Our next fiction selection for the MashableReads social book club is Enon by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Harding.

Can despair be beautiful? The subject matter never is, but how we process the unthinkable can be intoxicating, especially in the hands of such a talented writer. In Enon, Harding addresses grief in phantasmagoric ways, revealing the mind’s inner workings during the loss of a child. You want the pain to stop, and Harding drives you to the brink where you hope redemption lies.
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Be sure to follow @mashlifestyle on Twitter throughout the month to discuss Enon, using the hashtag #MashReads during the chat. You can also join our Facebook group to stay updated on MashableReads, and let us know what you think about the book throughout the month.
Want to hang out with the author in person? Share your thoughts on the book using the hashtag #MashReads via Vine, Instagram or Twitter prior to the chat, and we will select 10 people to visit Mashable's New York headquarters to meet Paul Harding on December 3rd at 6:00pm ET and participate in our book club.
We spoke with Harding about character cameos, online pet peeves and dealing with grief online.
Mashable: Grief is highly personal and particular; yet a lot of people find comfort online for a host of reasons — in order to move at their pace or to remain private. Given the topics of your first two novels, do you see any merit for dealing with grief online? Harding: Sure. There are so many resources online that can help a person navigate through grief and, as you say, do so with some privacy. I think the thing with grief, loss, illness — the whole human array of woes and misfortunes we all find ourselves swamped in at various points in our mortal careers — is striking a balance between, on the one hand, completely collapsing into ourselves and becoming totally isolated (as Charlie does in Enon, which only amplifies and deepens his grief into monstrous proportions) and, on the other hand, trying to totally externalize it to the extent that that becomes its own kind of psychosis. Faulkner created an infinite world in Yoknapatawpha County. Do you plan on doing the same with the Crosby family and those around them?
The idea appeals to me very deeply. The fictional world seems larger, seems to have more dimension and richness when, for example, the protagonist from one novel you’ve read has a cameo role in another. I think that recognition is a very, very powerful phenomenon; it is one of the deepest and greatest pleasures of reading. I love going back to Yoknapatawpha time after time and watching and listening to the Snopes and the Sutpens and the Compsons and the Beauchamps. So was it the failed suicide/meeting the girls in the graveyard that saved Charlie, or the grinding of events throughout the novel?
I think that it’s all of the above. I came to think of Charlie as being figuratively on fire throughout the novel, as if he was immolated in his daughter’s death. He means to drown himself, but the water literally feels to him as if it’s putting that fire out, quenching the flames. Extinguished, as it were, he is able to hear those girls' voices and be soothed by their beauty, be delighted by the sound of them, and to almost hear what he loved about his own daughter’s voice. So it feels graceful, merciful and hopeful to him.
As modest as it all is, it is authentic. I think that Charlie grinding his way through the rest of the book prepares him for those moments of succor. Maybe he could not have done it by himself, but he has managed to at least make himself available for such things. I’d include the good talking-to that he gets from Mrs. Hale — she kind of activates this cathartic sequence toward the end of the book. What is your biggest online pet peeve? Instant, impulsive broadcasting of this moment’s thought, without thinking about it, without really experiencing it in oneself, as oneself. The transference of the self to online. I place much value on interiority, on the inner life. I worry that if whatever pops into your head at any instant immediately goes online, you lose the crucial time for your thoughts to simmer and evolve and build up nuance, depth and empathy. There’s the danger of this externalized, eternal and depthless presence. That is the proper realm for, chickens and cows, perhaps, but not for thoughtful, smart, civil, artistic, human men and women.
I’m no online whiz, but I’m not a Luddite, either. I love that we have these laptops and tablets and smartphones; they’re awesome and convenient and all that. It’s more about maintaining balance. Technology should always be a predicate of the true subject: our individual humanity, our examined lives. It should be a tool, not the very thing itself.
Image: Ekko von Schwichow