S. Scott Whitaker's Blog, page 10
September 6, 2015
Lust, Murder & Money in Robert N Friedland's The Second Wedding of Doctor Geneva Song, #fictionreview
Lust, Murder & Money
Robert N. Friedland's The Second Wedding of Doctor Geneva Song, erotically charges through Canadian Chinese socialscapes, leaving broken hearts, bodies and wisps of wickedness behind. Friedland's been here before, in his short story collection Faded Love, where he deftly explored the psycho-sexual relations of Caucasian men and Chinese women; its a territory Friedland knows by the back of his hand. This time the narrative twists around the inner conflicts of Dr. Geneva Song, and her Spirit Sister, Sister Deri. The names are notable for Geneva, is at first a marriage of two cultures at peace, but one eventually into darker unsettling waters. And sister is, well a sister of many definitions, adding to the Friedland's motif of duality; opposing forces that sometimes yin, and sometimes yang.
Sam Victor, a character from Friedland's Faded Love, Geneva's older detached husband, serves as passive more gentle lover to Deri and Geneva. His relationship with Deri is not unknown to Geneva, who also has lovers of her own to explore. The characters here exhibit a kind of passion that is restrained and bland in public, hiding aggression and desire behind a veneer of conservatism, but all the time fighting to come to the surface, to be outed. And Friedland explores a Google search worth of sexual scenarios, focusing on both the physical and psychological effects on the relationships that intertwine.
The people in Friedland's world are a lusty, sadistic lot, all manners of mental and sexual degradation heighten the suspense of Geneva's rape, the subsequent murder of the rapist, and the investigation that follows. The plot is well designed, but spare, serving more of a link between psycho-sexual conflicts, Friedland's strong suite.
Robert N. Friedland's The Second Wedding of Doctor Geneva Song, erotically charges through Canadian Chinese socialscapes, leaving broken hearts, bodies and wisps of wickedness behind. Friedland's been here before, in his short story collection Faded Love, where he deftly explored the psycho-sexual relations of Caucasian men and Chinese women; its a territory Friedland knows by the back of his hand. This time the narrative twists around the inner conflicts of Dr. Geneva Song, and her Spirit Sister, Sister Deri. The names are notable for Geneva, is at first a marriage of two cultures at peace, but one eventually into darker unsettling waters. And sister is, well a sister of many definitions, adding to the Friedland's motif of duality; opposing forces that sometimes yin, and sometimes yang.
Sam Victor, a character from Friedland's Faded Love, Geneva's older detached husband, serves as passive more gentle lover to Deri and Geneva. His relationship with Deri is not unknown to Geneva, who also has lovers of her own to explore. The characters here exhibit a kind of passion that is restrained and bland in public, hiding aggression and desire behind a veneer of conservatism, but all the time fighting to come to the surface, to be outed. And Friedland explores a Google search worth of sexual scenarios, focusing on both the physical and psychological effects on the relationships that intertwine.
The people in Friedland's world are a lusty, sadistic lot, all manners of mental and sexual degradation heighten the suspense of Geneva's rape, the subsequent murder of the rapist, and the investigation that follows. The plot is well designed, but spare, serving more of a link between psycho-sexual conflicts, Friedland's strong suite.
Published on September 06, 2015 12:57
September 5, 2015
The Wall Did Not Answer---Alfonso Gatto's Selected #Poems are a Marvel to visit
The Wall Did Not Answer---Alfonso Gatto's Selected Poems are a Marvel to visit.
This review could easily turn into a wiki-biographical-critical history of the Italian Resistance Poet, but it isn't, mostly because I'm going to assume that dear reader, you, probably have no idea who Gatto is, or even care less about Italian Resistance Poetry. Not that you aren't interested, or turned off by the idea, but that it is this reader's opinion that taking his work out of context is just as powerful of a experience as reading them in context, and it is in fact a testament to his powers to read them out of context and find yourself moved.
And for those of you who like to travel and tramp comfortably about the world, Gatto's poems put you spiritually in the heart of Italy, and emotionally at the center of love. Who wouldn't turn down a romantic night, blossoming with love, wine, and the moon round and plump? Even with danger lurking in the alley, or perhaps even because of it.
I dither on.
Gatto's a good listen, a good read. His works are windows into another relationship, landscape, point of view. Without irony, without bloated symbolism; they are country cottages in a yard of flowers and trees. They may be quiet places to rest your reading hat upon, but they are places full of story, history, and love. What I like to discover in poems are places. Perhaps that's why I like old country songs, and on occasion, a new ramble along about some place I've never been. And because I'm an American and find Mediterranean life romantic when Gatto takes us to where “the evenings shall return to cool off/the piazzas in the blue” and where “O, windows, wells, lodges, glass/attached to life...turn toward dawn with that song of lost words...You are the red pulp of a split watermelon/in the center of a white tablecloth” I'm there. Book my ticket. Sell me on love.
But Gatto is a Resistance poet, a voice against Fascism, and witness and advocate for those who cannot speak. I'm reminded of Martin Espada, my first poetry teacher, who urged his young chargers to not forgot those without a voice, and I imagine Gatto would agree. “It was dawn, and where people worked...where the same shriek/of trams was the day's greeting to the fresh/face of the living—and they wanted a massacre/so that Milan would have...her promised sons all mingled in one heart.” For the Martyrs of Piazzale Loreto juxtaposes the mundane city life with the horror of massacred civilians who were killed for their partisan associations, a subject of great importance in Gatto's mythology.
Gatto's poems begin with place and spiral to people, often to freedom, often to love, which is where all poets eventually return to, is it not?
This review could easily turn into a wiki-biographical-critical history of the Italian Resistance Poet, but it isn't, mostly because I'm going to assume that dear reader, you, probably have no idea who Gatto is, or even care less about Italian Resistance Poetry. Not that you aren't interested, or turned off by the idea, but that it is this reader's opinion that taking his work out of context is just as powerful of a experience as reading them in context, and it is in fact a testament to his powers to read them out of context and find yourself moved.
And for those of you who like to travel and tramp comfortably about the world, Gatto's poems put you spiritually in the heart of Italy, and emotionally at the center of love. Who wouldn't turn down a romantic night, blossoming with love, wine, and the moon round and plump? Even with danger lurking in the alley, or perhaps even because of it.
I dither on.
Gatto's a good listen, a good read. His works are windows into another relationship, landscape, point of view. Without irony, without bloated symbolism; they are country cottages in a yard of flowers and trees. They may be quiet places to rest your reading hat upon, but they are places full of story, history, and love. What I like to discover in poems are places. Perhaps that's why I like old country songs, and on occasion, a new ramble along about some place I've never been. And because I'm an American and find Mediterranean life romantic when Gatto takes us to where “the evenings shall return to cool off/the piazzas in the blue” and where “O, windows, wells, lodges, glass/attached to life...turn toward dawn with that song of lost words...You are the red pulp of a split watermelon/in the center of a white tablecloth” I'm there. Book my ticket. Sell me on love.
But Gatto is a Resistance poet, a voice against Fascism, and witness and advocate for those who cannot speak. I'm reminded of Martin Espada, my first poetry teacher, who urged his young chargers to not forgot those without a voice, and I imagine Gatto would agree. “It was dawn, and where people worked...where the same shriek/of trams was the day's greeting to the fresh/face of the living—and they wanted a massacre/so that Milan would have...her promised sons all mingled in one heart.” For the Martyrs of Piazzale Loreto juxtaposes the mundane city life with the horror of massacred civilians who were killed for their partisan associations, a subject of great importance in Gatto's mythology.
Gatto's poems begin with place and spiral to people, often to freedom, often to love, which is where all poets eventually return to, is it not?
Published on September 05, 2015 15:00
September 4, 2015
Ken Poyner's Constant Animals is weird, funny, and absurd, #fictionreview
Ken Poyner's Constant Animals is best described as short speculative fiction laced with irony, droll humor, and satire. To say that much of Constant Animals is bizarre would be understatement, for Poyner’s world is our world turned upside down. Poyner''s fiction reminds me of Jonathan Letham's short fiction or better yet the surreal prose poetry of Russell Edson. Poyner’s Animals features mermaid wives in living room aquariums who wait for encyclopedia salesmen to fertilize their eggs. In one story a man elegizes his grip, in another a man takes up wearing a sled harness to make work easier and continues wearing it, much to the confusion and awe of those around him. Most of the stories are written in first person, without much dialogue. Dialogue would get in the way of Poyner's flash fiction, which is what these stories ultimately are. A few are two pages or less, most come in under five. The short story remains the most modern of literary genres, but it has never been the most profitable. Readers tend to like fat operatic works of fiction to sustain their reading lives for months. Big fat novels have proven to be unshakable, though the short story, and poetry, are better suited to subway and bus commutes, and our modern quick attention span. And flash fiction? It marries the best of poetry and the best of short fiction in a punk rock fashion. Poyner's style is a bit absurdist, and his stories read swiftly. The emotions are muted, but the situations, which play out like social comedies, or nightmares, would call for histrionics in the best of us: affairs, mid-life disappointments, but Poyner, like Letham, or David Foster Wallace, reminds us that even when life is its most absurd people often do not know how to react except to try to keep on being normal. Their reactions are anti-reactions. In "The Sister" a family paints doors and landscaping on an enormously fat sister and sell her as a house to a couple who is known the wiser. The couple eventually has a child, and the sister falls in love with a tan house across the street. One morning the families wake up to find themselves on the lawn "looking for the walls" while the sister lumbers off into the sunset with the tan house underneath her arm. They simply cannot fathom what has happened and go about with their lives as if none of it did.In another story a man wears bear suit while he performs in a circus until the man and the suit merge and the man becomes the bear. In another a man carries a monkey and worms out the social norms such relationships defy. A prostitute made of glass sits in the dark and checks her surface for cracks and chips. Alien species mate and dirt farmers sell their children. Poyner's world in Constant Animals is a menagerie of odd, and it all happens at arm’s length, detached, floating, separate from us.Many of these stories pine with lust, most of them from the male perspective. Some of the stories are randy, others express a detached male guilt about lust. Poyner is at home writing about this breed of modern men, who are almost shy and embarrassed about their desires, tamed almost, but not quite. The men of these stories often are lost creatures, de-masculinized in the modern world of clerks, lawyers, statistics and abstract thought. The one theme that needles these stories together is the underlying instinctual urge to mate and love that lives in our DNA. We cannot escape it. Poyner humorizes it, shows us the irony, the cruelty of it but it's there nevertheless. If these flash fiction peices were written by another author its quite possible the outcomes would be violent, or tragic, given the same circumstances. But Poyner is witty, weird, and wild, and in his capable hands he gives us a myriad of worlds that shimmer and resemble our own, albeit through a warped window in a funhouse. I suggest you take him to the beach, and take a vacation from the romance and the formula mystery of summer beach reads. Poyner's style is bizarre but readable, and enjoyable, and a vacation from the norm.
Published on September 04, 2015 14:00
September 3, 2015
Jeffrey Lockwood's debut novel, Anomie, is a story of a man at odds with himself, #fictionreview
Jeffrey Lockwood’s debut novel, Anomie, from Harvard Square Editions, is a novel of a man who is at odds with himself, and the very world around him. Anomie, defined by Webster, is “social instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values; or personal unrest, alienation, and uncertainty that comes from a lack of purpose or ideals.” Like the title implies, the world of Anomie is one of shifting moral codes, and of melting cultures. It is a novel of instability, personal and cultural, that the protagonist must overcome.
Academia, like most jobs, is a trap. Lockwood’s criticism of its insular nature is evident as he details Michael’s past. Academia, like the ivy that climbs the English department buildings, is also a destructive force, pulling down the very egos it once held up. Part of Michael’s ego is crushed when he loses Helene, his true love, and part of his ego is crushed by addiction. After an accident in Canada, the once promising Fulbright winning Michael finds himself with a codeine addiction, and a despondent detachment to his job. Michael bottoms out and quits his job to go abroad, attempting a rebirth by teaching English in China. It is there he hopes to find himself once again. This is the world Michael inhabits, a world that Michael cannot function in, or understand; the disconnect of Western Individualism, and the confining, cloistered collectivism of the East. Michael belongs in neither world, and does not even belong to himself.
The novel’s prologue opens in dialect, and frames for the reader how language and culture can be both alienating and an adventure. Baby Michael is being sung to, and read asleep by Frenchie, who tells him the story of Gookoosh, a story about travel, strange adventure, and foreign places. Frenchie’s dialect is heavy, and pronounced, and the characterization becomes the metaphor for Michael’s conflict. Michael exists between cultures, and has so since birth. As the novel unfolds Michael attempts to forge his identity, to bring his halves together.
We meet Michael on a train, reading great works of Western literature, as he barrels into the heart of China. Michael’s detachment is palpable, and he stands out in stark contrast to the men on the train who have a useful purpose, traveling to work, whereas Michael is locked into his own memory and past, hanging on to the very identity he is trying to escape; the life of an academic poet. Michael is good at what he does, but he doesn’t seem to love it very much. He is nominated for a Stonington Award, a writer in residence fellowship that he ultimately turns down. Mostly because he wouldn’t feel comfortable around the faculty.
During Michael’s second semester of teaching in China he meets Li Qin, a precocious English student, and the two of them begin an on again, off again relationship. After she cheats on him with Brad, a pot smoking bohemian, Michael forces himself upon her and ends the relationship, sending him off into another downward spiral of alcoholic drinking. Li Qin pops up intermittently, a symbol of his recent past, a past he doesn’t understand. And Michael’s life continues to be the same old problems over and over again. Fear, self destruction, and lack of direction continue to haunt him. And when he finally meets Avery, a beautiful Chinese woman, he still cannot let go of the past. Helene, and Li Qin haunt him still. Avery, of course, has her own trappings, one of them being her arranged open marriage. Avery is game for Michael, but it is Michael who is hesitant.
Lockwood also flashback’s to Michael’s childhood struggle with his own mixed heritage, and it is where Anomie comes together as a story. Lockwood’s novel is a story of man without a place, who has to struggle and fight himself to become comfortable in his own skin, and up until the last chapters, it isn’t clear if Michael will find himself in China, or back home among the Native Americans of Crooked River.
The novel jumps, and the storyline is expansive. Michael is a character who isn’t very likable. He gives Lockwood a chance to discuss literature and criticize the trappings of America, the West, and careerist culture, but he doesn’t give the reader much to root for. He is restless, irritable, and discontent. It isn’t until the end of the book that Michael feels whole, feels fully realized as a person, or character. But of course, this comes after Lockwood puts Michael through the paces, giving him one personal failure after personal failure to contend with.
Academia, like most jobs, is a trap. Lockwood’s criticism of its insular nature is evident as he details Michael’s past. Academia, like the ivy that climbs the English department buildings, is also a destructive force, pulling down the very egos it once held up. Part of Michael’s ego is crushed when he loses Helene, his true love, and part of his ego is crushed by addiction. After an accident in Canada, the once promising Fulbright winning Michael finds himself with a codeine addiction, and a despondent detachment to his job. Michael bottoms out and quits his job to go abroad, attempting a rebirth by teaching English in China. It is there he hopes to find himself once again. This is the world Michael inhabits, a world that Michael cannot function in, or understand; the disconnect of Western Individualism, and the confining, cloistered collectivism of the East. Michael belongs in neither world, and does not even belong to himself.
The novel’s prologue opens in dialect, and frames for the reader how language and culture can be both alienating and an adventure. Baby Michael is being sung to, and read asleep by Frenchie, who tells him the story of Gookoosh, a story about travel, strange adventure, and foreign places. Frenchie’s dialect is heavy, and pronounced, and the characterization becomes the metaphor for Michael’s conflict. Michael exists between cultures, and has so since birth. As the novel unfolds Michael attempts to forge his identity, to bring his halves together.
We meet Michael on a train, reading great works of Western literature, as he barrels into the heart of China. Michael’s detachment is palpable, and he stands out in stark contrast to the men on the train who have a useful purpose, traveling to work, whereas Michael is locked into his own memory and past, hanging on to the very identity he is trying to escape; the life of an academic poet. Michael is good at what he does, but he doesn’t seem to love it very much. He is nominated for a Stonington Award, a writer in residence fellowship that he ultimately turns down. Mostly because he wouldn’t feel comfortable around the faculty.
During Michael’s second semester of teaching in China he meets Li Qin, a precocious English student, and the two of them begin an on again, off again relationship. After she cheats on him with Brad, a pot smoking bohemian, Michael forces himself upon her and ends the relationship, sending him off into another downward spiral of alcoholic drinking. Li Qin pops up intermittently, a symbol of his recent past, a past he doesn’t understand. And Michael’s life continues to be the same old problems over and over again. Fear, self destruction, and lack of direction continue to haunt him. And when he finally meets Avery, a beautiful Chinese woman, he still cannot let go of the past. Helene, and Li Qin haunt him still. Avery, of course, has her own trappings, one of them being her arranged open marriage. Avery is game for Michael, but it is Michael who is hesitant.
Lockwood also flashback’s to Michael’s childhood struggle with his own mixed heritage, and it is where Anomie comes together as a story. Lockwood’s novel is a story of man without a place, who has to struggle and fight himself to become comfortable in his own skin, and up until the last chapters, it isn’t clear if Michael will find himself in China, or back home among the Native Americans of Crooked River.
The novel jumps, and the storyline is expansive. Michael is a character who isn’t very likable. He gives Lockwood a chance to discuss literature and criticize the trappings of America, the West, and careerist culture, but he doesn’t give the reader much to root for. He is restless, irritable, and discontent. It isn’t until the end of the book that Michael feels whole, feels fully realized as a person, or character. But of course, this comes after Lockwood puts Michael through the paces, giving him one personal failure after personal failure to contend with.
Published on September 03, 2015 12:34
September 2, 2015
Lyn Lifshin's A Girl Goes into the Woods collects her work into a comprehensive volume, #poetryreview
Lyn Lifshin happens, as poetry does, and publishes so frequently it often the most said thing about her work; she’s prolific. Like an actor who stays busy, or a novelist, Lifshin produces. A Girl Goes Into the Woods is crafted the way a tradeswoman might construct a home.The poems selected for A Girl Goes into the Woods reflect the breadth and breath of Lifshin’s career. One of the great narratives of her work is about people and the tug of war with their body. Yes, many of these poems are about women, and what it means to have a woman’s body, and Lifshin accomplishes this in great scope. There are Barbie poems, and Madgirl poems, and Ice Maiden poems, and My Sister poems, and Lifshin documents life and human folly in a variety of suites. The openness and sensuality of the opening section, Black Velvet Girl (autobiography) are fine boards of memory, knotted with sensuous lines. Jewishness is explored in such wonderful poems such “Being Jewish in a Small Town” where the speaker "keep a/ Christmas tree in/my drawer..." and the theme is doubled and mirrored throughout the volume, about the Holocaust, and about small town consciousness. But her poems are not limited to women, or femaleness, they are about human nature. Lifshin changes costumes like a well seasoned thespian and is a confident crafter of scenes. Nuances of poetry’s first cousin, theatre, such as character and scenery, is not often well yielded by contemporary poets, but Lifshin understands the power of the suspension of belief, and the fourth wall. When Lifshin isn’t creating characters she expresses the daily grind of living. Take “April, Paris” for example, from the Isn’t it Enough How it Slams Back (what you can’t erase) section, where the speaker plays with Paris cliches, cafes, rain, smoking, pastries, but Lifshin, instead of writing about Paris, is writing about age and sex and our expectations of both, “I wish I could feel/what she must,dolled up,trying to soothe this/man and getting off on it.” Lifshin has a gift for capturing the balance of sex and death on our human bodies, and our more delicate psyche. The poems where the speaker is remembering a mother’s or lover’s slow decline illuminates the human condition; our bodies betray us, and they become old and flabby and flatulent, yet still capable of cruelty, jealousy, and lust.Going Home and Looking for the Lost Voices spoke to me as a reader and as a poet, perhaps their elegiac tone and wintry landscapes stood out to my ear. Gale of the Sun, Angels Don’t Fly (place) also struck me as particularly strong. And that’s the only problem with reviewing A Girl Goes into the Woods, Lifshin’s whopping vision. I’m wearing my reviewer’s anxiety on my proverbial sleeve here, dear reader, because I really try to connect to the writer’s intent and A Girl Goes into the Woods is a massive collection, 365 pages of poems (396 if you count front and back matter) and no review can capture the totality of the experience. Reading a book of poetry equates to several returns to reading the poet’s breath as it is arranged on the page, and this volume is one that lovers and newcomers to Lifshin’s work will return to again and again.
Published on September 02, 2015 12:28
September 1, 2015
HOW SOON IS NOW? Heather O'Neill's Memory Future examines memory and love, #poetryreview
HOW SOON IS NOW? Heather O'Neill's Memory Future examines memory and love
Heather Aimee O'Neill's Memory Future, winner of the 2010 Gold Line Press chapbook award, breaks upon the ear like a Sunday morning LP, and like a great record, the tones play upon each other and echo, and redouble, and enlarge, the needle skipping slightly between tracks, the rain coming down with steady even beats.
Broken into three sections, the titles of which come from English poet and writer Jeanette Winterson's Gut Symmetries, which both serve as an epigram to the entire work and introduce the metaphysical spines running through individual poems in this book. Winterson asks “What is salted up in the memory of you?...We think of our lives as linear but it is the spin of earth that allows us to observe time. ” O'Neill's speakers deal with a reality that begins in memory and works forward. And O'Neill's speakers often respond from the outskirts of love, defining a lover, reinterpreting a memory, recognizing that there is always one person in the relationship that is more desired than the other; one more caught up in the other's energy. O'Neill's dialogue with Winterson is one the many admirable things about this chapbook which feature poems that are compassionate, sensuous, and tender, but never fragile. They are like oaks covered in moss, at once serene and soft, but also hard and rooted in the past.
The book's prelude,“Certainty” features a chorus of voices, relatives and friends, who ask impossible and nagging questions to dead relatives and to those of have passed, and it's an appropriate set up for O'Neill's dialogue with memory. The questions these folk ask, many to religious figures, or historical rogues, frame the larger spiritual and emotional themes of the poems, such as asking “Jesus to speak slowly,” or Mother Superior “were we that unworthy?” but the more important and interesting questions are those asked to not Hitler or Christ, but to the husband, “Why?” to the father “where were you?” and to the grandfather “why did you sleep in separate rooms?”
“Salted up in the memory of you,” the first section, concerns the differences of spirit between two lovers, the speaker on the outside looking in, almost peeping at the other, remarking how different the two lovers are, and have become since joining. The poems threaten to reveal a relationship about to come apart, asking to “Begin at the end and remember/you were the one who asked for me?” The section ends with the powerful “From the Platform” where one lover watches the other leave on the subway and realizes that even within a relationship she is alone:I walk alongside the train, turnto catch your eyes one lasttime through the commuter crowd.But you look straight ahead intothe dark lines of the tunnel,book resting on your lap, eyesfull of the hazel green in your scarf.You could live without me.
Section two “the spin of the earth allows us to observe time” is a wonderfully done modern corona entitled “Winter in Spain.” A corona or crown of sonnets, which is, for those not in the know, a kind of chain sonnet, where the last line of the poem is the first line of the subsequent poem. The final line of the final poem is the first line of the first poem. A circle, a crown. A wonderful and difficult form to work within, and O'Neill gracefully alters the opening lines, and wiggles into the form her own way, keeping language fresh, virile. The subject is perfect for a corona, traveling through France and Spain with a lover, smoking, wine, the mysterious past, sexual tension that makes the back of your neck ripple. It's a sensuous dip into one's intoxication with a lover or companion.
Section three, “If the universe is movement it will not be in one direction only,” focuses on memory and reflection, and one the book's great strengths is that O'Neill manages to keep melodrama at arm's length while at a funeral, or at the beach, or while watching the shoreline for an errant father's tugboat to come home. The poet steers us through the past via relationships, their tenuous, and sometimes elliptical pull on our lives, and the book ends in the classroom, as the speaker visits her sister in school, and sees how her soft, respectable sister was once like her students, a little greedy, eager, contemplating more candy.
Memory Future is a taut, sensuous chapbook, highlighting the emotional landscapes between people we love, and how they affect us, our winding up and our winding down.
Heather Aimee O'Neill's Memory Future, winner of the 2010 Gold Line Press chapbook award, breaks upon the ear like a Sunday morning LP, and like a great record, the tones play upon each other and echo, and redouble, and enlarge, the needle skipping slightly between tracks, the rain coming down with steady even beats.
Broken into three sections, the titles of which come from English poet and writer Jeanette Winterson's Gut Symmetries, which both serve as an epigram to the entire work and introduce the metaphysical spines running through individual poems in this book. Winterson asks “What is salted up in the memory of you?...We think of our lives as linear but it is the spin of earth that allows us to observe time. ” O'Neill's speakers deal with a reality that begins in memory and works forward. And O'Neill's speakers often respond from the outskirts of love, defining a lover, reinterpreting a memory, recognizing that there is always one person in the relationship that is more desired than the other; one more caught up in the other's energy. O'Neill's dialogue with Winterson is one the many admirable things about this chapbook which feature poems that are compassionate, sensuous, and tender, but never fragile. They are like oaks covered in moss, at once serene and soft, but also hard and rooted in the past.
The book's prelude,“Certainty” features a chorus of voices, relatives and friends, who ask impossible and nagging questions to dead relatives and to those of have passed, and it's an appropriate set up for O'Neill's dialogue with memory. The questions these folk ask, many to religious figures, or historical rogues, frame the larger spiritual and emotional themes of the poems, such as asking “Jesus to speak slowly,” or Mother Superior “were we that unworthy?” but the more important and interesting questions are those asked to not Hitler or Christ, but to the husband, “Why?” to the father “where were you?” and to the grandfather “why did you sleep in separate rooms?”
“Salted up in the memory of you,” the first section, concerns the differences of spirit between two lovers, the speaker on the outside looking in, almost peeping at the other, remarking how different the two lovers are, and have become since joining. The poems threaten to reveal a relationship about to come apart, asking to “Begin at the end and remember/you were the one who asked for me?” The section ends with the powerful “From the Platform” where one lover watches the other leave on the subway and realizes that even within a relationship she is alone:I walk alongside the train, turnto catch your eyes one lasttime through the commuter crowd.But you look straight ahead intothe dark lines of the tunnel,book resting on your lap, eyesfull of the hazel green in your scarf.You could live without me.
Section two “the spin of the earth allows us to observe time” is a wonderfully done modern corona entitled “Winter in Spain.” A corona or crown of sonnets, which is, for those not in the know, a kind of chain sonnet, where the last line of the poem is the first line of the subsequent poem. The final line of the final poem is the first line of the first poem. A circle, a crown. A wonderful and difficult form to work within, and O'Neill gracefully alters the opening lines, and wiggles into the form her own way, keeping language fresh, virile. The subject is perfect for a corona, traveling through France and Spain with a lover, smoking, wine, the mysterious past, sexual tension that makes the back of your neck ripple. It's a sensuous dip into one's intoxication with a lover or companion.
Section three, “If the universe is movement it will not be in one direction only,” focuses on memory and reflection, and one the book's great strengths is that O'Neill manages to keep melodrama at arm's length while at a funeral, or at the beach, or while watching the shoreline for an errant father's tugboat to come home. The poet steers us through the past via relationships, their tenuous, and sometimes elliptical pull on our lives, and the book ends in the classroom, as the speaker visits her sister in school, and sees how her soft, respectable sister was once like her students, a little greedy, eager, contemplating more candy.
Memory Future is a taut, sensuous chapbook, highlighting the emotional landscapes between people we love, and how they affect us, our winding up and our winding down.
Published on September 01, 2015 13:00
August 31, 2015
From Share My Destiny's Archive: Mark Evans No Shelter From Darkness is top shelf #vampire #fiction, #review
Mark D Evans No Cover From Darkness is a nail biting coming of age novel set among the romantic and dangerous world of World War Two London during the Nazi bombing runs that razed the city. It's a horror story in the high romantic tradition of Stoker, Stevenson, and Shelley. Evans lays groundwork for a series that promises to grow into a pulpy action horror fun, but his origin story is all character, about an orphaned girl, Beth, who grows into a vampire as she moves into puberty, and the horrors of adult life, and all it's passion and thrill which are mirrored in her vampire awakening.
Much of the action of Darkness is inward, and Elizabeth, or Beth, the protagonist is for the most part a normal girl, adopted into a middle class London family at birth, and raised in a sheltered world of school and pesky little brothers. The Nazis bombing raids wreak havoc upon the family's life, and the neighborhood, and between the terrorizing bombs and the aftermath of the explosions, Beth has plenty to worry about. Her friend Mary has lost her parents and takes up home with her family. Her mother works long hours at the hospital, and baby brother Oliver and Beth have to fend a bit for themselves among the hawkish and predatory children of a bombed out London, all the while Beth is dogged by sickness and soon learns she is not what she seems.
Evans puts you in the thick of action, and it's in these intense moments where Beth comes of age as the bombs flash, the shelter shakes, and Beth has to face her new identity, vampyre. There have been sympathetic novels about vampires before, but Evans has not only tweaked the motiff, his setting allows for a layered rich tale. The climactic scene where Beth grapples with her inner vampire nature, the paines of her new vampire body, and the doubts of her human family, the danger outside her is equally real as bombs fall around her.
The characters in No Shelter From Darkness face darkness in a variety of forms, Bill, Beth's adopted father becomes the typical distrustful parent most teenagers face, save Bill plays that role because he is a trained vampire hunter, a member of the Ministry, hiding and protecting Beth, or perhaps only coralling her, and keeping her from harming others. Make no mistake, the action and thrills run like a spike through a vampire's heart in No Shelter from Darkness, and like the gothic novels of the previous centuries, the action is centered in the minds and hearts of the characters. Evans knows that a good thriller starts with an evocative and richly drawn world, and the characters that live there. Four Stars.
Much of the action of Darkness is inward, and Elizabeth, or Beth, the protagonist is for the most part a normal girl, adopted into a middle class London family at birth, and raised in a sheltered world of school and pesky little brothers. The Nazis bombing raids wreak havoc upon the family's life, and the neighborhood, and between the terrorizing bombs and the aftermath of the explosions, Beth has plenty to worry about. Her friend Mary has lost her parents and takes up home with her family. Her mother works long hours at the hospital, and baby brother Oliver and Beth have to fend a bit for themselves among the hawkish and predatory children of a bombed out London, all the while Beth is dogged by sickness and soon learns she is not what she seems.
Evans puts you in the thick of action, and it's in these intense moments where Beth comes of age as the bombs flash, the shelter shakes, and Beth has to face her new identity, vampyre. There have been sympathetic novels about vampires before, but Evans has not only tweaked the motiff, his setting allows for a layered rich tale. The climactic scene where Beth grapples with her inner vampire nature, the paines of her new vampire body, and the doubts of her human family, the danger outside her is equally real as bombs fall around her.
The characters in No Shelter From Darkness face darkness in a variety of forms, Bill, Beth's adopted father becomes the typical distrustful parent most teenagers face, save Bill plays that role because he is a trained vampire hunter, a member of the Ministry, hiding and protecting Beth, or perhaps only coralling her, and keeping her from harming others. Make no mistake, the action and thrills run like a spike through a vampire's heart in No Shelter from Darkness, and like the gothic novels of the previous centuries, the action is centered in the minds and hearts of the characters. Evans knows that a good thriller starts with an evocative and richly drawn world, and the characters that live there. Four Stars.
Published on August 31, 2015 14:00
August 30, 2015
From Share My Destiny's Archive: Jeff Gunhus' Night Chills is a paranormal romp, #fictionreview
Jeff Gunhus’ Night Chills is an adult paranormal romp that will scare the bejesus out of parents and drive horror readers deep into the winter nights to discover exactly what the hell is going on in the sleepy, creepy small town of Prescott City in western Maryland. Jack Tremont is a tortured middle class husband married to an understanding doctor, who have recently relocated their family to Prescott City because Jack killed a young girl in a car accident in California. A fresh start. A small town. Peaceful, right? And at first, the novel teases us with Jack’s past. How will it come back to haunt him? And when? Gunhus does not hold back the emotional punches. Night Chills owns its share of action, but the majority of the thrills early on have to do with parental anxiety towards losing one’s child.
There’s Max, Jack’s new friend, who may or may not be what he seems, and his emotional battle with the bottle, and the potential death of his daughter from cancer; his inner conflict echoes Jack’s past troubles, which doubles with the portents of danger offered by a drunk struck by lighting in front of the local watering hole. There’s the to good-to-be-true town shrink, Scott Moran, and the growing rifts between him and his teenager daughter and his new trophy wife. Not to mention the mysterious disappearance of a junkie teenage girl, and the mysterious death of a young Latino woman from a strange disease. Soon, Jack and his wife, Dr. Lauren Tremont, find themselves at the emotional axis of these events when their young daughter is threatened, and eventually kidnapped.
The opening act is anchored by Jack’s confrontation with the sadistic Nate Huckley, who assaults Jack and his daughters at a rest area in the middle of a cold early winter night. Of course, the memory of his recent past comes back to haunt him, and when his own daughter is threatened, it begins a daisy chain of events that will eventually connect Jack and his family to the paranormal “source,” a seemingly limitless energy that dates back before the local Native Americans.
As the novel corkscrews to a satisfying conclusion, that will thrill action and horror fans alike, Jack wrestles with his sanity, and Joseph Lonetree, a Native American crackerjack SEAL, who may or may not be trusted. Along the way Jack discovers a small town medical conspiracy, a super secret cult sucking “the source” dry for eternal life, and psychic powers, for decades. Gunhus keeps the plot boiling by pacing the red herrings, the easter eggs, and the conspiracy reveals so the reader is drawn into his thick web. Gunhus' forary into adult horror is reminiscent of the big dogs, King and Koontz, as his layers of supernatural, paranoia, and small town detail overlap and knot together.
For my money, the rotten town officials are a satisfying group of antagonists, but the use of Nate Huckley as a psychopathic, supernatural muscle man puts the stranglehold on the tension, as Gunhus ratchets the prose with mechanical precision. Huckley’s a borderline pedophile and rapist, and Gunhus keeps most of his creepy salacious leanings off page, but gives the reader enough to hate and root against while the imagination runs away with the details. When Huckley’s lust for power pushes him to make serious mistakes towards the end of the novel, your fist will be pumping for his blood.
Gunhus balances the good and evil out with the use of Lonetree, the Navy SEAL, as Huckley’s foil. The gruff, smart-ass, gun-toting, tracker also happens to know a lot about Native American mythology, thanks to his dear old departed Dad and brother, for whom Lonetree is seeking revenge against the cult's boss, a hidden figurehead who gaurds the source. Lonetree's a lot of a fun as he plans and plots circles around the supernatural coterie of small town wanna-be gods who hold Jack’s youngest daughter, Sara, hostage.
If you are looking for a book to keep you up late at night, and a book that delivers action as well as suspense, look no further than Night Chills. Four stars.
There’s Max, Jack’s new friend, who may or may not be what he seems, and his emotional battle with the bottle, and the potential death of his daughter from cancer; his inner conflict echoes Jack’s past troubles, which doubles with the portents of danger offered by a drunk struck by lighting in front of the local watering hole. There’s the to good-to-be-true town shrink, Scott Moran, and the growing rifts between him and his teenager daughter and his new trophy wife. Not to mention the mysterious disappearance of a junkie teenage girl, and the mysterious death of a young Latino woman from a strange disease. Soon, Jack and his wife, Dr. Lauren Tremont, find themselves at the emotional axis of these events when their young daughter is threatened, and eventually kidnapped.
The opening act is anchored by Jack’s confrontation with the sadistic Nate Huckley, who assaults Jack and his daughters at a rest area in the middle of a cold early winter night. Of course, the memory of his recent past comes back to haunt him, and when his own daughter is threatened, it begins a daisy chain of events that will eventually connect Jack and his family to the paranormal “source,” a seemingly limitless energy that dates back before the local Native Americans.
As the novel corkscrews to a satisfying conclusion, that will thrill action and horror fans alike, Jack wrestles with his sanity, and Joseph Lonetree, a Native American crackerjack SEAL, who may or may not be trusted. Along the way Jack discovers a small town medical conspiracy, a super secret cult sucking “the source” dry for eternal life, and psychic powers, for decades. Gunhus keeps the plot boiling by pacing the red herrings, the easter eggs, and the conspiracy reveals so the reader is drawn into his thick web. Gunhus' forary into adult horror is reminiscent of the big dogs, King and Koontz, as his layers of supernatural, paranoia, and small town detail overlap and knot together.
For my money, the rotten town officials are a satisfying group of antagonists, but the use of Nate Huckley as a psychopathic, supernatural muscle man puts the stranglehold on the tension, as Gunhus ratchets the prose with mechanical precision. Huckley’s a borderline pedophile and rapist, and Gunhus keeps most of his creepy salacious leanings off page, but gives the reader enough to hate and root against while the imagination runs away with the details. When Huckley’s lust for power pushes him to make serious mistakes towards the end of the novel, your fist will be pumping for his blood.
Gunhus balances the good and evil out with the use of Lonetree, the Navy SEAL, as Huckley’s foil. The gruff, smart-ass, gun-toting, tracker also happens to know a lot about Native American mythology, thanks to his dear old departed Dad and brother, for whom Lonetree is seeking revenge against the cult's boss, a hidden figurehead who gaurds the source. Lonetree's a lot of a fun as he plans and plots circles around the supernatural coterie of small town wanna-be gods who hold Jack’s youngest daughter, Sara, hostage.
If you are looking for a book to keep you up late at night, and a book that delivers action as well as suspense, look no further than Night Chills. Four stars.
Published on August 30, 2015 12:16
August 29, 2015
From Share My Destiny's Archive: Laurie Olerich's Primani is a plucky supernatural fun, #fictionreview
Laurie Olerich’s Primani, first in a series of plucky, angel, action adventure novels is a fun, hopeful yarn. Mica Thomas is an above average girl in a world of hurt. Primani opens as she is assaulted by a small town psychopath. She’s nearly finished off in the novel’s first quarter, which sees her through the early stages of recovery from rape and assault. And who better to help her recover in the world than Sean O’ Cahan, a handsome, hunky, ripped, Irish young man who has arrived from out of town as Mica gets her feet underneath her? Sean and his buddies are not what they seem, and in the early stages where Mica and her friends lust over their finely sculpted bodies and pine for sexual release, Sean and his friends remain distant from the girls who lust after them. They offer distraction, safety, and mystery to Mica who only wishes for life to move forward. To forget about the recent violent past. The tension is palpable, and as Mica’s fate rushes towards a second encounter with her assailant, Sean and his buddies reveal they are more than human.
Sean’s buddies, Dec, the protective one, and Killian, the strongest, and most aggressive, do not approve of Sean’s affection towards Mica, as the three carry themselves like trained special ops about upstate New York. And, as the narrative unfolds, are trained ops, just not of the human variety, they are Primani, soldiers of the first legion, and through a physical and romantic connection between Sean and Mica, Mica learns the truth, and sees the world through the eyes of the soldiers, quite literally, as she gains psychic powers.
Olerich’s gift is expressing the sensuality of the characters, as Mica’s body drives her character through much of the novel. She’s young, she’s got a rockin’ body, and she means to use it, whether it means hiking with her dog through the forest, or feeling it react to Sean’s warm naked body; Primani is a feast for the senses, and Olerich homes in on the sensations Mica and Sean feast upon as they grow closer and closer.
The boys are stationed in Mica’s neighborhood as part of a larger military plan in the age long war against demons, and Mica is drawn deeper and deeper as she and Sean grow closer and closer. Primani is a sweet novel, the heart and life of a young woman at stake, and though Mica faces mortal danger she’s got guardian angels to show up and help her, hunky ones at that, and her relationship with Sean smolders; Olerich keeps the reader hot, but doesn’t let it boil over, after all Sean has more important matters to tend to than his hot and bothered earthly girlfriend.
The Primani and Mica head to New York, where she is inducted into a deeper world of angels and their associates. Demons run rampant in the city, and the boys gear up for a fight with Dagin, a demon whose history with the Primani goes way back. And as Mica’s new psychic abilities round into form, her powers grow, as does her importance to the growing circle of Primani guardians and warriors she hangs with; her new family.
Olerich amps up the action in the city, and brings the action to a satisfying conclusion as the team, as it were, heads back to the mountains to foil the demon advancement. Olerich doesn’t dwell much on the nuances of demon plans, or how exactly, the angels hope to deal with the threat, she instead focuses on the relationships between Mica and her new family. The emotional setting is Mica’s heart and mind, and as she grows into her new role with the Primani, the relationships grow deeper, and more intimate. If you like your butt-kicking action with heart and levity, the Primani series will deliver. Three stars.
Sean’s buddies, Dec, the protective one, and Killian, the strongest, and most aggressive, do not approve of Sean’s affection towards Mica, as the three carry themselves like trained special ops about upstate New York. And, as the narrative unfolds, are trained ops, just not of the human variety, they are Primani, soldiers of the first legion, and through a physical and romantic connection between Sean and Mica, Mica learns the truth, and sees the world through the eyes of the soldiers, quite literally, as she gains psychic powers.
Olerich’s gift is expressing the sensuality of the characters, as Mica’s body drives her character through much of the novel. She’s young, she’s got a rockin’ body, and she means to use it, whether it means hiking with her dog through the forest, or feeling it react to Sean’s warm naked body; Primani is a feast for the senses, and Olerich homes in on the sensations Mica and Sean feast upon as they grow closer and closer.
The boys are stationed in Mica’s neighborhood as part of a larger military plan in the age long war against demons, and Mica is drawn deeper and deeper as she and Sean grow closer and closer. Primani is a sweet novel, the heart and life of a young woman at stake, and though Mica faces mortal danger she’s got guardian angels to show up and help her, hunky ones at that, and her relationship with Sean smolders; Olerich keeps the reader hot, but doesn’t let it boil over, after all Sean has more important matters to tend to than his hot and bothered earthly girlfriend.
The Primani and Mica head to New York, where she is inducted into a deeper world of angels and their associates. Demons run rampant in the city, and the boys gear up for a fight with Dagin, a demon whose history with the Primani goes way back. And as Mica’s new psychic abilities round into form, her powers grow, as does her importance to the growing circle of Primani guardians and warriors she hangs with; her new family.
Olerich amps up the action in the city, and brings the action to a satisfying conclusion as the team, as it were, heads back to the mountains to foil the demon advancement. Olerich doesn’t dwell much on the nuances of demon plans, or how exactly, the angels hope to deal with the threat, she instead focuses on the relationships between Mica and her new family. The emotional setting is Mica’s heart and mind, and as she grows into her new role with the Primani, the relationships grow deeper, and more intimate. If you like your butt-kicking action with heart and levity, the Primani series will deliver. Three stars.
Published on August 29, 2015 13:00
August 28, 2015
From Share My Destiny's Archives: Kathleen Collins Realm Walker, #fictionreview
Kathleen Collins Realm Walker is an action thriller, complete with demons, vampires and werewolves, agencies of supernaturals, or Altereds, and a smoking hot dark fae heroine who likes to slug one back with the boys when she isn't working a case, only instead of whisky, she prefers vampire blood. Julianna Norris is a Walker, a kind of cop for the real world to keep supernatural beings in their place. She’s feisty, private, and has a track record for getting into scrapes and getting out of them with the hair on her fae head just barely intact.If her supernatural cop duties weren’t stressful enough, Julianna Norris is the mate of vampire Thomas Kendrick who like a lot of literary vampires carries himself with a holier than thou attitude. I kept wanting Julianna to smack him in the face, but like many obnoxious characters, he grew on me, mostly because Collins turns him into a shadowy protective figure who gets to whine about how kick ass his bride is. Julianna's fae magic combined with Kendricks power via union makes her a deadly agent, and a member of the coven. And she can bring it when it comes to work, fighting demons and such. But she's ill prepared for Kendrick's return. In Collins' world a vampire union is akin to marriage. Power is garnered through unions, both superatural and political. Kendrick left Julianna shortly after their union, which was both a powerful and humbling experience for both of them. As a result few know about the union, an affront to Kendrick's ego. The fallout of his leaving is the emotional landscape of the novel. Julianna, in Kendrick's wake, took up a lover, Kendrick's assistant. Julianna’s close friend is Kendrick's sister, who offers her assistance when she needs. Julianna is surrounded by people who wish to protect her from Thomas Kendrick; not to mention her team of altereds, Jeremiah, an elemental, and a werewolf named Nathaniel.The novel's action sequences revolve around the chase for Nathaniel, Julianna's partner who is possessed by a demon, and the subsequent chase for the demon behind the caper, a demon after Julianna. Along the way, Kendrick has to come to grips with his love for his bride, the demon hunting her, and his own place in Julianna's world. The majority of the book shifts between Julianna and Thomas' perspectives as the action pushes towards a dark fae vampire mage conclusion that will rock supernatural action fans. There's demon possession, and vampire coven betrayal, and lots of red herrings to keep you guessing about character's fates and fortunes.
However, Collins real story is centered around relationships. Marriage, mostly, and how to navigate distances between hearts. Collins' mythology is fairly derivative, but this opening book in a series seeks to lay a foundation. Collins throws words like "union," "the gathering," and "coven" around with abandon. Needless to say much of these words, and words like them, are overdone, but thankfully Collins relies on character descriptions and action more than overused terms for supernatural social norms. I particularly enjoyed the elemental family, and the camaraderie between Julianna and her work mates. Besides the complex relationships she frames, her other strength is her world building skills, mashing up our world with a supernatural bureaucracy that smacks of satire. Sure to please readers of urban fantasy, Realm Walker is an action packed debut. 3 stars.
However, Collins real story is centered around relationships. Marriage, mostly, and how to navigate distances between hearts. Collins' mythology is fairly derivative, but this opening book in a series seeks to lay a foundation. Collins throws words like "union," "the gathering," and "coven" around with abandon. Needless to say much of these words, and words like them, are overdone, but thankfully Collins relies on character descriptions and action more than overused terms for supernatural social norms. I particularly enjoyed the elemental family, and the camaraderie between Julianna and her work mates. Besides the complex relationships she frames, her other strength is her world building skills, mashing up our world with a supernatural bureaucracy that smacks of satire. Sure to please readers of urban fantasy, Realm Walker is an action packed debut. 3 stars.
Published on August 28, 2015 13:00