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Wednesday reviews round-up for 16th December
Posted by Paul Raven on December 16th, 2009 at 11:01
It’s getting colder… and that’s not just because I’m feeling the effects of having moved 250 miles north, either (I think). It’s been a long old year, and all I want to do right now is draw the curtains against the grey, crank up the heating a bit and settle down with a stack of good books. But for now, duty calls – so here’s some review coverage of PS Publishing titles from the last week or so to help you choose your own holiday reading.
First of all, Richard Dansky at Green Man Review raves about Darrell Schweitzer‘s Living With The Dead:
If you run into Darrell Schweitzer at a convention, you can be fairly certain that he’s going to try to sell you a book. If the book in question is Living With the Dead, I’d advise you to let him succeed.
[...]
Living With The Dead is a weird tale in the truest sense, a phantasmagoria described in dream-language. There are no explanations to be had — no lengthy exposition as to why the corpses are delivered here, or where they come from, or why they never rot — nor do there need to be. It is enough that they are there, and that the citizens of Old Corpsenburg must deal with them in their own way, and when they rise and start to dance, it is — but perhaps I’ve said too much already. Sold in a gorgeous hardcover from PS Publishing with a stunning Jason Van Hollander cover, the book also sports an introduction from Tim Lebbon. It’s a slender volume, only 65 pages, but it offers more than many books ten times its length.
Then there’s a review of Patrick O’Leary‘s collection The Black Heart, at no less esteemed a publication than the Financial Times (whose target readership should doubtless be fully conversant with black heartedness, ho ho ho):
… The Black Heart plays on psychological imbalance and nightmarish imaginings. In “What Mattered Was Sleep”, a father surrenders his son to the government because the boy has tested positive for some kind of disease. What disease? What becomes of the boy? O’Leary never reveals the answers but the doom-laden, fatalistic tone of the story suggests we are better off not knowing. Similarly, “The Me After the Rock” consists of a dialogue between two quarantined astronauts who’ve returned from a mission to Mars where something went badly wrong. We’re given only teasing glimpses as to the nature of the mishap. However, the revelation that we are reading a transcript of their conversation is a chilling clue.
The flinty brilliance of The Black Heart lies in a willingness to leave its stories open-ended and ambiguous. O’Leary, a Detroit resident and former creative director of an advertising agency, hints that life today is so bewildering that it should not be entirely decoded in fiction.
Should not, or could not? ;)
The last of this week’s hat-trick sees Marly Youmans‘ Val / Orson picked as best book of the year by John Wilson of the Christianity Today website:
I quote from Catherynne Valente’s excellent introduction to this novella: “It is Shakespearean in its sensibility, with its enchanted wood, its twins, its doubling and quadrupling of couples and families, its fairy brood. It is difficult to say that it is a fantasy novel, and difficult to say it isn’t.” The word “magical” has been overused and misused to such an extent that it has perhaps lost its potency, but this tale, set among the redwoods of Northern California, is truly magical. I’m sorry it is not as easily obtained as the others on this list, but I can attest—having ordered it from the UK myself—that it is by no means inaccessible. And you will be amply rewarded. More than any other book I read in 2009, this one insistently came to mind.
So there you go! By my reckoning, we’ve one more Wednesday before Christmas… which means it’s probably high time I finished my present shopping! Hopefully the above will have given you a few ideas for last-minute gift choices of your own… and don’t forget our three-for-two offer on all current titles. 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!