Thrift Store Puzzles by John Boden

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of the byproducts of devoting ourselves to the literary disciplines of reading and writing is that, in these oscillating orbits, we often graze the elliptical circuit of an author whose fictive fundamentals resonate with a frightening familiarity—a kindred echo.

John Boden’s Thrift Store Puzzles (Dead Sky Publishing) is an exercise in both dexterity and discipline. It’s a tale centered on relationships: the triangular dynamics of growth, nourishment, and inevitable decline.

Thrift Store Puzzles is a succinct read (a novella clocking in at 140 pages), but it captures a number of hallmarks that make Boden such a formidable writer: narrow-eyed, noir-shaded prose contrasted by detours into tender tones of contemplation. But Boden does monstrous just fine, capturing gruesome, creature descriptions with wince-inducing deftness.

Like several of the story’s healthcare-field characters, Boden reminds us that caregivers (often to exhaustive degrees) place their human charges above all else.

Boden’s approach here in Thrift Store Puzzles is that of a literary caregiver.

Not unlike the inherent attentiveness extended by healthcare workers, Boden places emphasis on this relational reciprocity; and as we encounter an aging character whose reflective recitations propel the narrative, it becomes clear that he’s asking his audience to not only trust this character’s recollections and horrifying revelations, but to also ask: Even we’re skeptical that all the “thrift store” pieces are intact, wouldn’t we extend patience and empathy to help assemble a person’s narrative puzzle?

Our modern existence has come to rely on self-suited technology, and less and less on human interaction; but we should remain suspicious of this trick of convenience, because we need each other, often more than we suspect. And one day, many of us will need someone to help us slide our own puzzle pieces together.

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