Part fiction, part essay and part reminiscence, Exploded View is a thoroughly engaging look at reading, writing and life. Under headings such as “Quaker State,” “Essential services,” “Hurricane” and “Kitchen sink,” author Jean McKay considers topics as wide-ranging as crabapples, babies, macaroons, metaphors, toilet floats, death and acorns as she progresses through the alphabet, taking things apart and putting them back together in unexpected but always delightful ways. At every point in her journey, from “Auffeurenpraxis” to “Zymurgy” and beyond, she extends an amiable invitation to readers to participate in the excitement. Exploded View is wry, tender and wickedly funny. It is also punctuated with the “small thunderings of joy” that only words in the right hands can create. From her resilient narrative perch, McKay moves easily from first person to third, from recollection to fantasy, from wisecrack to lament. Her book is an appealingly oddball miscellany, an exploded view not only of language but of one writer’s time on this planet.