh like worms do to a corpse...?). This part of the book is largely an allegory for the way the world destroys innocence?that was my interpretation of it anyhow. Most of the rest of the book (with the exception of a few oblique flashbacks) is an attempt to recapture the bliss of childhood, as Catherine and friends drive around America. The style here gets highly surrealistic at times, but not André Breton surrealistic, more like Lewis Carroll.... Where Angelwings is successful is in its exuberance as an intensely written work of art. Jessup is clearly endowed with talent, and on just about every page he too shows flashes of genius.