![]() ![]() Only the reader is privy to his thoughts. He thinks: “we were warring, in our constant, low-grade way, and when it’s like that between people, the line that shall not be crossed is never clear.” Even with, or perhaps especially with, one of his oldest friends, who is equally unable to share his feelings, Ant cannot express his grief and sense of loss. For Ant, his grief and loss have caused him to shut himself off from the world. And yet he does reach out to Ant, and Ant is unable to reciprocate. #White out conditions fullHe’s gruff and full of bluster, often resorting to violence and childish behavior. It’s an interesting complication of Vince’s character: he is, in many ways, a male character we’ve seen before. Again and again, Vince tries to get Ant to open up but Ant refuses. How’s things with you?’” Later, when Ant mentions his ex-girlfriend Wendy and Vince asks who she is, Ant waves off the question. ‘Feels nice, riding in this behemoth again. When Vince asks him how he’s been, Ant doesn’t really respond: “I shrug-at him, and at everything I could tell him, at all I could say in response, my hoard of thoughts and tidings and urges that want a voice, a breath. Having not seen each other for five years, Ant throws his bag into the trunk of the car and tells Vince he needs a haircut. The dialogue illuminates the distance between what is said and what is thought. ‘Why don’t you just drive and keep your eyes on the road?’ ‘Does this tape deck do anything other than mangle tapes? You got an aux cord or something in back? I can plug in the Discman.’ The dialogue is often not tagged, further emphasizing its combativeness. They dance like boxers around important subjects, their speech serving as punches, back and forth, back and forth. Toxic masculinity defines their relationship: two men, reverting to child-like ways, unable to express how they truly feel. The two behave like always-fighting brothers, a hum of anger under their love. Vince and Ant quickly fall back into their old patterns, bantering on the road trip. The present moment of the book is short but always moving forward-it takes place over twenty-four hours, a tight container that not only allows for the journey to the funeral and back but also provides room for Ant’s interiority. But because Ant’s grief has isolated him from the world, we learn more about him through his memories than we do from his thoughts or actions. The novel, written in first person and present tense, is deeply embedded in Ant’s interiority, spiraling from the present moment to memory to thought, granting the reader deeper and deeper knowledge of Ant as the book progresses. Ant has as a result shut himself off from his childhood-and, indeed, from much of the world-but it takes Ray’s death-so horrific that it made the national news-to bring him back, pulling him into his past. His mother died from cancer, his father disappeared from his life, and his girlfriend left him and was then killed. ![]() As Ant and Vince travel to the funeral and back, Shah carefully unpacks each of the ways that those whom Ant has loved-grandparents, parents, girlfriend-are no longer with him. Vince picks up Ant at the airport and together they drive north to the funeral in unpredictable March weather.įrom the opening, Ant sees himself as alone and displaced in the world, his dark humor covering his hurt: “With the last of my loved ones now gone, I find funerals kind of fun,” he says. ![]() Ray, the younger cousin of Ant’s friend Vince who often tagged along with the two older boys, was mauled to death by a local dog. After being away for several years, Antioch-known as Ant-returns home to the Midwest, for the funeral of Ray, a childhood friend. Whiteout Conditions, Tariq Shah’s slim but powerful debut novel, focuses on grief, loss, and friendship in lyrical and stunning prose. ![]()
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