The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier

Brockmeier's A Brief History of the Dead has remained one of my most memorable reads, so I was happy to see he had a new one out. 

The Illumination is speculative fiction, and refers to a phenomenon that strikes society unexpectedly.  Suddenly, people's pain is visible as colored lights.  If you have a cut on your finger, your finger glows.  If you have a kidney stone, it is lit up for everyone else to see.  The implications of knowing who is in pain and in what way becomes a new factor in interpersonal interactions.  Something about this book kept making me think of Saramago's Blindness - the use of a physical ailment to make a societal point. 

This novel follows six people as they navigate in this strange new world - starting with a patient at a hospital when this all starts. Five other major characters emerge, each of them coming into possession of a set of love-letters written by the husband of the patient's hospital roommate.  These love letters form the basis of the connection among the rest of the characters, who are otherwise reasonably unrelated.

I like Brockmeier and I liked this book because it was interesting, but I'm not sure I "get" it in the end.  The two devices - the illumination of pain and the love letters - didn't mesh enough for me.  I did enjoy the characters and their stories, but wished for more out of this book.