Garth Risk Hallberg’s sequel to his 2015’s City on Fire, is a prodigious, tedious narrative packed with sheer excellence on every page and an overwhelming attention to the minutest details. The book appears to be having an inner conflict as it pursues its deeply flawed but self-aware main characters through its stunning linguistic corridors, offering a robust structure with imaginative uses of visual aids such as chat bubbles, photos and diverse typography. Expected to be sleek and smooth, the book frustratingly pauses every so often and scrutinises every minor traffic signal, tracklist, and every animated street corner it encounters. Its portrayal as an exploration into the realm of the Great American Novel feels off-course as Hallberg seems to have taken a wrong turn somewhere.
However, on scraping the surface of this over-attention to details, The Second Coming unfolds as the narrative of two dynamic, fractured personalities. Our first character, Jolie, is an advanced yet pessimistic teenager from New York who’s recently been having troubles with underage alcohol consumption and mediocre academic performance. She accidentally drops her mobile on a subway track and barely escapes death while retrieving it. Is this near-death experience a subtle plea for assistance? The other key character, Ethan—her father—believes so. A well-meaning but irresolute inhabitant at a Californian rehabilitation centre, Ethan perceives himself as the only potential saviour of his daughter he deserted three years ago. He hence reappears on the east coast, confronting the ruins of his former life.
The quintessence of The Second Coming is to discover the resemblances between the lost father and the distressed daughter, showcasing Hallberg’s extraordinary talent sporadically. He garnishes the book with one remarkable anecdote after another, however, these are burdened under a pile of superfluous information that obscures the book’s formidable literary display. This gap between the reader’s expectation and the author’s apparent talent makes the novel buckle under its own massiveness. Half its length could have double the impact.