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Silk Flowers
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"Her sickness starts with a tingling, a current from some strange electric cloud that can be sensed, but never seen. She feels it looming as she rises from the bed. She feels it humming through the floorboards, through her feet, and through her legs."
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"A poetry of the body these words—a meticulous meditation. With a full control of voice and tone, Meghan Lamb captures the ...more
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"A poetry of the body these words—a meticulous meditation. With a full control of voice and tone, Meghan Lamb captures the ...more
Paperback, First, 95 pages
Published
March 2017
by Birds of Lace
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What an intense emotional feat. Lamb always writes things that manage to pierce through all the social pretense and get to the marrow of what it means to be living and relating to others. I'll be meditating on this novella for quite some time.
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I breathed a sigh of relief on the first page, as I knew from the language straight away it would be a favorite just as I'd always hoped. You're in good hands with Meghan, and she leaves nothing out of place in this slim book. I've been waiting my whole life to read Silk Flowers (or, at least the last several years as it went through the book equivalent of "production hell.") All worth it, for the ultimate beauty of this strangely crafted little novella.
Jackson read it to me in three sittings, ...more
Jackson read it to me in three sittings, ...more

I feel like I'm going to be haunted by the (and this is the word that keeps coming to mind) precision of this book for a while. Beautiful, strange, haunting.
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This short novella, less than 100-pages, is beautifully written. I felt that it read like poetry despite having a story line more like a novel. The author's prose was unique and moving, likely inspired by her own battle with an unknown illness. I certainly empathized with the fear and uncertainty that an illness can bring to one's life. For me it was a quick read, I did not want to put it down as I wanted to learn the outcome of the story. For those looking for a piece you could read in one day,
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"The bowls sit in the fridge with bits of beef, creamed corn, and runny lines of beet broth, dirty food splashed up around the silver circle."
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Saw an early copy of this, back when it was with another press, and loved it. Lamb's work, here and elsewhere, is precise, deadly, and often darkly, unexpectedly funny.
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The thanatoptic (not just visual) stuff comes vitiatingly harder and faster than that in Ariel but is powerful in its aesthetic specificity. The focal triptych nature is sad. When it doesn't work (for me) it doesn't work (for me) in interesting ways.
(view spoiler) ...more
(view spoiler) ...more

Illness is disconcerting, and as it advances, it permeates everything. The body responds in ways it has not been taught to respond with. The hardship of functionality and movement, but with a lucidity that can only be perceived within the walls of suffering.
That is what I experimented with this novella. Every smell and every whimper and every small need of a miracle for the characters was piercing. The worlds of pain need a certain language that Lamb was able to create so beautifully and poigna ...more
That is what I experimented with this novella. Every smell and every whimper and every small need of a miracle for the characters was piercing. The worlds of pain need a certain language that Lamb was able to create so beautifully and poigna ...more
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