Horrifying in a compulsively readable way, Negative Space charts the erratic and disturbing movements of a group of teens living in a small New Hampshire town. For these kids life in this town is a stultifying existence, as evidenced by the copious amount of drugs they consume. They take a lot of drugs, and I mean a lot of drugs. Popping pills first thing in the morning, smoking weed all day long, winding down in the evening with some shrooms or acid…and then there is WHORL. This book transcends sexuality by presenting these teens as having seemingly no preference in who they love, are with, and are themselves (there is even a character who is often referred to as 'she' and 'he,' making it hard for the reader to know exactly who or what this person identifies as). Chen, Mark; Shannon, Chelsea (2020). Photography: A 21st Century Practice. Oxon: Routledge. p.188. ISBN 978-1-000-18524-9. Negative Space is a whole different beast. While I eventually was able to appreciate what Amydalatropolis did, by reframing 4chan posts as literary art, and revealing the absolute barbarism which lies at the "heart of darkness" which is the free, wild web, and that Yeager is perhaps the first novelist to ever UNDERSTAND the Internet and express this in a text worth reading--I adore Negative Space, because it does something wildly different exploration of a wildly different phenomena. Considering and improving the balance between negative space and positive space in a composition is considered by many to enhance the design. This basic, but often overlooked, principle of design gives the eye a "place to rest," increasing the appeal of a composition through subtle means.

There are few books that capture so gracefully and so truthfully the way in which art and life weave and bleed together. Negative Space is a beautiful, profound, unique book.’ A Note for MA: Space/Time in the Garden of Ryoan-Ji - Iimura". Mfj-online.org . Retrieved 2009-11-11. Although it’s not practical to give a design education in a blog post, if you know something about negative space I bet you’ll look at books and the way they are designed very differently. And these are all lessons you can use if you decide to design your own book. So here goes: 5 Ways Negative Space Affects Book Design Overall I think this is just downright the most effective “kids on bikes” small town atmosphere I’ve ever encountered in a horror novel, ESPECIALLY because nothing is sugar coated and as I said in my original review that this dying do-nothing town and all the freaks, stoners, eccentrics and junkies that inhabit it are so tangentially familiar to me. Near the end Jill muses about how state lines are arbitrary, that it’s all really the same thing copy and pasted forever, and jfc if that doesn’t speak volumes about capitalism itself and the cycle the youth of today grow up within, the one where we are all aware of as the abyss of the future awaits us like a void in space and can do nothing but fight against this entropy through some kind of broad radical action, whether personal, empathetic and based on identity (Lu) or self-centered, desiring to escape that entropy all together through trying to achieve some spiritual apotheosis (Tyler), etc. I’ll reiterate that I still think this is probably the best fictional portrayal of misspent alienated youth I have ever seen, which is impressive especially considering how this was written in 2020 and those tropes have long been utilized throughout the decades, centuries; Yeager’s just feels so distinctly generational and urgent in a way I’ve never seen it done beforeI never did try salvia, although if I’d discovered it earlier I probably would have. At any rate, in the novel WHORL is a drug that opens a portal to another realm of existence. This portal can facilitate access to supernatural powers. It’s unclear whether it is the user’s intention or simply their innate nature that determines whether the power will be used for good or evil, but regardless we see examples of both play out in the book. Yeager takes his time in fully explicating the significance of WHORL and the particulars of its use (and abuse), which is good because this uncertainty in the reader’s mind is what fuels the narrative engine. It’s difficult to imagine writing a concise plot summary for this book. Because, though it is plenty plot-heavy, I feel like trying to describe it would do a disservice to what I think may be one of the most emotionally evocative novels I’ve read in the past year. When she learns of her husband's infidelity, she starts wringing her hands and notices for the first time that this is not only something that happens in books

I want to preface this by saying that I hold no judgement towards anyone who enjoys this book. This post comes purely from an inquisitive standpoint, not a malicious one.This nightmarish zone made accessible by WHORL remains ominously ambiguous throughout Negative Space, and its influence on the town is left spookily undefined: is it the cause of the decades-long suicide epidemic in Kinsfield? Is someone using these indeterminate entities as a means of exacting revenge? Or, is this realm a hellish form of purgatory, a spectral catchment full of wandering souls once belonging to the suicidal townsfolk? While the story obliquely gestures to each of these interpretations in kind, with particular attention being paid to whether Tyler is the conjurer or conduit of these unspeakable forces, the real strength of the novel is its refusal to settle on any one answer, instead harnessing vagueness and obscurity as a fertile source of dread and terror. She is uncommonly good at writing about being embodied. When she learns of her husband’s infidelity, she starts wringing her hands and notices for the first time that this is not only something that happens in books. As if to shout down cliches about finding one’s voice: “After my marriage breaks, I go to the top of a mountain and scream. The wind whips the sound away, disappearing it out of my mouth before it has even hit the air. I scream in the empty house. I scream at the empty house. I yell in the bath.” Testing her voice There is no doubt that the writings of H. P. Lovecraft have enjoyed a significant renaissance of late. In both literary academia and mainstream culture, his idiosyncratic oeuvre has now been properly recognised for codifying and popularising a unique form of horror commonly known as ‘The Weird’. In an essay written by Lovecraft himself, aptly titled ‘Notes on Writing Weird Fiction’, he deftly outlines the specifics of this distinct sub-genre, explaining how his own particular brand of horror stories evoke a disturbing and fearful sense of the unknown by violently exposing his characters to an insidious alterity that exists beyond the bounds of human reason and perception.

It’s a hard book to read – due to the subject matter and the stylistic and structural choices, it’s hard to understand and often even harder to sympathize with the actions of some characters. Yet you don’t want the novel to end, like a fever dream that feels more Real than real. Wish I could give this one more than 5 stars. Not just my favorite thing I've read this year, but probably one of my favorite things I've read ever? As soon as I finished it I wanted to reset my progress and start all over?? I never feel that way. Negative Space is one of the truly great, smart horror novels I’ve had the pleasure to read in my thirty-nine laps around the sun. It was both an emotional journey and a skin-crawling experience. It shows obvious influence from Blake Butler’s monolith 300 000 000, but it is also indebted to Clive Barker and H.P Lovecraft. This novel will make your feel ugly and vulnerable in the best possible way, like someone stared into your soul and looked at every little imperfection.Arditi, Aries; Cho, Jianna (2007). "Letter case and text legibility in normal and low vision". Vision Research. 47 (19): 2449–2505. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2007.06.010. PMC 2016788. PMID 17675131. The use of negative space in art may be analogous to silence in music, but only when it is juxtaposed with adjacent musical ideas. As such, there is a difference between inert and active silences in music, where the latter is more closely analogous to negative space in art. In general I don’t think I’ve like…ever read a horror novel that’s as burned into the fabric of my brain as this one tbh?? The unique writing vivifies every incident and I don’t think there was a single scene from my first reading that I forgot, but everything on reread STILL took me by surprise and many of it hit even harder than last time. Most of my memories even with books I love are in the abstract or in pivotal scenes but every scene here is stamped into my brain to a very rare extent only summoned by the most vivid writing and even when describing something inconsequential, the writing is memorable

Prokhorov, Nikita (15 March 2013). Alain Nicolas in Ambigrams revealed. New Riders. ISBN 978-0-13-308646-1 . Retrieved 2021-08-07.When you’re learning how to add values to create form, the idea of intentionally leaving areas blank and untouched may seem troublesome. But I’ve learned that with great art, not everything has to follow a set rule or be rendered entirely realistically in a drawing. Negative Space – the title invokes drawing lessons from her mother – is partly about allowing her writing to become more personal: or better, more physical. Criticism and autobiography start to merge, and Leach finds correlatives for her predicament, or instruction on how to get beyond it, in a wide array of art and literature. I don't think I will be sleeping soundly tonight. Make way for the new generation - B.R. Yeager is at the frontlines, and hopefully, if I can muster the talent and courage to make my voice and the voice of the people with less privilege and similar anxieties to me heard, I'll be right there with him.