It dawned on me what this book reminds me of: Heronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. I’ve always loved that piece because it fascinates, there is so much going on at once that one cannot take it all in in a single viewing.
O’Brien’s novel has three stories going on, one nested within another like the Russian wooden dolls. They belong together, but the thread is tenuous and the reader must seek to fit them together just so. One must look and wonder about one scene, and before it’s completely understood in itself, we are pulled out and dropped into another. The birth of the reader perhaps?
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology