Patchwork / Tom Comitta / Coffee House Press, August 19th, 2025 – $14.95 (paperback)

The stories we tell are extraordinary, but the words we use are borrowed; in a quilt of words just as erratic as they are harmonious, Tom Comitta’s Patchwork is a reminder that every day, just by living, we pay homage to those who came before us.

Patchwork, in a literal sense, tells the story of a narrator troubled by the inherent absurdism of his reality as he searches for a coveted snuff box. But the novel demands your attention towards the covert, sending you tumbling through corridors of paintings, haunted Gothic castles, and stray letters littering abandoned bookshelves. As the narrator is both physically and emotionally torn apart for a journey defined by loss and suffering, we constantly question what could possibly be his reasoning – what reward could be great enough to justify this astringent of a journey? But really, his quest is a reflection of every one of ours, just as it is an echo of hundreds of stories told before our own. We are all pursuing something – beauty, maybe, or fulfillment – and despite the inevitable turmoil of life, the pain of unavoidable loss, and the grief that is inseparable from love, we trudge on.

We often think about the connections between our ancestors’ stories and ours. We visit museums and sift through library shelves, enamoring ourselves with the idea that history repeats itself and humans are drawn towards the same patterns again and again. Comitta speaks to these patterns and the purported collective consciousness of humans. Each chapter is a collage of fragments and scraps from other books, with the words of authors such as Leo Tolstoy and Jane Austen repurposed to form Comitta’s unique narrative. But while Comitta is obvious about his replication, it is not exclusive to him. We are all perpetrators of subconsciously imitating the stories we love most.

We make the same mistakes, our words littered with the same typos, our conversations characterized by the same gesticulations. Throughout it all, we tell our own stories of heartache and success, using an amalgamation of voices we were once raised by. Patchwork is not just a novel or an absurdist work of art. It is a reminder that despite the chaos of it all, human beings will always be connected with one another. We will dance, persistently, precariously, along the same imprints in the dirt. So, Tom Comitta asks us one thing:

In this mess of a universe, can you follow along?

– Sky Cross