THE OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE

An examination of grief and viruses through the AIDS crisis and the internet age.

In the early 1990s, McCalden, a multidisciplinary artist, lost both her parents to “AIDS-related complications.” Her grandmother, Nivia, raised her, removing her parents’ few belongings from their home. The author’s life has been marked by their absence and what little she knows about them. This book is a reckoning with grief and the unknown, but it’s equally about the virus, which McCalden calls her “closest living relative.” Interspersed with her story and the history of the disease is a fascinating line of research on the early internet era, connected thematically by computer “viruses” and its overlapping timeline with the AIDS crisis. The mid-1990s, writes the author, represent a gap in the archive, when paper filing was quickly becoming obsolete and the internet was still new. As a result, only the oldest, most fragile documents were preserved in the digital realm, leaving the ephemera of daily life to memory or imagination. In short vignettes varying widely in topics and tone, McCalden encourages readers to see her book as an album about grief. “Every fragment is like a track on a record, a picture in a yearbook; they build on top of one another until, at the end, they form an experience,” she writes. While often captivating, the fragmented style eventually wears thin and often fails to lead to greater insights. The parceling of information is reminiscent of the internet, but, like the internet, the information is diluted from its source. Some moments are truly translucent in their brilliance—e.g., McCalden’s claim that “observation is a relationship”—but readers may seek more depth. Nonetheless, there’s plenty to appreciate in the strength of the prose and the unexpected connections.

Fans of experimental form will find much to admire here.