Charles Blackstone. The Week You Weren't Here.(Brief Article)(Book Review)

Charles Blackstone. The Week You Weren't Here. Flame, 2004. 326 pp. Paper: 8.00 [pounds sterling].

To launch his first novel, The Week You Weren't Here, Charles Blackstone utilizes a Franz Kafka epigraph: "'It amuses me,' said K., 'only because it gives me some insight into the ridiculous tangle that may under certain circumstances determine a person's life.'" In the novel the person's life is Hunter Flanagan's; the ridiculous tangle, a web of love interests and a forthcoming move to graduate school (after a leisurely stroll through college). Interestingly enough, the Kafka epigraph informs both the novel's strengths and its weaknesses. The Week You Weren't Here is a commendable collage of centrifugal amusements. Yet if insight is important, as it is to Kafka, the novel falls short since the amusements do not lead to a ...