A story of memories entirely out of reach, of being present in a world remembering a life which might have been so much more, at least as it is seen by the ghost of a homeless person, living out his experience through life and death, through the process of crossing over, a vision rendered through memory and the decay of it--but also the permanence of the book's incisive portrayal of the afterlife, a world where everything is the same, the only difference being that you can no longer reach anything, that your lived experience becomes locked in place. You learn a lot about the main character Kazu's misfortune, mixed with strangers wandering through his world, both his life as he experienced it, and in the reality of death, both where he is and where he isn't, and the dance between them creates an excellent mingling, and the novel as a whole is a beautiful mediation on slipping away, both of losing yourself and recollecting.