R.J. Askew's Blog: Indie tester, page 2
August 24, 2013
BOY-MAN BLOKE TO LOST WOMAN LOVER: 'YOU'RE WELCOME TO STAY TO WATCH THE FOOTBALL' - A REVIEW OF '27', A GENERATION FACEBOOK NOVEL
How do you judge a book?
Perhaps our feelings and responses to how a story ends are a reliable guide.
Most writers hurl grappling hooks into our eyes and swarm into us with their treasured creations in their opening graphs. But how many times have you read a book with a great opening, but never got to the end, or got to the end with a sense of relief?
So how did '27' end for me?
I was at the 98% mark according to my kindle, on a train heading through London. Such was my focus on reading those last 2% I swear to you I almost missed my stop and ended up hurtling to Gatwick airport. As I only had a few more minutes of reading left this would have been a double disaster as I would have been stuck on the train for an hour with nothing to read. As it was, I barged off the train through a crowd of people getting on and finished reding '27' as I walked down the platform towards the tube, again bumping into the odd person, including one who was also reading her kindle on the hoof.
This is the best of signs for '27' because it means I was engaged, committed and there for the author, just as I was when I started reading. So the book is a success.
So what is it about? Six university friends get together again when they are 27 and a sequence of events flows from their reunion because relationship issues remain active and aspects of their characters have become underscored with time.
Most readers will probably recognise something of themselves and their own university friends in the six characters. So, too, most readers will be familiar with how Facebook and TV provide backdrops to their own lives. All this is expertly captured in '27'.
The six face a host of normal problems. Problems caused by absent parents, expectant parents, romantic rivalries, disappointments in love and work, pressure, drink, choices, choices. All the issues are familiar and real.
The author puts her characters through the mill, too. I found myself liking laid-back Dave, then not liking him. I found myself wishing Katie would outdo Renee for a change. I was envious of self-made Steve when cupid scored what turns out to be a very dubious bullseye on him. I was impressed by how the author nails the deviousness of an alcoholic in his efforts to hide his little secret.
Yes, there were points in the story when I was chuckling happily at the way modern lives were satarised. I thought it was brilliant. The moral compass bearing of '27' is set firmly to LIFE'S A BITCH - DEAL WITH IT.
The six characters are not bad, none of them are evil. Yes, they all have their flaws. But they are OK. The most flawed character is arguably a highly compassionate care worker whose life was lived within such a narrow horizon as to make him derisibly dull.
I can't disclose the central plot theme which had my eyes going for it right to the end when my mind was screaching, 'Open the letter, Renee!' But I will say this: Dave the beta male pawn on the love board stands N O chance. But then a boy-man who says to a super-uber-mega distressed woman whose husband has just walked out on her and whom he has just had sex with, "You are welcome to stay and watch the football", is clearly destined for a shocking cumuppance.
So I enjoyed '27'. It is intelligent, amusing and moving contempoary read. The author won my curiosity and kept all her plates spinning, characterwise and storywise.
The best part of the story for me though was the outcome for an unpromising peripheral character, the social wallflower, Sam. Sam is not really one of the six. They can barely remember her. She is in the background of their photos, just as she is in the background of their memories. But.. It is the way she pursues a ridiculous dream of happiness against vicious odds and her excruciating social gaucheness that provides the setting for much of the story. I was extremely happy about how Sam ..
My lips are sealed. You will have to read '27' yourself to find out how the author lands her finely conceived story. The ending sets things up sweetly for about three more books, which I for one will happily read, as I want to know .. what .. happens .. next .. to Dave, Katie, Renee and daughter.
Perhaps our feelings and responses to how a story ends are a reliable guide.
Most writers hurl grappling hooks into our eyes and swarm into us with their treasured creations in their opening graphs. But how many times have you read a book with a great opening, but never got to the end, or got to the end with a sense of relief?
So how did '27' end for me?
I was at the 98% mark according to my kindle, on a train heading through London. Such was my focus on reading those last 2% I swear to you I almost missed my stop and ended up hurtling to Gatwick airport. As I only had a few more minutes of reading left this would have been a double disaster as I would have been stuck on the train for an hour with nothing to read. As it was, I barged off the train through a crowd of people getting on and finished reding '27' as I walked down the platform towards the tube, again bumping into the odd person, including one who was also reading her kindle on the hoof.
This is the best of signs for '27' because it means I was engaged, committed and there for the author, just as I was when I started reading. So the book is a success.
So what is it about? Six university friends get together again when they are 27 and a sequence of events flows from their reunion because relationship issues remain active and aspects of their characters have become underscored with time.
Most readers will probably recognise something of themselves and their own university friends in the six characters. So, too, most readers will be familiar with how Facebook and TV provide backdrops to their own lives. All this is expertly captured in '27'.
The six face a host of normal problems. Problems caused by absent parents, expectant parents, romantic rivalries, disappointments in love and work, pressure, drink, choices, choices. All the issues are familiar and real.
The author puts her characters through the mill, too. I found myself liking laid-back Dave, then not liking him. I found myself wishing Katie would outdo Renee for a change. I was envious of self-made Steve when cupid scored what turns out to be a very dubious bullseye on him. I was impressed by how the author nails the deviousness of an alcoholic in his efforts to hide his little secret.
Yes, there were points in the story when I was chuckling happily at the way modern lives were satarised. I thought it was brilliant. The moral compass bearing of '27' is set firmly to LIFE'S A BITCH - DEAL WITH IT.
The six characters are not bad, none of them are evil. Yes, they all have their flaws. But they are OK. The most flawed character is arguably a highly compassionate care worker whose life was lived within such a narrow horizon as to make him derisibly dull.
I can't disclose the central plot theme which had my eyes going for it right to the end when my mind was screaching, 'Open the letter, Renee!' But I will say this: Dave the beta male pawn on the love board stands N O chance. But then a boy-man who says to a super-uber-mega distressed woman whose husband has just walked out on her and whom he has just had sex with, "You are welcome to stay and watch the football", is clearly destined for a shocking cumuppance.
So I enjoyed '27'. It is intelligent, amusing and moving contempoary read. The author won my curiosity and kept all her plates spinning, characterwise and storywise.
The best part of the story for me though was the outcome for an unpromising peripheral character, the social wallflower, Sam. Sam is not really one of the six. They can barely remember her. She is in the background of their photos, just as she is in the background of their memories. But.. It is the way she pursues a ridiculous dream of happiness against vicious odds and her excruciating social gaucheness that provides the setting for much of the story. I was extremely happy about how Sam ..
My lips are sealed. You will have to read '27' yourself to find out how the author lands her finely conceived story. The ending sets things up sweetly for about three more books, which I for one will happily read, as I want to know .. what .. happens .. next .. to Dave, Katie, Renee and daughter.
August 22, 2013
WHEN READING A STORY STRIKES A BLOW AGAINST EVIL
I read this story when I was on holiday with my family of three teens in a tranquil part of England during a very pleasant spell of sunny weather. This is how life should be, right? OK a teen is a teen is a teen is a teen. But on the whole my crew are OK. I try to be an OK dad. It is one of life's blessings for a guy to be a dad.
So why do so many men mess it up? Why do so many of us screw up the lives of those we are supposed to nourish and be espaliers to? What makes a man like Richard the vile step-father in Jesamine James acutely beautiful UP THE HILL BACKWARDS turn evil? I guess a shrink might offer a load of reasons with footnotes to all sorts of studies. But the word evil works for me.
UP THE HILL BACKWARDS is not about Richard though and it is not about his evil doings, few of which are detailed. The story is about Jes, his step-daughter, her suffering, intelligence, resilience, defiance, and survival.
I've read and heart a lot about evil men like Jimmy Savile preying on kids recently. If we are honest we all know it has gone on forever. It is one thing to be hurt by a stranger, but when the stranger is a parent, or step-parent. How the hell does a kid live with it? A kid doesn't know how to front down the person who is supposed to defend them not destroy them.
UP THE HILL BACKWARDS shows us how Jes works things out as best she can, how she copes, how she makes her little escapes, and then her big escape, and ultimately takes a very, very big step to deal with the evil man who is her worst enemy.
This is a harsh story. But it is also achingly beautiful because of the insight it gives into a normal kid's spirit. Yes, she does bad things. She sleeps around in a lovelessly casual way to 'dilute' her tormentor's influence on her. She does glue with other messed up kids, at least one of whom dies young. She sneaks INTO a children's home to find friends and solace. And when she is older, Mr.Vodka awaits her .. 'I said, go easy on the mixer!'
The writing in UP THE HILL BACKWARDS is intelligent and matter of fact. It is stripped of sentimentality. The story shoots straight and sparingly. It is coolly and sharply told. No words are wasted. And it is very convincing.
I could see the traces of pink paint in the knot swirls in the long case of bad Richard's collection of clocks. And I could see the wooden lasts burning in the fire before which Jes is sitting in her Northampton trap of a home, burning her leg. The lasts for me were symbols of a more solid time. Naive I admit. But that is what I felt as I read that dab. So, too, later on, Jes bemoans the loss of so many pubs - in part because she wants a drink - but, more significantly because of the loss of community spirit. Perhaps bad things are less likely to happen when we get out from the intensity of our self-contained little worlds. Maybe there is a msg for all of us in this as our online lives see many of us sinking into potentially damaging isolation. For it is not in that isolation that men like evil Richard can flourish?
Jes is not beaten, never beaten spiritually, though she is beaten physically. She plots her escape. This passage of UP THE HILL BACKWARDS was top draw because it made me feel how it was for her, the sheer terror of what she was attempting to do .. to .. just .. get .. on a bus .. and go. And, ach, the pain of how it all goes wrong for her. Yet she persists, this is the point .. she persists. She keeps going. But, o the sadness of how things turn out with her literally on a slow boat back to her tormentor, witnessing the hypocrisy of another man, this time a manipulative youth using religion to get his lustful way, con control.
So I learnt a lot and I thought a lot as I read UP THE HILL BACKWARDS, which I believe will make an excellent piece of drama on a stage or on a screen. I swear to you, it deserves to be on a stage in Northampton where the story is set. That would be something because it would show that Jes, through her art, has triumphed in a creative way over the destroyer who was Richard and over whom she does triumph personally.
I am a middle-aged bloke who's had an OK life. I have never messed anyone up and I was not messed up as a kid. But for anyone who has suffered or is suffering an evil Richard I am certain that UP THE HILL BACKWARDS may well prove a lifeline. So the book deserves to be out there and read because its message is an important msg of survival and a slap for those of us who are complacent or dismissive about the things others less well off have to endure.
So the next thing to do it get it and read it. By reading UP THE HILL BACKWARDS you will be doing something to fight against the evil it shows us is among us. The more Jes succeeds the more the evil recedes.
Ron Askew
So why do so many men mess it up? Why do so many of us screw up the lives of those we are supposed to nourish and be espaliers to? What makes a man like Richard the vile step-father in Jesamine James acutely beautiful UP THE HILL BACKWARDS turn evil? I guess a shrink might offer a load of reasons with footnotes to all sorts of studies. But the word evil works for me.
UP THE HILL BACKWARDS is not about Richard though and it is not about his evil doings, few of which are detailed. The story is about Jes, his step-daughter, her suffering, intelligence, resilience, defiance, and survival.
I've read and heart a lot about evil men like Jimmy Savile preying on kids recently. If we are honest we all know it has gone on forever. It is one thing to be hurt by a stranger, but when the stranger is a parent, or step-parent. How the hell does a kid live with it? A kid doesn't know how to front down the person who is supposed to defend them not destroy them.
UP THE HILL BACKWARDS shows us how Jes works things out as best she can, how she copes, how she makes her little escapes, and then her big escape, and ultimately takes a very, very big step to deal with the evil man who is her worst enemy.
This is a harsh story. But it is also achingly beautiful because of the insight it gives into a normal kid's spirit. Yes, she does bad things. She sleeps around in a lovelessly casual way to 'dilute' her tormentor's influence on her. She does glue with other messed up kids, at least one of whom dies young. She sneaks INTO a children's home to find friends and solace. And when she is older, Mr.Vodka awaits her .. 'I said, go easy on the mixer!'
The writing in UP THE HILL BACKWARDS is intelligent and matter of fact. It is stripped of sentimentality. The story shoots straight and sparingly. It is coolly and sharply told. No words are wasted. And it is very convincing.
I could see the traces of pink paint in the knot swirls in the long case of bad Richard's collection of clocks. And I could see the wooden lasts burning in the fire before which Jes is sitting in her Northampton trap of a home, burning her leg. The lasts for me were symbols of a more solid time. Naive I admit. But that is what I felt as I read that dab. So, too, later on, Jes bemoans the loss of so many pubs - in part because she wants a drink - but, more significantly because of the loss of community spirit. Perhaps bad things are less likely to happen when we get out from the intensity of our self-contained little worlds. Maybe there is a msg for all of us in this as our online lives see many of us sinking into potentially damaging isolation. For it is not in that isolation that men like evil Richard can flourish?
Jes is not beaten, never beaten spiritually, though she is beaten physically. She plots her escape. This passage of UP THE HILL BACKWARDS was top draw because it made me feel how it was for her, the sheer terror of what she was attempting to do .. to .. just .. get .. on a bus .. and go. And, ach, the pain of how it all goes wrong for her. Yet she persists, this is the point .. she persists. She keeps going. But, o the sadness of how things turn out with her literally on a slow boat back to her tormentor, witnessing the hypocrisy of another man, this time a manipulative youth using religion to get his lustful way, con control.
So I learnt a lot and I thought a lot as I read UP THE HILL BACKWARDS, which I believe will make an excellent piece of drama on a stage or on a screen. I swear to you, it deserves to be on a stage in Northampton where the story is set. That would be something because it would show that Jes, through her art, has triumphed in a creative way over the destroyer who was Richard and over whom she does triumph personally.
I am a middle-aged bloke who's had an OK life. I have never messed anyone up and I was not messed up as a kid. But for anyone who has suffered or is suffering an evil Richard I am certain that UP THE HILL BACKWARDS may well prove a lifeline. So the book deserves to be out there and read because its message is an important msg of survival and a slap for those of us who are complacent or dismissive about the things others less well off have to endure.
So the next thing to do it get it and read it. By reading UP THE HILL BACKWARDS you will be doing something to fight against the evil it shows us is among us. The more Jes succeeds the more the evil recedes.
Ron Askew
August 12, 2013
A STRONG WOMAN'S STRUGGLE DURING THE BIRTH OF A PROUD AFRICAN NATION
Kenya is a fascinating country. In some ways it is a young country having only gained its independence from Britain in the 1960s. Yet is is also at the heart of a region to which we may all owe our origins. In that respect it is the most ancient of places.
Jane Bwye's Breath of Africa is quintessentially a novel of place and time, set in Kenya from the 1950s, when there was a vicious rebellion against British rule and tracing the lives of two young women as they grow up and face a range of personal challenges and setbacks as they and the country that has shaped their young lives come of age.
Although BREATH OF AFRICA is a historical novel it feels very young. The story commences with the two girls breaking out of their school at night to go on a wild horse ride, while Mau Mau rebels skulk in the darkness intending them harm.
Some of the issues feel very modern also. There is an inter-racial relationship and race features when Charles, a talented young black man finds himself struggling to cope with life at Oxford University. The nastier side of white settler prejudice are also captured. But not all the whites are like this. Some opt to stay when British rule ends because they love the country and feel themselves to be as much a part of it as the Africans.
Caroline is a stayer, literally. She abandons her chance to go to Oxford, marries, loses her husband, decides to make her future in the new Kenya.
But the new Kenya is not a place of innocence and forgiveness. Caroline's life becomes entangled in a Mau Mau curse which dogs her childhood friend. We read of malevolence and irrational yet powerful superstition. This is at odds with Caroline's strong Christianity and plain good sense.
So, too, we see how Charles' live evolves as he struggles to make his way in business. His country's independence does not guarantee his success.
It is also fascinating to read how the two white girls are not significantly better treated by the black men who have taken the places of the white settlers. So there are gender issues in play also which feel very modern.
The insights into the Mau Mau rebellion and the efforts made to suppress it are absolutely fascinating. So, too, is the fact that once the British have left the Kenyans proceed to fall out with one another and there is a coup against President Daniel arap Moi.
And all the while, running like a spine through BREATH OF AFRICA is the stupendous natural beauty of Kenya, with is wildlife, exotic birds, mountains, forests, plains and white beaches. This beauty seems more constant than the ways of the humans who act their lives out on its stage.
In some ways BREATH OF AFRICA is a sad story because, especially from the British perspective, it captures the end of a period of glory and power. But from an African perspective the sadness is that many of them suffered under British rule and died during their struggle for independence. And independence for many African countries, Kenya included, often left the way open for local corruption or dictatorship.
That said people struggle to make the best of their lives however politics go. Caroline is a classic case of a woman struggling to do her best, with the best of motives, often against the odds. She is a strong woman and perseveres. She triumphs over the evil and hatred behind the curse.
But in the end she concludes she can never really belong in the new Kenya. This conclusion seemed to mark the very end for the settler commitment to the country. Perhaps it had to be this way. That said she is unbowed and is not in any way beaten personally. Her integrity is intact. So, too, she finds consolation with someone whose job it was to try to ensure British rule continued. Such is life.
BREATH OF AFRICA kicks off at a gallop, literally, and ends thunderously, again literally. The ending is especially strong as Caroline finally sees the African curse die, literally.
The one constancy in the story is perhaps a set of pre-historic paintings in a secret cave, which seem to say to us that the comings and goings of more recent times are as nothing to the longer sweep of human history buried in the rocks and earth of Kenya.
BREATH OF AFRICA is lovingly written, intelligent, informative and moving. It is as much a story of a woman's struggle against prejudice and hardship. Caroline is a single parent. She is not a privileged woman in a big house. She struggles for money. Yes, the story has a very modern feel to it.
Ron Askew
Jane Bwye's Breath of Africa is quintessentially a novel of place and time, set in Kenya from the 1950s, when there was a vicious rebellion against British rule and tracing the lives of two young women as they grow up and face a range of personal challenges and setbacks as they and the country that has shaped their young lives come of age.
Although BREATH OF AFRICA is a historical novel it feels very young. The story commences with the two girls breaking out of their school at night to go on a wild horse ride, while Mau Mau rebels skulk in the darkness intending them harm.
Some of the issues feel very modern also. There is an inter-racial relationship and race features when Charles, a talented young black man finds himself struggling to cope with life at Oxford University. The nastier side of white settler prejudice are also captured. But not all the whites are like this. Some opt to stay when British rule ends because they love the country and feel themselves to be as much a part of it as the Africans.
Caroline is a stayer, literally. She abandons her chance to go to Oxford, marries, loses her husband, decides to make her future in the new Kenya.
But the new Kenya is not a place of innocence and forgiveness. Caroline's life becomes entangled in a Mau Mau curse which dogs her childhood friend. We read of malevolence and irrational yet powerful superstition. This is at odds with Caroline's strong Christianity and plain good sense.
So, too, we see how Charles' live evolves as he struggles to make his way in business. His country's independence does not guarantee his success.
It is also fascinating to read how the two white girls are not significantly better treated by the black men who have taken the places of the white settlers. So there are gender issues in play also which feel very modern.
The insights into the Mau Mau rebellion and the efforts made to suppress it are absolutely fascinating. So, too, is the fact that once the British have left the Kenyans proceed to fall out with one another and there is a coup against President Daniel arap Moi.
And all the while, running like a spine through BREATH OF AFRICA is the stupendous natural beauty of Kenya, with is wildlife, exotic birds, mountains, forests, plains and white beaches. This beauty seems more constant than the ways of the humans who act their lives out on its stage.
In some ways BREATH OF AFRICA is a sad story because, especially from the British perspective, it captures the end of a period of glory and power. But from an African perspective the sadness is that many of them suffered under British rule and died during their struggle for independence. And independence for many African countries, Kenya included, often left the way open for local corruption or dictatorship.
That said people struggle to make the best of their lives however politics go. Caroline is a classic case of a woman struggling to do her best, with the best of motives, often against the odds. She is a strong woman and perseveres. She triumphs over the evil and hatred behind the curse.
But in the end she concludes she can never really belong in the new Kenya. This conclusion seemed to mark the very end for the settler commitment to the country. Perhaps it had to be this way. That said she is unbowed and is not in any way beaten personally. Her integrity is intact. So, too, she finds consolation with someone whose job it was to try to ensure British rule continued. Such is life.
BREATH OF AFRICA kicks off at a gallop, literally, and ends thunderously, again literally. The ending is especially strong as Caroline finally sees the African curse die, literally.
The one constancy in the story is perhaps a set of pre-historic paintings in a secret cave, which seem to say to us that the comings and goings of more recent times are as nothing to the longer sweep of human history buried in the rocks and earth of Kenya.
BREATH OF AFRICA is lovingly written, intelligent, informative and moving. It is as much a story of a woman's struggle against prejudice and hardship. Caroline is a single parent. She is not a privileged woman in a big house. She struggles for money. Yes, the story has a very modern feel to it.
Ron Askew
WHEN LUST LIGHTNING STRIKES FOR LUCKY MS AVERAGE
I've read a few erotic novellas recently. There are plenty to choose from in what a weary publisher might call, 'this crowded and competitive market place'.
So when I came to read Fall Into Love I was a jaded reader. This is because I am sated by erotic writing, much of which -- with a few notable exceptions -- is formulaic, and by the tidal wave of erotic imagery around us. My brain is dulled by what I have already read and seen.
So it will take something pretty special to win my approval.
FALL INTO LOVE is special. Why? Not because of the sex but because of the expertly drawn character of Simone, a woman on the loose in NY but who is spectacularly so not up for it she can't wait for her evening clubbing to draw to a close so she can go home. She pays lip service to sex to please her friends.
Simone has not has sex for four years after being totally turned off by her ex-husband. A fact which will have many a reader nodding, 'yep, that's me.'
Simone's girlfriends do their best to get her laid again, but she is just not up for it.
I enjoyed how unfashionably sexless she was. There was an intelligence about her resingnation. We sense she could easily see her 4 years of celibacy stretch into 40, thus sparing herself all manner of nuisance.
But then she falls from her bar stool .. aggggggg! .. right into strong arms of Zane .. ahhhhhh!
And so it begins.
The first third of so of FALL INTO LOVE expertly details all the little stages of Simone's slow but steady awakening to the possibilities facing her. She dares to dream the dream of unbridled nookie. And because she is so used to nothing good happening, she has nothing to lose and so risks all. And, to her surprise, Zane the Hunk of fine American muscle and sinew, obliges her in every detail.
Zane The Grim is brilliantly drawn. I'd best not give too much away, but here is one dab of Zane: 'The rippling melody of his voice is raked with gravel..' Marvellous stuff. The story almost blinks at itself in some odd way.
And it takes its time. A less cunning author might have unleashed her sex card much earlier and more than once. Not so the author of FALL INTO LOVE. She holds back. She builds. A little detail here. A mood shift there. All very experctly done. The slow ride in the life back to Zanes luxury suite.
And then the sex. There is a deliberate gear shift just after half way when the story comes out of the blocks like a thoroughbred stallion on Derby Day. The sex is at intense as the build up to it is studied. The philosophy of pleasure hovers in the background, too. It is all very intelligent.
So far, so enjoyable. It gets better. FALL INTO LOVE totally won my eyes and bossed my curiosity. I like to think I am a cunning reader, but even I was caught out by the ending, not so much the manner of the twist but by Simone's state of mind at the very end after her intense sexual adventure. You will have to read the story to see if you agree with me.
So the strength of the story for me was not about the raw and intense sex, which I enjoyed because of the confidence and joy it conveyed, but more about the character of Simone and her relationship with said sex and of its impact on her emotional and spiritual estate.
The way we consume sex these days in literature or on the internet is often lopsided. The focus is on the act, or images of the act. But mostly we never actually know what the people are feeling, their deeper responsess, the broader context of their lives.
Simone felt like a fairly normal person who suddenly found herself in a maelstrom of the hottest imaginable sex with an impossibly hunky hunk of well-oiled and up-for-it sex machine.
The genius of all this is that Simone is a very average woman in looks and expectations, maybe even a little drab and dour. She is everywoman in some ways. A female reader could quietly identify with her, or feel pity for her and think herself better off than Simone the innocent. I can't believe many female readers would not secretly fancy a round or two with Zane The Huge.
I know the author has another couple of stories up her sleeve. I for one will read them to see if she can pull it off again with such story-telling skill.
Ron AskewFall Into Love
So when I came to read Fall Into Love I was a jaded reader. This is because I am sated by erotic writing, much of which -- with a few notable exceptions -- is formulaic, and by the tidal wave of erotic imagery around us. My brain is dulled by what I have already read and seen.
So it will take something pretty special to win my approval.
FALL INTO LOVE is special. Why? Not because of the sex but because of the expertly drawn character of Simone, a woman on the loose in NY but who is spectacularly so not up for it she can't wait for her evening clubbing to draw to a close so she can go home. She pays lip service to sex to please her friends.
Simone has not has sex for four years after being totally turned off by her ex-husband. A fact which will have many a reader nodding, 'yep, that's me.'
Simone's girlfriends do their best to get her laid again, but she is just not up for it.
I enjoyed how unfashionably sexless she was. There was an intelligence about her resingnation. We sense she could easily see her 4 years of celibacy stretch into 40, thus sparing herself all manner of nuisance.
But then she falls from her bar stool .. aggggggg! .. right into strong arms of Zane .. ahhhhhh!
And so it begins.
The first third of so of FALL INTO LOVE expertly details all the little stages of Simone's slow but steady awakening to the possibilities facing her. She dares to dream the dream of unbridled nookie. And because she is so used to nothing good happening, she has nothing to lose and so risks all. And, to her surprise, Zane the Hunk of fine American muscle and sinew, obliges her in every detail.
Zane The Grim is brilliantly drawn. I'd best not give too much away, but here is one dab of Zane: 'The rippling melody of his voice is raked with gravel..' Marvellous stuff. The story almost blinks at itself in some odd way.
And it takes its time. A less cunning author might have unleashed her sex card much earlier and more than once. Not so the author of FALL INTO LOVE. She holds back. She builds. A little detail here. A mood shift there. All very experctly done. The slow ride in the life back to Zanes luxury suite.
And then the sex. There is a deliberate gear shift just after half way when the story comes out of the blocks like a thoroughbred stallion on Derby Day. The sex is at intense as the build up to it is studied. The philosophy of pleasure hovers in the background, too. It is all very intelligent.
So far, so enjoyable. It gets better. FALL INTO LOVE totally won my eyes and bossed my curiosity. I like to think I am a cunning reader, but even I was caught out by the ending, not so much the manner of the twist but by Simone's state of mind at the very end after her intense sexual adventure. You will have to read the story to see if you agree with me.
So the strength of the story for me was not about the raw and intense sex, which I enjoyed because of the confidence and joy it conveyed, but more about the character of Simone and her relationship with said sex and of its impact on her emotional and spiritual estate.
The way we consume sex these days in literature or on the internet is often lopsided. The focus is on the act, or images of the act. But mostly we never actually know what the people are feeling, their deeper responsess, the broader context of their lives.
Simone felt like a fairly normal person who suddenly found herself in a maelstrom of the hottest imaginable sex with an impossibly hunky hunk of well-oiled and up-for-it sex machine.
The genius of all this is that Simone is a very average woman in looks and expectations, maybe even a little drab and dour. She is everywoman in some ways. A female reader could quietly identify with her, or feel pity for her and think herself better off than Simone the innocent. I can't believe many female readers would not secretly fancy a round or two with Zane The Huge.
I know the author has another couple of stories up her sleeve. I for one will read them to see if she can pull it off again with such story-telling skill.
Ron AskewFall Into Love
June 26, 2013
Review of Keir McCabe's ICE CREAM AND AESOP
IN QUEST OF FAMILY .. a review of Keir McCabe's debut novel ICE CREAM AND AESOP
Some stories are so strong we cease to be aware of languge, such is our absorbtion in the story. Others boss our eye with the beauty of their language.
Keir McCabe's ICE CREAM AND AESOP does both.
The architecture of the story is excellent in the way it skips deftly back and forth from the big picture spanning a lifetime to its intense focus on the events of a single climatic day of resolution among a community of bums, tramps, vagrants and derelicts who have formed an alternative tribe in an abandoned ice cream factory in Ipswich, which becomes their home for several years.
The story is pleasingly balanced, assured and intelligent. It yields nuggets of meaning in an entirely natural and believable way.
So, too, the language deployed is of a very high order. There are some exquisite dabs of observation, both of the character of Ipswich's declining industrial underbelly in the early part of this century, and of a dispirate of broken down individuals struggling to survive as they sink to the bottom of the social order which, for the most part, would rather they were not there at all.
One of my favourite dabs was a description a dog -- Luukas -- and its relationship with the human players. Luukas is at the heart of all and links a very modern story with Aesop's timeless fables.
A mixed up dog whose bark 'concealed a nuance of decline, Luukas symbolises hope amid despair: 'And yet in her eyes -- those entrancing, walnut-brown eyes -- there still shone a mischief and a vigour that could release a man from even the deepest sorrow.'
Beautiful.
But brutality and insensitivity are more the norm for the self-styled 'residents' of Jacobs former ice cream parlour. ICE CREAM AND AESOP is as much a spiritual and moral study as a sequence of events.
Such is its psychological power, I was reminded often of the philosophical insights and poetic prose of Vasily Grossman's LIFE AND FATE, a towering work of great insight and sweep. In that story, Krymov's 'dog in two halves' plays an Aesopian role similar to the role played by Luukas in Keir McCabe's story. In the latter story, the simple act of removing a splint of glass from Luukas' paw on an Ipswich street alters the course of a dozen or more broken lives, leading as it does to an unlikely blossoming of companionship and co-operation.
The ragged trousered society of characters in the ICE CREAAM AND AESOP reminded me of the desperate Russian troops in LIFE AND FATE who were stuck in a house surrounded by the German army. Both groups are up against it and do all they can to cling onto their temporary respite in a dangerous setting.
In this passage towards the end of ICE CREAM AND AESOP the residents have collapsed after a baking August day of drinking punctuated by distressing violence:
"Bodies rolled and limbs twitched atop their beds of concrete. Bodies writhed atop their beds of brick, of stainless steel, of corrugated iron, of common chickweed, and black medic, dandelion, and a copse of emptied bottles, bottles lain scattered, impotent as spent shells; remnants of a War fought; battled - a War lost."
Such people are among us all the time. We most ignore them when we can.
If you read ICE CREAM AND AESOP you will at least KNOW in future how a life can crumble, how an ordinary person can find themselves broken and lost, unemployed and then homeless. I found myself wondering how I would cope were I ripped from what Keir McCabe describes as 'the analgesic nirvana of a structured life'. It does bear to think too much about it. Of course, if you are caught in the trap your mind may literally become your enemy within.
The book touches on many themes: parental desertion, bullying, rejection, hopelessness, alcoholism, survival, friendship, justice .. and treachery. Not all survive, both in reality and in the story. That said the story is literally a phoenix which rises from the ashes. The existance of the story is itself a remarkable and important thing.
ICE CREAM AND AESOP also shows us, normal folk, how we are and it is not always pretty because the story is uncompromising in its honesty. Not all of us can face our true nature. Many would dispute that we are as we are. There is a thread of misanthropy at the heart of the story spun by the lessons of harsh experience. But there are also flashes of hope, companionship and compassion in the story.
The counterpoising of despair and hope is mirrored in the language, too. The street speech of the characters if captured with razor accuracy. But it is set against poetic prose which Vasily Grossman would applaud.
ICE CREAM AND AESOP faces ugliness. It highlights the death of five prostitues in Ipswich and rages at the vileness of some of the news commentary. I felt more than once that it was not the ugliness of the street people that I found myself regretting but the broader indifference in the rest of us.
That said ICE CREAM AND AESOP is a profoundly moving and beautiful book because of the humanity that breaks through the concrete of our callousness like the dandelions and common chickweed that break through the cracked concrete of JACOBS PARLOUR MAID .. EST.1897 .. QUALITY ITALIAN ICE CREAM OF EAST ANGLIA, 52-54 GRIMWADE STREET, IPSWICH.
I recommend it to you.
Here is the link to it: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ice-Cream-Aes...
Ron Askew, June 2013, St Albans.
Some stories are so strong we cease to be aware of languge, such is our absorbtion in the story. Others boss our eye with the beauty of their language.
Keir McCabe's ICE CREAM AND AESOP does both.
The architecture of the story is excellent in the way it skips deftly back and forth from the big picture spanning a lifetime to its intense focus on the events of a single climatic day of resolution among a community of bums, tramps, vagrants and derelicts who have formed an alternative tribe in an abandoned ice cream factory in Ipswich, which becomes their home for several years.
The story is pleasingly balanced, assured and intelligent. It yields nuggets of meaning in an entirely natural and believable way.
So, too, the language deployed is of a very high order. There are some exquisite dabs of observation, both of the character of Ipswich's declining industrial underbelly in the early part of this century, and of a dispirate of broken down individuals struggling to survive as they sink to the bottom of the social order which, for the most part, would rather they were not there at all.
One of my favourite dabs was a description a dog -- Luukas -- and its relationship with the human players. Luukas is at the heart of all and links a very modern story with Aesop's timeless fables.
A mixed up dog whose bark 'concealed a nuance of decline, Luukas symbolises hope amid despair: 'And yet in her eyes -- those entrancing, walnut-brown eyes -- there still shone a mischief and a vigour that could release a man from even the deepest sorrow.'
Beautiful.
But brutality and insensitivity are more the norm for the self-styled 'residents' of Jacobs former ice cream parlour. ICE CREAM AND AESOP is as much a spiritual and moral study as a sequence of events.
Such is its psychological power, I was reminded often of the philosophical insights and poetic prose of Vasily Grossman's LIFE AND FATE, a towering work of great insight and sweep. In that story, Krymov's 'dog in two halves' plays an Aesopian role similar to the role played by Luukas in Keir McCabe's story. In the latter story, the simple act of removing a splint of glass from Luukas' paw on an Ipswich street alters the course of a dozen or more broken lives, leading as it does to an unlikely blossoming of companionship and co-operation.
The ragged trousered society of characters in the ICE CREAAM AND AESOP reminded me of the desperate Russian troops in LIFE AND FATE who were stuck in a house surrounded by the German army. Both groups are up against it and do all they can to cling onto their temporary respite in a dangerous setting.
In this passage towards the end of ICE CREAM AND AESOP the residents have collapsed after a baking August day of drinking punctuated by distressing violence:
"Bodies rolled and limbs twitched atop their beds of concrete. Bodies writhed atop their beds of brick, of stainless steel, of corrugated iron, of common chickweed, and black medic, dandelion, and a copse of emptied bottles, bottles lain scattered, impotent as spent shells; remnants of a War fought; battled - a War lost."
Such people are among us all the time. We most ignore them when we can.
If you read ICE CREAM AND AESOP you will at least KNOW in future how a life can crumble, how an ordinary person can find themselves broken and lost, unemployed and then homeless. I found myself wondering how I would cope were I ripped from what Keir McCabe describes as 'the analgesic nirvana of a structured life'. It does bear to think too much about it. Of course, if you are caught in the trap your mind may literally become your enemy within.
The book touches on many themes: parental desertion, bullying, rejection, hopelessness, alcoholism, survival, friendship, justice .. and treachery. Not all survive, both in reality and in the story. That said the story is literally a phoenix which rises from the ashes. The existance of the story is itself a remarkable and important thing.
ICE CREAM AND AESOP also shows us, normal folk, how we are and it is not always pretty because the story is uncompromising in its honesty. Not all of us can face our true nature. Many would dispute that we are as we are. There is a thread of misanthropy at the heart of the story spun by the lessons of harsh experience. But there are also flashes of hope, companionship and compassion in the story.
The counterpoising of despair and hope is mirrored in the language, too. The street speech of the characters if captured with razor accuracy. But it is set against poetic prose which Vasily Grossman would applaud.
ICE CREAM AND AESOP faces ugliness. It highlights the death of five prostitues in Ipswich and rages at the vileness of some of the news commentary. I felt more than once that it was not the ugliness of the street people that I found myself regretting but the broader indifference in the rest of us.
That said ICE CREAM AND AESOP is a profoundly moving and beautiful book because of the humanity that breaks through the concrete of our callousness like the dandelions and common chickweed that break through the cracked concrete of JACOBS PARLOUR MAID .. EST.1897 .. QUALITY ITALIAN ICE CREAM OF EAST ANGLIA, 52-54 GRIMWADE STREET, IPSWICH.
I recommend it to you.
Here is the link to it: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ice-Cream-Aes...
Ron Askew, June 2013, St Albans.
March 2, 2013
LOVE POEMS AND MORE FROM THE HEART AND SOUL OF MAN .. deep down southern pride captured in verse
I have never met Charles Johnson, but having read his Love Poems and More From the Heart and Soul of Man - forty years in the making - I feel like I have known him all my life.
Plain speaking humanity and honesty are what Charles Johnson serves up for us in. And I enjoyed every moment of my journey through his poetry, which I read over the course of a couple of days commuting in and out of London.
He is a well travelled man, having served around the world in the USAF. His early love poems draw on the sights and natural beauties he has seen to express his love. And towards the end of the collection he expresses profound compassion for those who suffered in Japan and Haiti after the terrible earthquakes there.
He feels intensely and lives as he feels. A patriotic American, he loves Old Glory, curses his country's enemies, yet does not hesitate to show how that same country sometimes scorns its vets. One of the most intensely moving poems was towards the end of the collection. A unit is flying off to war. His poet's eye shows us the faces of the young troops turning for one last look back as they board the plane that will take them to god knows what. Profound. I know about the wars of course. Brits have been there, too. But they seem far more personal to Americans because of the insult of 9/11. Respect for the forces also runs deep in America still. It's not about glorifying war, not at all. It's about honouring those who serve in what they believe to be a just cause - the red white and blue cause of democracy and freedom. It matters. It is vital that poets write about it because it is about heart, the heart of the nation, and our collective heart, Western values. It is vital that those who go off, perhaps to die, are honoured by poets like Charles Johnson.
So I was moved. I saw those faces getting onto that plane.
I also saw an other face in another very moving poem, I AM BABABBAS, where the poet has the cynical and unrepentant Barabbas suddenly say, 'I was touched and changed as he (Christ) looked directly at me'.
It feels real. We feel those looks.
That said, this collection is very much about home, the poet's home and his inner feelings, his personal home within.
MA BELL, one of the first poems, takes us to Sapulpa, Oklahoma, where 'it was like God took the sun, on that day, in that small town..' on the day of the dear old lady's death. I am sure she would feel proud to be so movingly remembered. It is as if we, too, know her.
There are many tender love poems and quite a few about lost love and the sadness of being alone. The poet has loved intensely. It's all there.
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT FOR THE HELPLESS ROMANTIC - love that title - nails it with the lost lover, '..helplessly dreaming of them for days..' and '..your heart clouds your vision so perfection is all you see..' Timeless stuff.
He nails the passion, too, '..like trying to bottle up a volcano, or stop the rising sun..' with lips '..like a very sweet love potion, demand your attention, invoking your devotion..' as '..naughty minds collide..'
He captures the giving joy of love '..if I could hold time in my hands, each second I would give to you..' and how love sets us free '..with one giant step you washed away my fears..' and '..I finally let down my walls and felt your endless love come rushing through..'
This is to live, to feel the best of life.
But he is not all luvvy dovvy, roses are red - though he does write sweetly about the sweet power of roses.
In the wonderfully titled FREAKY PARTY GIRL WITH A PERFECT SMILE we see a drunk woman in a bar losing it and heading for the rocks. We both want to be with her, to share her carefree lustfullness, but also feel sorry for her, and ashamed that we want her. Above all we see her. She is real, alive to us through the poet's eye.
And in the CUPID'S BROKEN ARROW there are these three heart-stabbing lines, '..my marriage is broken, my heart is brokem, my life is broken..' Powerfully emotive stuff. Millions will recongise the feeling in those three cutting jabs.
This brings me to, for me, two of the strongest poems in the collection CHEATER'S MERRY-GO-ROUND and FAMILY GATHERING.
These poems could easily make great songs, with lines like, '..he didn't want you when you were free..' and '..there's a missing plate..' and '..I see her in the vase on the table and the rug down the hall..
These are achingly sad, but in an achingly beautiful way because they capture life and articulate how we feel. The ability to do this is a gift. Charles Johnson has this gift and writes with great clarity about these little big things, universal themes.
The want of love is a theme he returns to often. The best of these poems is ALOHA ALONE, where the poet finds himself in an idlyllic setting only to realise that everyone else is with someone, apart from him. Even a couple in their eighties underscore his aloneness.
He nails this feeling in SOUTHERN STYLE LONELY which has a lovely repetition in it .. 'southern pride, southern pride, deep down southern pride..' Bravo!
Lost love produces some classic titles, which feel like song titles to me, namely, IF I WERE ALADIN .. HUMPTY DUMPTY HEARTS, and MY EMPTY HEART TATTOO. For me, the very best of these is FROM A PAWN TO A QUEEN, there must be millions of women who are treated like pawns and would love to make it to be a queen in the arms of one who truly loves them.
And - pause to catch my breath - when it all goes wrong and love is gone, he is never bitter, and hopes for the very best fot the lost lover, '..I am happy knowing you will be happy..'
And for those for whom it plain works, those who stay together, LIVING FOREVER A DECADE AT A TIME captures an idealised love beautifully: '..after a full life together, an immense love is all they feel..' I so relate to this and applaud it as a good model for how we should strive to be because such relationships hold everything together - for us all. We all need there to be such marriages, just like we all need there to be Ma Bells to show us how to live well, to be happy with our lot. There is not one syllable of selfishness in Charles Johnson's writing.
Now then! Change of tack. I also had some great laughs as I read this collection. I smirked lustfully at BIKINIS AND TATTOOS MAKE ME HORNY. And I was in absolute stitches at the brilliantly funny MOONSHINE STILL ON LAUGHTER HILL, which revels in the effects of hooch on a philosophical country gentleman. I also loved MY GUITAR STILL THINKS IT'S A TREE. Oh, and I nodded in agreement at the plain wisdom of AA MEETINT AT THE LOCAL BAR, which shows how important a quiet drink in easy company is to most of us.
It's all here. He remembers his dad teaching him how to fish. He remembers Uncle Bule a simple but blessed man, with a passion for red. And in SIGNNED BUBBA'S MOM he celebrates the qualities of a son who sacrifices his own success to help his mother learn to read.
Much as Christ caught Barabbas' eye and the boys stepping onto the plane looked back, so too Charles Johnson the poet catches Charles Johnson the man looking back over his life, not in one momnent but in lots of little moments over the time it has taken him to collect his lines. I drew comfort and instruction from this. Comfort because it shows a life lived to the full with a positive outlook. And insttuctive because it made me think about my own life and made me think I should remember some of the lines in the poems. For example, there is a line in CHEATER'S MERRY-GO-ROUND that struck home, '..I didn't even notice as you started to change..'
And there is this. The collection is very much a man poetry for men. I think hard men who might think poetry has nothing to do with their lives could be moved and benefit from reading these poems, which may show them that it is not a bad thing to be in touch with our feelings. And young men of bad attitude could well benefit from reading this collection because they might learn how to grow into better men. I would have these poems read in jails. I believe poetry can change lives, especially poetry such as this which is not about counting syllables, making pretty patterns or constructing grand metaphysical schemes. We are dealing with something far more important - the heart. And what is any poetry without a beating heart?
I recommend Love Poems and More From the Heart and Soul of Man to you because it shows the pulse of honest America beats as strong as ever. And if I ever do get to meet Charles Johnson I will shake his and say, 'Respect, poet!'
Plain speaking humanity and honesty are what Charles Johnson serves up for us in. And I enjoyed every moment of my journey through his poetry, which I read over the course of a couple of days commuting in and out of London.
He is a well travelled man, having served around the world in the USAF. His early love poems draw on the sights and natural beauties he has seen to express his love. And towards the end of the collection he expresses profound compassion for those who suffered in Japan and Haiti after the terrible earthquakes there.
He feels intensely and lives as he feels. A patriotic American, he loves Old Glory, curses his country's enemies, yet does not hesitate to show how that same country sometimes scorns its vets. One of the most intensely moving poems was towards the end of the collection. A unit is flying off to war. His poet's eye shows us the faces of the young troops turning for one last look back as they board the plane that will take them to god knows what. Profound. I know about the wars of course. Brits have been there, too. But they seem far more personal to Americans because of the insult of 9/11. Respect for the forces also runs deep in America still. It's not about glorifying war, not at all. It's about honouring those who serve in what they believe to be a just cause - the red white and blue cause of democracy and freedom. It matters. It is vital that poets write about it because it is about heart, the heart of the nation, and our collective heart, Western values. It is vital that those who go off, perhaps to die, are honoured by poets like Charles Johnson.
So I was moved. I saw those faces getting onto that plane.
I also saw an other face in another very moving poem, I AM BABABBAS, where the poet has the cynical and unrepentant Barabbas suddenly say, 'I was touched and changed as he (Christ) looked directly at me'.
It feels real. We feel those looks.
That said, this collection is very much about home, the poet's home and his inner feelings, his personal home within.
MA BELL, one of the first poems, takes us to Sapulpa, Oklahoma, where 'it was like God took the sun, on that day, in that small town..' on the day of the dear old lady's death. I am sure she would feel proud to be so movingly remembered. It is as if we, too, know her.
There are many tender love poems and quite a few about lost love and the sadness of being alone. The poet has loved intensely. It's all there.
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT FOR THE HELPLESS ROMANTIC - love that title - nails it with the lost lover, '..helplessly dreaming of them for days..' and '..your heart clouds your vision so perfection is all you see..' Timeless stuff.
He nails the passion, too, '..like trying to bottle up a volcano, or stop the rising sun..' with lips '..like a very sweet love potion, demand your attention, invoking your devotion..' as '..naughty minds collide..'
He captures the giving joy of love '..if I could hold time in my hands, each second I would give to you..' and how love sets us free '..with one giant step you washed away my fears..' and '..I finally let down my walls and felt your endless love come rushing through..'
This is to live, to feel the best of life.
But he is not all luvvy dovvy, roses are red - though he does write sweetly about the sweet power of roses.
In the wonderfully titled FREAKY PARTY GIRL WITH A PERFECT SMILE we see a drunk woman in a bar losing it and heading for the rocks. We both want to be with her, to share her carefree lustfullness, but also feel sorry for her, and ashamed that we want her. Above all we see her. She is real, alive to us through the poet's eye.
And in the CUPID'S BROKEN ARROW there are these three heart-stabbing lines, '..my marriage is broken, my heart is brokem, my life is broken..' Powerfully emotive stuff. Millions will recongise the feeling in those three cutting jabs.
This brings me to, for me, two of the strongest poems in the collection CHEATER'S MERRY-GO-ROUND and FAMILY GATHERING.
These poems could easily make great songs, with lines like, '..he didn't want you when you were free..' and '..there's a missing plate..' and '..I see her in the vase on the table and the rug down the hall..
These are achingly sad, but in an achingly beautiful way because they capture life and articulate how we feel. The ability to do this is a gift. Charles Johnson has this gift and writes with great clarity about these little big things, universal themes.
The want of love is a theme he returns to often. The best of these poems is ALOHA ALONE, where the poet finds himself in an idlyllic setting only to realise that everyone else is with someone, apart from him. Even a couple in their eighties underscore his aloneness.
He nails this feeling in SOUTHERN STYLE LONELY which has a lovely repetition in it .. 'southern pride, southern pride, deep down southern pride..' Bravo!
Lost love produces some classic titles, which feel like song titles to me, namely, IF I WERE ALADIN .. HUMPTY DUMPTY HEARTS, and MY EMPTY HEART TATTOO. For me, the very best of these is FROM A PAWN TO A QUEEN, there must be millions of women who are treated like pawns and would love to make it to be a queen in the arms of one who truly loves them.
And - pause to catch my breath - when it all goes wrong and love is gone, he is never bitter, and hopes for the very best fot the lost lover, '..I am happy knowing you will be happy..'
And for those for whom it plain works, those who stay together, LIVING FOREVER A DECADE AT A TIME captures an idealised love beautifully: '..after a full life together, an immense love is all they feel..' I so relate to this and applaud it as a good model for how we should strive to be because such relationships hold everything together - for us all. We all need there to be such marriages, just like we all need there to be Ma Bells to show us how to live well, to be happy with our lot. There is not one syllable of selfishness in Charles Johnson's writing.
Now then! Change of tack. I also had some great laughs as I read this collection. I smirked lustfully at BIKINIS AND TATTOOS MAKE ME HORNY. And I was in absolute stitches at the brilliantly funny MOONSHINE STILL ON LAUGHTER HILL, which revels in the effects of hooch on a philosophical country gentleman. I also loved MY GUITAR STILL THINKS IT'S A TREE. Oh, and I nodded in agreement at the plain wisdom of AA MEETINT AT THE LOCAL BAR, which shows how important a quiet drink in easy company is to most of us.
It's all here. He remembers his dad teaching him how to fish. He remembers Uncle Bule a simple but blessed man, with a passion for red. And in SIGNNED BUBBA'S MOM he celebrates the qualities of a son who sacrifices his own success to help his mother learn to read.
Much as Christ caught Barabbas' eye and the boys stepping onto the plane looked back, so too Charles Johnson the poet catches Charles Johnson the man looking back over his life, not in one momnent but in lots of little moments over the time it has taken him to collect his lines. I drew comfort and instruction from this. Comfort because it shows a life lived to the full with a positive outlook. And insttuctive because it made me think about my own life and made me think I should remember some of the lines in the poems. For example, there is a line in CHEATER'S MERRY-GO-ROUND that struck home, '..I didn't even notice as you started to change..'
And there is this. The collection is very much a man poetry for men. I think hard men who might think poetry has nothing to do with their lives could be moved and benefit from reading these poems, which may show them that it is not a bad thing to be in touch with our feelings. And young men of bad attitude could well benefit from reading this collection because they might learn how to grow into better men. I would have these poems read in jails. I believe poetry can change lives, especially poetry such as this which is not about counting syllables, making pretty patterns or constructing grand metaphysical schemes. We are dealing with something far more important - the heart. And what is any poetry without a beating heart?
I recommend Love Poems and More From the Heart and Soul of Man to you because it shows the pulse of honest America beats as strong as ever. And if I ever do get to meet Charles Johnson I will shake his and say, 'Respect, poet!'
February 17, 2013
IT STARTED WITH A CLICK .. and let to a meeting in the flessh (spoilers)
Estelle Wilkinson's It Started With A Click: A Memoir of an eBay Romance is a story of our times for our times, about an online romance which springs out of nothing to become something.
Catherine 'meets' Damien when she buys some tickets on ebay for a rugby game. As you do! The two strike up a chatty relationship which has them swapping messages on cars, football teams, bosses, friends and exs. We learn about their characters as they become increasingly revelatory with each other. They are at ease from the start. They literally click, click, click, from the first click. And they don't stop .. clicking.
We learn about Damien's dodgy hips and Catherine's wardrobe full of black trousers. And we see our own lives in what they are watching on TV and how much boozing and partying they are doing.
There must be thousands of such relationships going on right now.
It Started With A Click: A Memoir of an eBay Romance is a mini social history of our times. We see how we are from it and maybe pick up a few tips on how to be from it. Art immitates life and life immitates art.
And we are curious because we are evesdroppers on the most private of exchanges which evolves as the two clickers gradually shed their inhibitions.
Will they hit it off? Yes. Will they do the ugly? What's stopping them? We will them to get on with it. But this is 2004, things have speeded up since then. D and C are polite, measured, respectful and gentle. And the story is a great tease, especially in the second half when they make plans for holidays in Spain and America, but have not actually met for their first weekend at home.
How will it be meeting a beautiful stranger about whom we know so much apart from whether the big click will happen .. in the real.
That said things do progress, in some ways astonishingly so. The notion of them discussing whih football teams their kids will support shows how vigorous their fantasy is.
But what about the ugly? Will they? Will they? We will them to.
They plan holidays, they discuss flights to Las Vagas and Spain. But how about meeting ..
Things progress. Their chit chat becomes increasingly passionate. Our eyes hoover it up. We know them well now, we want them to make it. We want to be there, with them. We want to know, to share their feelings and thrills. Phew.
Yes, the story becomes steamy.
But for this reader it was the struggle between fantasy and reality, which must feature in most online romances, which was the most fascinating angle. How far can fantasy take us?
Over to the two love birds:
DAMIEN: If there's a spark there, let's ignite it, there will be plenty of time for talking over the weekend!
CATHERINE: .. it seems a foregone conclusion that we will meet, melt and pounce, ignite that spark and fall in to bed probably at about the same time that we fall madly in love!
DAMIEN: I've never fancied someone I've never met before, I've never even had a crush on a celebrity or anything like that, which is what makes it all so strange. I really do think I fancy you already - how can a rational 31 year old bloke come out with something like that?
CATHERINE: I don't know! None of it makes sense but it feels really good so you just have to follow your heart! Which is what we're doing by meeting on Friday!!
DAMIEN: I think we're too romantic by half!!
CATHERINE: I think we must be! Is that good?
DAMIEN: It dependes whether we let romance get in the way of reality or reality get in the way of romance. .. I'm not that interested in reality at the moment, just the Catherine Lord fantasy.
CATHERINE: What about the Catherine Lord reality on Friday - will you be interested then?
DAMIEN: Yes, because I think it will be even better than the fantasy!
CATHERINE: It will be!
I thoroughly enjoyed this fly-on-the-wall read and recommend it to you. Estelle Wilkinson's story won my eye and keep me reading with increasing curiosity as the temperature rose steadily.
Catherine 'meets' Damien when she buys some tickets on ebay for a rugby game. As you do! The two strike up a chatty relationship which has them swapping messages on cars, football teams, bosses, friends and exs. We learn about their characters as they become increasingly revelatory with each other. They are at ease from the start. They literally click, click, click, from the first click. And they don't stop .. clicking.
We learn about Damien's dodgy hips and Catherine's wardrobe full of black trousers. And we see our own lives in what they are watching on TV and how much boozing and partying they are doing.
There must be thousands of such relationships going on right now.
It Started With A Click: A Memoir of an eBay Romance is a mini social history of our times. We see how we are from it and maybe pick up a few tips on how to be from it. Art immitates life and life immitates art.
And we are curious because we are evesdroppers on the most private of exchanges which evolves as the two clickers gradually shed their inhibitions.
Will they hit it off? Yes. Will they do the ugly? What's stopping them? We will them to get on with it. But this is 2004, things have speeded up since then. D and C are polite, measured, respectful and gentle. And the story is a great tease, especially in the second half when they make plans for holidays in Spain and America, but have not actually met for their first weekend at home.
How will it be meeting a beautiful stranger about whom we know so much apart from whether the big click will happen .. in the real.
That said things do progress, in some ways astonishingly so. The notion of them discussing whih football teams their kids will support shows how vigorous their fantasy is.
But what about the ugly? Will they? Will they? We will them to.
They plan holidays, they discuss flights to Las Vagas and Spain. But how about meeting ..
Things progress. Their chit chat becomes increasingly passionate. Our eyes hoover it up. We know them well now, we want them to make it. We want to be there, with them. We want to know, to share their feelings and thrills. Phew.
Yes, the story becomes steamy.
But for this reader it was the struggle between fantasy and reality, which must feature in most online romances, which was the most fascinating angle. How far can fantasy take us?
Over to the two love birds:
DAMIEN: If there's a spark there, let's ignite it, there will be plenty of time for talking over the weekend!
CATHERINE: .. it seems a foregone conclusion that we will meet, melt and pounce, ignite that spark and fall in to bed probably at about the same time that we fall madly in love!
DAMIEN: I've never fancied someone I've never met before, I've never even had a crush on a celebrity or anything like that, which is what makes it all so strange. I really do think I fancy you already - how can a rational 31 year old bloke come out with something like that?
CATHERINE: I don't know! None of it makes sense but it feels really good so you just have to follow your heart! Which is what we're doing by meeting on Friday!!
DAMIEN: I think we're too romantic by half!!
CATHERINE: I think we must be! Is that good?
DAMIEN: It dependes whether we let romance get in the way of reality or reality get in the way of romance. .. I'm not that interested in reality at the moment, just the Catherine Lord fantasy.
CATHERINE: What about the Catherine Lord reality on Friday - will you be interested then?
DAMIEN: Yes, because I think it will be even better than the fantasy!
CATHERINE: It will be!
I thoroughly enjoyed this fly-on-the-wall read and recommend it to you. Estelle Wilkinson's story won my eye and keep me reading with increasing curiosity as the temperature rose steadily.
January 30, 2013
FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION - a review philosophique
Life being so beautifully tiresome, we read to be free to be the more .. alive. And when to read is not enough we write, o how we write and write and write, because the tyranny of instincts insists we create to reconstruct its universal dream o fwhat it is to be anew within this primacy of primes .. alive.
Hunter S. Jones' Fables of the Reconstruction bit my neck and ate my brains.
I shall be reading it again.
A gone wrong honey badger of a novella, FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION MAKES no apology for not wiping its feet when it dances into your life because - I tweet you not - your life exists for it to be.
Brilliant writing does not mimic life at its best because it is life at its best, being, as it is, at the core of that medium through which life perceives itself to be language.
On the face of it, FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION is about four frotting zombies frotting and feasting their ravenous way through the hirsute fistula that was steampunk London's Whitechapel, circa 1890.
Perhaps life makes zombies of us all with its incessant BDSM demands for more, more, always MORE!
What are we to do? Become aesthetes? Poets? Loggoffs?
No. We obey, drain ourselves in the quest for more, become .. zombies. Take a look at th the 07:38 train from St.Albans into London's St.Pancras station: zombies, planning, craving, pursuing their next feast of whatever, success, sex, success, succsex. I tweet you not.
FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION is an exhaustingly refreshing read. The wording is sweetly seductive, especially in the teasing early graphs, the undead characters live with startling vigour, and the structure, with it varied voices and mischievous ending cap-W-works.
I would have read it all without blinking save my wimpish Kindle swooned at the sheer sexual potency of the Huntress's locked and loaded life force.
This, for this reader, was the ultimate joy in all this: the sense of playing host to a supersexuality at the height of her creative powers, climaxing repeatedly through my synapses with a wink and a smirk.
To quote from another of The Hun's stories the read for me was a 'comustive coupling'. And - I tweet you not - this graph perfectly captures how it felt for me when I was done: 'My legs were still entwined around him as we dreamily returned from that place to which your mind retreats after your body is satisfied.' Metaphysically speaking of course.
More? You want more? Over to the story .. a few of my fave dabs:
'Minzle quite suddenly and beautifully danced into my life. He was really something. Full of life and mischief was he. And gorgeous; he was gorgeous.'
'..a body built for pleasure..'
'The demon tongue wrapped around my *li* .. like two delicate, small, wet fingers.'
'We exchanged this knowingness without saying one word.'
I commend FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION to you. Some will fine it far too alive, stronger minds will be enlivened by it and crave more, amore, amore. *bows*
Hunter S. Jones' Fables of the Reconstruction bit my neck and ate my brains.
I shall be reading it again.
A gone wrong honey badger of a novella, FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION MAKES no apology for not wiping its feet when it dances into your life because - I tweet you not - your life exists for it to be.
Brilliant writing does not mimic life at its best because it is life at its best, being, as it is, at the core of that medium through which life perceives itself to be language.
On the face of it, FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION is about four frotting zombies frotting and feasting their ravenous way through the hirsute fistula that was steampunk London's Whitechapel, circa 1890.
Perhaps life makes zombies of us all with its incessant BDSM demands for more, more, always MORE!
What are we to do? Become aesthetes? Poets? Loggoffs?
No. We obey, drain ourselves in the quest for more, become .. zombies. Take a look at th the 07:38 train from St.Albans into London's St.Pancras station: zombies, planning, craving, pursuing their next feast of whatever, success, sex, success, succsex. I tweet you not.
FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION is an exhaustingly refreshing read. The wording is sweetly seductive, especially in the teasing early graphs, the undead characters live with startling vigour, and the structure, with it varied voices and mischievous ending cap-W-works.
I would have read it all without blinking save my wimpish Kindle swooned at the sheer sexual potency of the Huntress's locked and loaded life force.
This, for this reader, was the ultimate joy in all this: the sense of playing host to a supersexuality at the height of her creative powers, climaxing repeatedly through my synapses with a wink and a smirk.
To quote from another of The Hun's stories the read for me was a 'comustive coupling'. And - I tweet you not - this graph perfectly captures how it felt for me when I was done: 'My legs were still entwined around him as we dreamily returned from that place to which your mind retreats after your body is satisfied.' Metaphysically speaking of course.
More? You want more? Over to the story .. a few of my fave dabs:
'Minzle quite suddenly and beautifully danced into my life. He was really something. Full of life and mischief was he. And gorgeous; he was gorgeous.'
'..a body built for pleasure..'
'The demon tongue wrapped around my *li* .. like two delicate, small, wet fingers.'
'We exchanged this knowingness without saying one word.'
I commend FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION to you. Some will fine it far too alive, stronger minds will be enlivened by it and crave more, amore, amore. *bows*
January 21, 2013
YEAR OF THE CELT ~ an excellent evocation of our ancestors' stuggles and ways
Two themes dominate this fine piece of historical fiction set 2,500 years ago: savage winter weather and immigration.
Hmmm,with half-a-foot of snow on the groud in most of England these past days, I cld not have picked a more apt time to read Rob Godfrey's enjoyable yarn of a trouble time, Year of the Celt: Imbolc
And what has led the news recently? The question of how many Bulgarians and Romanians may flock to Britain in a few months when EU regulations change. 75,000? 400,000?
Everything has changed in the last 2,500 years, yet nothing has changed.
This was one of the things that made Year of the Celt: Imbolc such a fascinating read, the familiarity of the issues facing Callan, Weland and Sealgair. The red-haired tyke having a row with a Polish guy over a parking space at his local Sainsbury's in Bingley cld easily be Sealgair.
As for the weather... Global warming is making British winters far more severe is seems. Brrrrrrrrrr.
I enjoyed Year of the Celt: Imbolc It caught my imagination early on and led my curiosity throughout. I grew to like some of the characters and shared their concerns for their future. They felt very human, very real, as did the problems they were struggling to survive. Morbod, a grumpy boatman on the River Lune, and Maccus, a myopic but sage old stone carver were esp well drawn secondary characters.
Another aspect of the story that won me was that it was about a village at the back of nowhere. There must have been thousands of such places facing such survival issues in our history.
And this is our history. There are many people in Britain who are the direct descendants of the Celts. For them aspects of Year of the Celt: Imbolc are in their DNA.
Me, I am a viking from the other side of the Pennines.
There are several stories and themes artfully interwoven into the fabric of Year of the Celt: Imbolc I esp enjoyed the sense of closeness to nature, the animals, the earth, and the seasons. I found this very appealing. Perhaps we cld learn from this story.
Youth, adventure, love, adultery, courage and betrayal are all there. Everything has changes, yet nothing has changed.
The story is well constructed also. The first two thirds fascinate and jog along nicely, with some great action, but it is in the last third from Chapter 22 onwards that things really take off as the consequences of the stresses facing the characters come to a climax.
There are some absolutely charming dabs in the last part of the book also which reminded me of Hardy's love for country traditions, esp a Yule celebration Celtic style.
I will leave you with a question which is at the heart of the story asked by Sealgair:
"Friends, my family have lived here for generations as you know. We've made a good living, by and large, with little help from outsiders ... we helped build this crannog (village) with our bare hands and our sweat. We've toiled on the hillsides to clear enought grazing land for our sheep and cattle. Why should we jeopardise it for strangers?"
On the face of it Sealgair is a wise man:
"We risk everything if we start ignoring the natural order of things."
Yet, as always in human affairs, things turn twisted and bad.
I commend Year of the Celt: Imbolc to you.
Hmmm,with half-a-foot of snow on the groud in most of England these past days, I cld not have picked a more apt time to read Rob Godfrey's enjoyable yarn of a trouble time, Year of the Celt: Imbolc
And what has led the news recently? The question of how many Bulgarians and Romanians may flock to Britain in a few months when EU regulations change. 75,000? 400,000?
Everything has changed in the last 2,500 years, yet nothing has changed.
This was one of the things that made Year of the Celt: Imbolc such a fascinating read, the familiarity of the issues facing Callan, Weland and Sealgair. The red-haired tyke having a row with a Polish guy over a parking space at his local Sainsbury's in Bingley cld easily be Sealgair.
As for the weather... Global warming is making British winters far more severe is seems. Brrrrrrrrrr.
I enjoyed Year of the Celt: Imbolc It caught my imagination early on and led my curiosity throughout. I grew to like some of the characters and shared their concerns for their future. They felt very human, very real, as did the problems they were struggling to survive. Morbod, a grumpy boatman on the River Lune, and Maccus, a myopic but sage old stone carver were esp well drawn secondary characters.
Another aspect of the story that won me was that it was about a village at the back of nowhere. There must have been thousands of such places facing such survival issues in our history.
And this is our history. There are many people in Britain who are the direct descendants of the Celts. For them aspects of Year of the Celt: Imbolc are in their DNA.
Me, I am a viking from the other side of the Pennines.
There are several stories and themes artfully interwoven into the fabric of Year of the Celt: Imbolc I esp enjoyed the sense of closeness to nature, the animals, the earth, and the seasons. I found this very appealing. Perhaps we cld learn from this story.
Youth, adventure, love, adultery, courage and betrayal are all there. Everything has changes, yet nothing has changed.
The story is well constructed also. The first two thirds fascinate and jog along nicely, with some great action, but it is in the last third from Chapter 22 onwards that things really take off as the consequences of the stresses facing the characters come to a climax.
There are some absolutely charming dabs in the last part of the book also which reminded me of Hardy's love for country traditions, esp a Yule celebration Celtic style.
I will leave you with a question which is at the heart of the story asked by Sealgair:
"Friends, my family have lived here for generations as you know. We've made a good living, by and large, with little help from outsiders ... we helped build this crannog (village) with our bare hands and our sweat. We've toiled on the hillsides to clear enought grazing land for our sheep and cattle. Why should we jeopardise it for strangers?"
On the face of it Sealgair is a wise man:
"We risk everything if we start ignoring the natural order of things."
Yet, as always in human affairs, things turn twisted and bad.
I commend Year of the Celt: Imbolc to you.
January 12, 2013
AN INTERVIEW WITH HOLLY AND GUY ~ by Sailor Online
Holly Golightly is the star in Truman Capote's BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S and Guy Montag is the man in Ray Bradbury's FAHRENHEIT 451. Both are brilliant creations. As for Sailor, I will leave you to work out who he might be. Tis a fiction, but a fiction.
AN INTERVIEW WITH HOLLY AND GUY by Sailor Online
SAILOR: So where did you two guys meet?
GUY MONTAG: In a reader's head. He'd just read us and there we were!
HOLLY GOLIGHTLY: (beaming broadly) Yeah, in his head.
GUY: We just, kinda, met, and she fell for my earnest good intentions. Nothing to do with how much I work out now, nothing at all.
HOLLY: I thought you were thinner than a Maine winter, when I first saw you.
GUY: That's cause I'd been stumbling around after the war.
HOLLY: Yeah, you were in bad shape
GUY: That's the thing about writers. They take no responsibility for what happens to us after the last page of our stories, that last, final, full stop. Then they die and it's too late. We go on. In my case, stumbling around in post-apocalypse America, coast to coast dead cities. You had it easy babes.
HOLLY: Only he (smiles at Guy) could call running a steak-n-tango joint on the arty side of BA easy.
SAILOR: BA?
GUY: Buenos Aires. You know, whre she ended up after Rio. It's all right there in the novella. You have read it, right? Only joking, Sailor, man!
HOLLY: (pats Sailor's knee) Take no notice. It's a side of him Ray Bradbury just never developed, just never knew about.
GUY: There was a lot Ray never knew about me.
SAILOR: Ach, the downsides of being a hero figure in a dystopian classic, I guess.
GUY: I guess.
HOLLY: Can I build you a drink, Sailor darling? This interview must be making you awfully thirsty, what with the air-con in this joint. I don't know how you guys survive the heat outside and the cold inside these days.
GUY: A Holly Golightly White Lady on the rocks is not to be sniffed at Sailor. (sighs happily) Will you just look at her!
HOLLY: Down boy. (shakes drink)
GUY: (to Sailor) If Ray and Truman knew the half of it .. (chuckles, winks)
HOLLY: (to Sailor) I think the lunk inhaled too much kerosene buring all those books year on year..
SAILOR: What sort of books do you guys read now? This for all the goodreads.commers.
GUY: Hol reads more tha I do, always has. There's nothing she won't read and hasn't read. She has great taste. I've never said this before, but she'd make a great writer, too.
HOLLY: Stephen King, can't stop reading him. I've so tried to get Guy to read THE STAND. Don't you think he's just love THE STAND? And THE PRODIGY, I so wish I could get him to listen to FIRESTARTER. NO! I mean it!
GUY: See what I have to live with?
SAILOR: Which iPod have you got there?
HOLLY: (holds her iPod up) Over 10,000 songs on the sucker. Ain't that something!
GUY: Bradbury was so advanced. He nailed the iPod with his earshells. And I swear to you his family walls predicted Facebook and wall to wall televisions, don't you think. I'm lucky he wrote me. A class act Ray Bradbury, a top class act.
SAILOR: And what is the fabulous Holly Golightly's view of Truman Capote?
HOLLY: Don't have one, never have, no need.
SAILOR: But he created you!
HOLLY: I like to think I created him, sugar
SAILOR: That is just soooo Holly Golightly.
HOLLY: How could it not be? I said it.
SAILOR: Would you, either of you like to be real?
HOLLY: Well you're a fine one to ask! 'Sailor'.
GUY: We are real, real fictions. We've sprung from human minds. Is a mind real? If it is, then that which it produces is real.
SAILOR: Imagination is real?
GUY: Metaphysically, yes. And surely our metaphycial creations exceed our physical creations. So maybe they and we are more real than ..
HOLLY: We're as real as money, is what he's saying.
GUY: And my small shifting hiatus hernia is real.
HOLLY: I somtimes think he's like good old Joe Bell in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. He even knocks the Tums back. And you might not believe this but he's taken to the flower arranging malrky, too. Now ain't that something? Who'd have thought Guy Montag would turn out a flower arranger? But I love him.
SAILOR: That's a sweet thing to say.
HOLLY: I love him because he makes me feel real in a way that Cayote Capote and Buster Bradbury never could Put that in your interview, every word of it.
GUY: And I love her because ..
HOLLY: Because I'm out of one book you and Chief Beatty could never burn. Ain't that the truth!
GUY: (smiling at Sailor) You see how she is. And why I love her to death. How can I disagree?
SAILOR: You can't.
GUY: The flower arranging.. It calms me down. I've had a stressful life. FAHRENHEIT 451 is not an easy book to be in. I mean, would you like to be Guy Montage? No, I thought not. Nor did I, to be honest with you. I especially like tulips. I don't know what it is about tulips, but..
SAILOR: And do you still ride Holly?
HOLLY: Are you kidding? Not after that caper in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. I lost the heir, don't forget. That Capote put me through a miscarriage. It was the lowest of the lows for me.
GUY: (taking Holly's hand) Yeah, Truman had no real idea what he put Holly through.
HOLLY: Awe, thanks sugar. (kissed Guy on lips, slowly at first and then with growing passion)
SAILOR: (aside) Shall we talk among ourselves a while? They seem to, erm, like each other. (Guy comes up for air) So tell me Guy Montag, how does it feel to be on the receiving end of a smacker from Miss Golightly-Flaming-Lips?
GUY: Hotter-n a pistol! (smiles at Holly) I just love her, always will.
SAILOR: Fred in BREAKFAST would be jealous.
HOLLY: Ach, he was gay and I was a geisha. And that was then. (blows a kiss) Hi Fred, darling. Wherever you are. You and the birdcage, 'Open wide the mind's cage door.'
SAILOR: Shelley?
HOLLY: Keats. The one thing Fred gave me.
SAILOR: Keatss?
HOLLY: A real love of reading, books-n-all. I can never get enough.
GUY: (smiling) So it was all worth it, saving the books.
HOLLY: Yeah, it was all worth it. (to Sailor) We all love this guy. (pulls Guy's arm playfully)
GUY: Yeah, but I did burn a lot of books. That I regret. But that's how I was written to be, a book burner. But I like to think I turned out OK in the end.
HOLLY: (to Sailor) I'm just so lucky I met this guy. Books, all down to books, books, books. We were born in books, Guy and I. People love us still, I'm told. (Sailor nods) We're lucky. We're timeless, immutable, never age. (holds her smartphone up) If I could just phone Capote, tell him.. I think it would make him very happy, to know we live on, to know how I met Guy here.
SAILOR: How did you meet actually?
GUY: We were in the mind of the same reader. He, the reader, had just finished BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S..
HOLLY: And loved every word of it, darling. Keep this bit in Sailor, sweetness.
GUY: Apparently, he, the reader, was creased double at the cavalry charge in Central Park.
HOLLY: Sparks flying. Terrifying.
GUY: As I was saying.. He then read FAHRENHEIT 451 and seems to have loved that, too, though in a different sort of way.
HOLLY: Because you were hot, babes. They all loved it because you were on fire, babes.
GUY: (to Sailor, feigning exhasperation) The Golightly magic.
HOLLY: I'm serious. I ran off to Rio when the merde hit. You.. (mists up) You went to the old professor, did the right thing, fought for what was right.
GUY: And torched a man, don't forget. (lowers his head)
HOLLY: An evi, fascist, book-burner. You stood up for books and freedom and the right to think differently. You're a hero to me. You really are. Me? I even pitched my cat into the trashcans from a moving limmo. (lowers her head)
SAILOR: (squirming a little in his seat) Can you tell us what you did in Rio?
HOLLY: No. It's not in the story, so we can't tell. Some things are forever private. (looks at Guy, as if for support) None of us can. Ours are story lives, real, but still story lives. We end with the story as far as the world is concerned. That last .. full .. stop. Over. done, world.
GUY: Except we go on.
HOLLY: Peter and Patsy Pan, forever young.
SAILOR: Yet here you are.
GUY: Yet here we are.
HOLLY: thanks to something remarkable and truly beautiful that happened in the mind of a reader.
GUY: I once heard of a reader who said to a writer, 'I'm just a reader'. But where would any of us be without her, the reader? Readers are all.
SAILOR: But they need writers, right? Or how else could they be readers?
HOLLY: You guys! Golightly.
GUY: (exchanges glance with Sailor) See, see how she is? It's why I..
SAILOR: Why we all love her.
HOLLY: Run that past me again, sugar.
SAILOR: I see you have a Kindle Fire there, and an iPod. May I ask what you're reading right now, an your fave listen?
HOLLY: What is this, Desert Island Discs? MUSE. I'm definitely into MUSE. We've been to a couple of their gigs, me and lunk here. (pulls Guy's arm)
SAILOR: (to Guy) Are you into MUSE, too?
GUY: Luckily, yes. We mosh. It's been great. We dress up. Holly loves it. And the great beauty is we can be so totally ourselves, not know by anyone. I'm just the lucky guy with no hair, but with this beautiful young woman on my arm. Now, how good is that?
SAILOR: And how do you fell about this beautiful young woman's Kindle, Mr. Montag of book saving fame?
GUY: My, that's a cute question for a Thursday afternoon in January! (thinks) I love it. Because she loves it. She reads all the time, not always on the Kindle, real book books too.. All the time. She's probably itching to read now, if truth be told. Everything. She reads everything because she is THE reader.
SAILOR: So tell me, Holly Golightly, what's on your Kindle right now?
HOLLY: I'm reading this astonishingly wonderful novella. I just love novellas. And I'm not just saying that because I'm in one. The one I'm reading right now: WATCHING SWIFTS. By some Brit writer, R.J.Askew. No, I'd never heard of him. But I have now. And so have you. It's just.. He makes me cry. In a good way. He makes me cry. There's a glass half full guy and a glass half empty guy. It's an allegory. There's Nature. This messed up war photographer, Emma Saywell, who reminds me of me, of how I might have been if I'd had a, like, job. Leonardo's this artist guy who sees more with his artist's eye than Emma ever sees through her camera lens. Blah. Life, love, death, being alive, London's Kew Gardens, beauty, poetry. Are you getting the vibe of the verb? It's good verb Sailor, I tweet you not. Different. Very not mean. Very not average. Very, very me.
GUY: And that's what it's all about, right? It's not my sort of read, but if Holly likes it..
HOLLY: Like is not a word I love, sugar. I love that little story. I wish I was in it, is all.
GUY: Babes? (Holly lowers her head and sniffs) ..you alright?
HOLLY: (sobs) Yes, I'm very happy.
GUY: You sure?
HOLLY: It's just so.. (sobs) ..damned poetic.
SAILOR: Do you want to stop the interview? I see how upset you are.
HOLLY: No, sweetheart. I'm not upset. I just get this way. Stories. Books. Fred. I've never forgiven myself for how I dissed Fred when he was trying to get me to read his story. And I went and dissed him. Because I didn't know then. Now I know. I read. And I know. There's beauty in books for those lucky enough to know how and where to look. 'Tell me, are you a real writer?' I said to him. I'm going to help you,' I said. 'I can, too. Think of all the people I know who know people.' But I didn't, not really. Do me a favour Sailor..
SAILOR: A WATCHING SPARROWS kind of favour?
HOLLY: SWIFTS, WATCHING SWIFTS. Trust me, download it. Read it. Tell me what you think. I'm serious, Guy. Or you can't run the interview.
GUY: Holly!
HOLLY: No, I mean it. I let Fred down. I won't let R.J. down. Is is a deal, Sailor?
SAILOR: Look.. (loads amazon.co.uk onto his tablet, searches for book, adds to basket, buys) There. Done.
HOLLY: You rock, Sailor! Has anyone ever told you that? You soooo rock!
SAILOR: Guy Montag of FAHRENHEIT 451, Holly Golightly of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S thank you.
HOLLY: Thank YOU! Sailor. I've always loved your music. Guy does. too. We saw you twice when you toured the States. In fact, I so don't believe I'm going to do this. (pulls out a copy of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S) Please may I ask if you sign this for me..
GUY: Holly!
HOLLY: What? What did I say? (Sailor, being the wag he is, signs, with a broad grin on his face)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
WATCHING SWIFTS .. amazon UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk/WATCHING-SWIF...
WATCHING SWIFTS .. amazon US
http://www.amazon.com/WATCHING-SWIFTS...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AN INTERVIEW WITH HOLLY AND GUY by Sailor Online
SAILOR: So where did you two guys meet?
GUY MONTAG: In a reader's head. He'd just read us and there we were!
HOLLY GOLIGHTLY: (beaming broadly) Yeah, in his head.
GUY: We just, kinda, met, and she fell for my earnest good intentions. Nothing to do with how much I work out now, nothing at all.
HOLLY: I thought you were thinner than a Maine winter, when I first saw you.
GUY: That's cause I'd been stumbling around after the war.
HOLLY: Yeah, you were in bad shape
GUY: That's the thing about writers. They take no responsibility for what happens to us after the last page of our stories, that last, final, full stop. Then they die and it's too late. We go on. In my case, stumbling around in post-apocalypse America, coast to coast dead cities. You had it easy babes.
HOLLY: Only he (smiles at Guy) could call running a steak-n-tango joint on the arty side of BA easy.
SAILOR: BA?
GUY: Buenos Aires. You know, whre she ended up after Rio. It's all right there in the novella. You have read it, right? Only joking, Sailor, man!
HOLLY: (pats Sailor's knee) Take no notice. It's a side of him Ray Bradbury just never developed, just never knew about.
GUY: There was a lot Ray never knew about me.
SAILOR: Ach, the downsides of being a hero figure in a dystopian classic, I guess.
GUY: I guess.
HOLLY: Can I build you a drink, Sailor darling? This interview must be making you awfully thirsty, what with the air-con in this joint. I don't know how you guys survive the heat outside and the cold inside these days.
GUY: A Holly Golightly White Lady on the rocks is not to be sniffed at Sailor. (sighs happily) Will you just look at her!
HOLLY: Down boy. (shakes drink)
GUY: (to Sailor) If Ray and Truman knew the half of it .. (chuckles, winks)
HOLLY: (to Sailor) I think the lunk inhaled too much kerosene buring all those books year on year..
SAILOR: What sort of books do you guys read now? This for all the goodreads.commers.
GUY: Hol reads more tha I do, always has. There's nothing she won't read and hasn't read. She has great taste. I've never said this before, but she'd make a great writer, too.
HOLLY: Stephen King, can't stop reading him. I've so tried to get Guy to read THE STAND. Don't you think he's just love THE STAND? And THE PRODIGY, I so wish I could get him to listen to FIRESTARTER. NO! I mean it!
GUY: See what I have to live with?
SAILOR: Which iPod have you got there?
HOLLY: (holds her iPod up) Over 10,000 songs on the sucker. Ain't that something!
GUY: Bradbury was so advanced. He nailed the iPod with his earshells. And I swear to you his family walls predicted Facebook and wall to wall televisions, don't you think. I'm lucky he wrote me. A class act Ray Bradbury, a top class act.
SAILOR: And what is the fabulous Holly Golightly's view of Truman Capote?
HOLLY: Don't have one, never have, no need.
SAILOR: But he created you!
HOLLY: I like to think I created him, sugar
SAILOR: That is just soooo Holly Golightly.
HOLLY: How could it not be? I said it.
SAILOR: Would you, either of you like to be real?
HOLLY: Well you're a fine one to ask! 'Sailor'.
GUY: We are real, real fictions. We've sprung from human minds. Is a mind real? If it is, then that which it produces is real.
SAILOR: Imagination is real?
GUY: Metaphysically, yes. And surely our metaphycial creations exceed our physical creations. So maybe they and we are more real than ..
HOLLY: We're as real as money, is what he's saying.
GUY: And my small shifting hiatus hernia is real.
HOLLY: I somtimes think he's like good old Joe Bell in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. He even knocks the Tums back. And you might not believe this but he's taken to the flower arranging malrky, too. Now ain't that something? Who'd have thought Guy Montag would turn out a flower arranger? But I love him.
SAILOR: That's a sweet thing to say.
HOLLY: I love him because he makes me feel real in a way that Cayote Capote and Buster Bradbury never could Put that in your interview, every word of it.
GUY: And I love her because ..
HOLLY: Because I'm out of one book you and Chief Beatty could never burn. Ain't that the truth!
GUY: (smiling at Sailor) You see how she is. And why I love her to death. How can I disagree?
SAILOR: You can't.
GUY: The flower arranging.. It calms me down. I've had a stressful life. FAHRENHEIT 451 is not an easy book to be in. I mean, would you like to be Guy Montage? No, I thought not. Nor did I, to be honest with you. I especially like tulips. I don't know what it is about tulips, but..
SAILOR: And do you still ride Holly?
HOLLY: Are you kidding? Not after that caper in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. I lost the heir, don't forget. That Capote put me through a miscarriage. It was the lowest of the lows for me.
GUY: (taking Holly's hand) Yeah, Truman had no real idea what he put Holly through.
HOLLY: Awe, thanks sugar. (kissed Guy on lips, slowly at first and then with growing passion)
SAILOR: (aside) Shall we talk among ourselves a while? They seem to, erm, like each other. (Guy comes up for air) So tell me Guy Montag, how does it feel to be on the receiving end of a smacker from Miss Golightly-Flaming-Lips?
GUY: Hotter-n a pistol! (smiles at Holly) I just love her, always will.
SAILOR: Fred in BREAKFAST would be jealous.
HOLLY: Ach, he was gay and I was a geisha. And that was then. (blows a kiss) Hi Fred, darling. Wherever you are. You and the birdcage, 'Open wide the mind's cage door.'
SAILOR: Shelley?
HOLLY: Keats. The one thing Fred gave me.
SAILOR: Keatss?
HOLLY: A real love of reading, books-n-all. I can never get enough.
GUY: (smiling) So it was all worth it, saving the books.
HOLLY: Yeah, it was all worth it. (to Sailor) We all love this guy. (pulls Guy's arm playfully)
GUY: Yeah, but I did burn a lot of books. That I regret. But that's how I was written to be, a book burner. But I like to think I turned out OK in the end.
HOLLY: (to Sailor) I'm just so lucky I met this guy. Books, all down to books, books, books. We were born in books, Guy and I. People love us still, I'm told. (Sailor nods) We're lucky. We're timeless, immutable, never age. (holds her smartphone up) If I could just phone Capote, tell him.. I think it would make him very happy, to know we live on, to know how I met Guy here.
SAILOR: How did you meet actually?
GUY: We were in the mind of the same reader. He, the reader, had just finished BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S..
HOLLY: And loved every word of it, darling. Keep this bit in Sailor, sweetness.
GUY: Apparently, he, the reader, was creased double at the cavalry charge in Central Park.
HOLLY: Sparks flying. Terrifying.
GUY: As I was saying.. He then read FAHRENHEIT 451 and seems to have loved that, too, though in a different sort of way.
HOLLY: Because you were hot, babes. They all loved it because you were on fire, babes.
GUY: (to Sailor, feigning exhasperation) The Golightly magic.
HOLLY: I'm serious. I ran off to Rio when the merde hit. You.. (mists up) You went to the old professor, did the right thing, fought for what was right.
GUY: And torched a man, don't forget. (lowers his head)
HOLLY: An evi, fascist, book-burner. You stood up for books and freedom and the right to think differently. You're a hero to me. You really are. Me? I even pitched my cat into the trashcans from a moving limmo. (lowers her head)
SAILOR: (squirming a little in his seat) Can you tell us what you did in Rio?
HOLLY: No. It's not in the story, so we can't tell. Some things are forever private. (looks at Guy, as if for support) None of us can. Ours are story lives, real, but still story lives. We end with the story as far as the world is concerned. That last .. full .. stop. Over. done, world.
GUY: Except we go on.
HOLLY: Peter and Patsy Pan, forever young.
SAILOR: Yet here you are.
GUY: Yet here we are.
HOLLY: thanks to something remarkable and truly beautiful that happened in the mind of a reader.
GUY: I once heard of a reader who said to a writer, 'I'm just a reader'. But where would any of us be without her, the reader? Readers are all.
SAILOR: But they need writers, right? Or how else could they be readers?
HOLLY: You guys! Golightly.
GUY: (exchanges glance with Sailor) See, see how she is? It's why I..
SAILOR: Why we all love her.
HOLLY: Run that past me again, sugar.
SAILOR: I see you have a Kindle Fire there, and an iPod. May I ask what you're reading right now, an your fave listen?
HOLLY: What is this, Desert Island Discs? MUSE. I'm definitely into MUSE. We've been to a couple of their gigs, me and lunk here. (pulls Guy's arm)
SAILOR: (to Guy) Are you into MUSE, too?
GUY: Luckily, yes. We mosh. It's been great. We dress up. Holly loves it. And the great beauty is we can be so totally ourselves, not know by anyone. I'm just the lucky guy with no hair, but with this beautiful young woman on my arm. Now, how good is that?
SAILOR: And how do you fell about this beautiful young woman's Kindle, Mr. Montag of book saving fame?
GUY: My, that's a cute question for a Thursday afternoon in January! (thinks) I love it. Because she loves it. She reads all the time, not always on the Kindle, real book books too.. All the time. She's probably itching to read now, if truth be told. Everything. She reads everything because she is THE reader.
SAILOR: So tell me, Holly Golightly, what's on your Kindle right now?
HOLLY: I'm reading this astonishingly wonderful novella. I just love novellas. And I'm not just saying that because I'm in one. The one I'm reading right now: WATCHING SWIFTS. By some Brit writer, R.J.Askew. No, I'd never heard of him. But I have now. And so have you. It's just.. He makes me cry. In a good way. He makes me cry. There's a glass half full guy and a glass half empty guy. It's an allegory. There's Nature. This messed up war photographer, Emma Saywell, who reminds me of me, of how I might have been if I'd had a, like, job. Leonardo's this artist guy who sees more with his artist's eye than Emma ever sees through her camera lens. Blah. Life, love, death, being alive, London's Kew Gardens, beauty, poetry. Are you getting the vibe of the verb? It's good verb Sailor, I tweet you not. Different. Very not mean. Very not average. Very, very me.
GUY: And that's what it's all about, right? It's not my sort of read, but if Holly likes it..
HOLLY: Like is not a word I love, sugar. I love that little story. I wish I was in it, is all.
GUY: Babes? (Holly lowers her head and sniffs) ..you alright?
HOLLY: (sobs) Yes, I'm very happy.
GUY: You sure?
HOLLY: It's just so.. (sobs) ..damned poetic.
SAILOR: Do you want to stop the interview? I see how upset you are.
HOLLY: No, sweetheart. I'm not upset. I just get this way. Stories. Books. Fred. I've never forgiven myself for how I dissed Fred when he was trying to get me to read his story. And I went and dissed him. Because I didn't know then. Now I know. I read. And I know. There's beauty in books for those lucky enough to know how and where to look. 'Tell me, are you a real writer?' I said to him. I'm going to help you,' I said. 'I can, too. Think of all the people I know who know people.' But I didn't, not really. Do me a favour Sailor..
SAILOR: A WATCHING SPARROWS kind of favour?
HOLLY: SWIFTS, WATCHING SWIFTS. Trust me, download it. Read it. Tell me what you think. I'm serious, Guy. Or you can't run the interview.
GUY: Holly!
HOLLY: No, I mean it. I let Fred down. I won't let R.J. down. Is is a deal, Sailor?
SAILOR: Look.. (loads amazon.co.uk onto his tablet, searches for book, adds to basket, buys) There. Done.
HOLLY: You rock, Sailor! Has anyone ever told you that? You soooo rock!
SAILOR: Guy Montag of FAHRENHEIT 451, Holly Golightly of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S thank you.
HOLLY: Thank YOU! Sailor. I've always loved your music. Guy does. too. We saw you twice when you toured the States. In fact, I so don't believe I'm going to do this. (pulls out a copy of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S) Please may I ask if you sign this for me..
GUY: Holly!
HOLLY: What? What did I say? (Sailor, being the wag he is, signs, with a broad grin on his face)
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WATCHING SWIFTS .. amazon UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk/WATCHING-SWIF...
WATCHING SWIFTS .. amazon US
http://www.amazon.com/WATCHING-SWIFTS...
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