The first chapter, the last chapter and a couple of chapters in the middle are brilliant. The remainder of the book careens between “Catcher in the Rye” and “Animal House” both in style in a level of sophistication. The contrast between the highs and the lows is so sharp as to be painful.
It’s not often that I read a book that stays with me. By “staying with me” I mean I think about it and the characters long after finishing the last page. I can recall the events that took place, and often every character’s name, as if they were real pages from my own life story and real people that I know and love. A book like this is usually one that I consistently suggest to other readers that I know will appreciate it as much as I did. Appalachian Justice by Melinda Clayton is all of this.
Grief and guilt ripple through Heaven Again by H. C. Turk, but not in a morose or self-pitying way. Despite emotionally weighed-down characters and tragic events, this compact, engaging novel that takes place in fictional locales in Florida compels the reader more to contemplation than anger, tears, or depression.
In this hilariously clever satire written by Dan Spencer, Buddy What crashes into the lives of America. Literally. When a naked man falls from the sky in the exact middle of the United States, not remembering a thing about who he is, many are quick to find out the meaning of it all. After a misunderstood conversation leads to the moniker ‘Buddy What’, it soon becomes part of his new identity, as his search for self begins.
Writing about what you know and have experienced can be a great tonic to exorcise one’s demons while remaining authoritative at the same time. It can also turn into a self-serving rant. Thomas Thonson is a veteran of the Hollywood film industry and the theme of his unpretentious collection, You Don’t Die of Love, is Hollywood and its people, particularly Harry Dare, an old time actor of Westerns whose private life was more dramatic than his cinematic one.
Collectively, Inklings (Very short stories and other babies born of ink) by Aparna Warrier, is shorter than a conventional short story. Undoubtedly the shortest book I’ve ever read without pictures.
A book’s cover is its calling card and this cover is gorgeous. A lot of times I’ll read a book and go back and look at the cover and realize how the cover didn’t quite capture the story, or how there are bits of the cover which don’t quite fit with the tale inside. But in this case, I couldn’t imagine a more perfect showcase for The Devil’s Garden.
Collected stories, like songs on LPs, often share a theme or tone related to its title. In that sense, the title of Wade Alan Steele’s collection, A Sudden Dominance of Shadows, correlates to the opaqueness of many of its stories that delve into the murky psyches of its protagonists. Otherwise, though, the disparate styles and quality of the stories makes this book more like a collection of B-Sides.
I can’t say I fully grasp why the title Past; Tense was chosen for the second story, let alone the entire collection. A double-, triple-, or even quadruple-entendre I imagine, involving grammatical tenses, emotional tension, and chronology. Its phonetic awkwardness does foreshadow Joe Harding’s collection as literary fiction; yet these ten well-written, well-edited stories, narrated in ten unique voices, are surprisingly accessible.
It’s hard sometimes to decide where a review should start, especially when I’ve read a good book and I’m yearning to tell someone all about it. The book encompasses so much, and I don’t want to leave anything out, but I don’t want to give the good parts away either. That’s exactly how I feel about Will Entrekin’s new novel, Meets Girl.
