We don't spend or waste time within the cloistered lush garden of Night Letters , we lose, with the narrator, our sense of urgent, scheduled time in the magic circle of rapture R and Dessaix draw around us, even the dream time of R's nightmares, in which he begins by being stalked by a lion in a jungle but ends up riding its back in terrified but sublime exaltation. R, the narrator, is diagnosed with an incurable terminal illness. He decides neither to fight not flee. If this book were a building, it'd be one of those laconically sprawling sybaritic Hollywood mansions, which end up working like a rollercoaster themepark ride through architectural styles. Fortunately for reviewerly tact and critical rigour, these are only metaphors.
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