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Wednesday reviews round-up for 11th November
Posted by Paul Raven on November 11th, 2009 at 11:11
What, Wednesday again? Already? Well, I guess that means it’s reviews round-up time, then… here we go!
First of all, Faren Miller of the esteemed Locus magazine takes on Patrick O’Leary‘s slippery collection, The Black Heart:
In his introduction to Patrick O’Leary’s new collection The Black Heart, James Morrow refers to some of the more autobiographical stories as ‘‘exotic and uncommon journeys… expeditions the author has mounted into the Orient of himself.’’ In the Author’s Introduction that follows, O’Leary asks three questions: ‘‘What is the story we are telling ourselves? Who is the narrator? Why should we listen to him?’’
Though some of these works first appeared on Sci Fiction, we’re a long way from the realms of space opera and action adventure – often listening to confused, crass, or unreliable narrators talking about their crimes, dreams, and epiphanies. We listen because even the husband who has pornographic visions after a split with his wife in ‘‘Catching a Dream’’ and the ticked-off cello thief in ‘‘Yo-Yo Stradivarius & Me’’ (the two originals in this group of 14 works from the past decade-plus) are driven into eloquence by unexpected encounters with beauty. And his array of ordinary people, skewed self-portraits, and more or less mythical figures all seem to come up with a pungent mix of the skeptical or matter-of-fact and a jolt of wonder, without reaching any trite conclusions.
Then Horrorworld grapples with the equally unconventional Blue Canoe by T M Wright:
Blue Canoe might be the first novel I’ve ever read where I’ve had no idea what was going on while reading it. Even the end didn’t bring a breakthrough for me. The novel is difficult to follow, is repetitive at times, lacks a coherent plot, and it’s not very scary. With all that said the question begs, is Blue Canoe worth reading? The answer is a resounding YES! Because at its heart, Blue Canoe is the most personal of horror tales. It deals with the possible failing of ones mind and it’s up to the readers to decide if the horrors presented to them are real or imagined.
[...]
Happy Farmer recalls and shares with his readers all of those things above, and he takes great pains to let the reader know how important they were in his life. Only to admit later on in the next chapters that he invented them. Only to admit later on in the next chapters, that yes, in fact, they did occur, and then goes into greater detail when recounting them all over again.
Readers will find themselves playing along with Wright and trying to guess the nature of Happy Farmer’s recollections. For instance, is the character he writes about in a story at the end of the novel a young Happy Farmer? Is his constant reciting of the origins of everyday objects his way of staying grounded? Was he a serial killer? Why did his father owe the woman next door to them money?
Elsewhere, genre novelist and voracious reader Ian Sales tackles a title from the back catalogue, namely Lisa Tuttle‘s My Death:
The narrator is an American writer resident in Scotland, as Tuttle is an American writer resident in Scotland. Her career has suffered after the recent death of her husband, and in an effort to find a project to pull her life back together, she decides to write a biography of early feminist novelist Helen Ralston. Who was also an American writer resident in Scotland. My Death ends twice – although one feels somewhat rushed – and each end gives an entirely different complexion to the story. Recommended.
And finally, Leona Wisoker of Green Man Review sings the praises for Eric Brown‘s retro-tastic Gilbert & Edgar On Mars:
These days, we know that the fantastical Mars presented by Burroughs — among others — is a complete impossibility. That makes books of this sort very difficult to pull off. But the mixture of reality and surreality in this short novella, combined with Eric Brown’s skill with details, written in an excellent reproduction of the way science fiction used to sound, produces a story engaging, amusing, and just the right length.
I highly recommend this story for anyone feeling nostalgic for the “good old days” of science fiction writing, when men wore — and frequently used — swords, and no matter whether the woman was red, green, or blue, she usually jumped straight into bed with the hero (no discussion of “feelings” required first). For those readers unfamiliar with these fathers of modern fantasy and science fiction, I suggest wandering over to the nearest used book store and picking up a wide variety of books by authors such as Burroughs and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle before attempting this novella.
And there we have it! As always, click on the cover art to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse.
Have you read a PS Publishing title recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!