Theo of Golden
Allen Levi, 2023
Contemporary fiction Literary fiction
A gentle, aphoristic novel about an old man, small-town kindness, memory, and the choice to let sadness become wisdom.
Feels like wonder and melancholy. About memory, time and morality.
A page from the book
Why we trap a torn ticket stub under glass.
How is it, Theo wondered, that a piece of paper - a letter, a photo, a ticket stub, a sketch, a painting - is suddenly transformed by placing it in four bits of wood beneath a pane of glass? What does it mean that we place permanent boundaries around transient moments? What does it say of humankind that we take such trouble to freeze specific memories, that we devote such energy to capturing and preserving the “minute particulars” of our lives? Allen Levi.Allen Levi is a singer-songwriter as well as a novelist; his fiction has the compact, spoken cadence of a lyric.
Books that feel like this
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
Jonas Jonasson, 2009
Also memory and morality.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- What is Theo of Golden like?
- Feels like wonder and melancholy. About memory, time and morality.
- What should I read after Theo of Golden?
- If you liked Theo of Golden, try The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (Jonas Jonasson), A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles) and The Perfect Divorce (Jeneva Rose).
A taste of the feed
Death as sleep sounds restful until you try to think it through.
Imagine that, death was just like being asleep. Would he have time to think before it was all over? And would he have time to think that he had thought it? But wait, how much do you have to think before you have finished thinking?
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared · Jonas Jonasson
Money can be earned back; the other thing can't.
I respect time more than anything as it’s our most valuable resource. Money comes and goes, but time only goes. Not a lot of people realize that. When you give someone your time, what you’re really giving them is a piece of you, and that’s why you have to be careful with it.
The Perfect Divorce · Jeneva Rose
The panic that arrives just after the point of no return.
It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you’ve made, and there’s this panic because you don’t know yet the scale of disaster you’ve left yourself open to.
Never Let Me Go · Kazuo Ishiguro
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