Jess Walter’s searing and sublime eighth novel, “So Far Gone,” is a wistful elegy — some might say a eulogy — to a kinder, gentler time. Its compelling antihero, sixty-something Rhys Kinnick, has spent seven years in self-imposed exile, occupying a cinder block cabin in a remote region of Washington state. His attempts to improve the home his grandfather once envisioned as a thriving sheep farm have stalled, but he has managed to read more than 900 books during his stay, and to write 2,000-plus pages of a still-unfinished metaphysical volume ambitiously titled “The Atlas of Wisdom.” He reassures himself that in becoming a hermit — leaving behind his daughter, Bethany, and grandchildren, Leah and Asher — and eschewing most creature comforts, he’s modeling Thoreau’s “Walden.”

In the rare en

See Full Page