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Above an Abyss: Two Novellas
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Two contrasting tales of suspense anchor Above an Abyss: Two Novellas, Ryan Masters's debut collection of fiction. In Trampoline Games, all is not well among the sharply defined suburbs of Salt Lake City in the summer of 1986. A 12-year-old boy arrives in a land of "mountains, Mormons, crickets" to find baffling prejudice, but also intoxicating freedom, lust, moments of he
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Paperback, 116 pages
Published
December 20th 2018
by Radial Books
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The epigraph to Above An Abyss, Ryan Masters’ marvellous collection of two beautiful and stunningly juxtaposed novellas, is from Nabokov’s Speak, Memory: ‘The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.’ ‘Trampoline Games’ and ‘The Moth Orchid’ approach this idea of existential precarity from entirely different directions, yet the two stories complement one another in breathtaking, unexpected ways.
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Masters writes with grace and subtlety in ABOVE AN ABYSS of two of the most difficult subjects: boyhood and old age. More, he does so in arguably the most difficult prose form to deploy effectively: the novella. Not for nothing are novellas notoriously maddening to write and publish. Good ones provide a wealth of precise imagery along with mature plots inclusive of character development. Short stories excel at the former, novels at the latter. To be able to craft both dynamics into a single work
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Ryan Masters is a writer and poet from Santa Cruz, CA. He spent a decade on staff at the Santa Cruz Sentinel and The Monterey County Weekly. He is a frequent contributor to The Surfer's Journal and former poet-in-residence for the City of Pacific Grove, CA. His poetry and fiction work have appeared in publications such as The Iowa Review, Catamaran Literary Reader and Unlikely Stories. Above an Ab
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