"Rain. The droplets that zoomed in on me from four thousand feet above and landed onto the back of my neck, into my hair, dripped down onto the asphalt and made small puddles that trickled slowly away from me." (97)
The characters are all richly drawn and the book is filled with a funky sense of rhythm that keeps the narrative moving along quickly, between Ennen's obsession with The Cardigans to snippets of music that range from David Bowie to REM. The cultural references are deftly woven into a story that moves quickly even in the midst of Mattias' worst inertia, taking the reader on a journey between dreams and reality. By the end of the book, the change is so prevalent that the final narrator is completely different from the one that opens the book.
Buzz Aldrin himself and his trip through space is as evocative a backdrop to the story as Mattias' hometown of Stavanger, Norway, and the moonlike Faroese Islands, where Mattias takes his own life-changing first steps. This is a lovely, delicately written novel whose power lies in the balance between Mattias' awakening, and his acceptance that there are many kinds of glory, and many different ways to create meaning and leave footprints.
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