Tomorrow, When I Was Young – Julie Travis
“‘Shapeshifting is necessary sometimes,’ said the elder, ‘it is neither good nor bad.’”
I must say I found this novelette captivating in a way that stopped me questioning how it managed to be so captivating, naively, disarmingly so. I enjoyed the character of Zanders and her search for an ancestor in Peru and the people she met along the way. But, above all, I loved the Golden Sea Captain whose ship the Giantess has a potentially shapeshifting or, rather, shapedetaching figurehead. A transformational yage and genderation of still slanting self. And the giant creature in the Golden Sea that went against the grain of gestalt by splintering off into many tiny creatures with divisive knives.
Ah, there is so much more I have not told you about this book’s journey that Zanders was making, and her connection with England, and I miraculously found myself being part of her journey rather than simply sharing it. By dint of both her smile and her sorrow. And I know that we all shall one day doff our clothes to enter our own particular Golden Seas and hopefully find more than just pronouns to define us. Towards synchronicity, … ”It was Zanders who first noticed how the gap between the elder’s speech and the Captain’s translation was narrowing.”
My previous reviews of this author: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/tag/julie-travis/
My previous reviews of Eibonvale Press: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/eibonvale-press/
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The Lighthouse – Jeremy Schliewe
“We ordered drinks, mine decaf, and took a seat in the corner. We were nearly the only customers.”“Is a person who does nothing somehow less than?”
An engagingly complex story that it is impossible to cover properly. The narrator is the elder half-brother (sharing the same mother) of sketch-dabbling Charles, the narrator who returns to Lake Michigan and its characterful pier and lighthouse, but who is the buoy of whom in this relationship of brotherly buoys, where sand gradually encroaches upon the text as it does upon all steps in life? From Virginia Woolf to Jeff VanderMeer, this contains possibly the most significant items of inner-lighthouse description in all literature. And as a symbol of the half-measures in life and to be WHO YOU ARE not who others expect you to be. The intimately curving walls inward, and the over-painted iron, compared to the far too open spaces of the house where you actually live by dint of inheritance or perceived ambition to live in large places. A genuine journey, this Schliewe work, therefore, towards finding oneself.
Only the young among us no longer need to distinguish between low and high culture. The only coming together is that of separation, “often in slow increments than by a sudden yank.” Later: “I would yank the door off its hinges, if necessary.” The insandation vision in this work is unforgettable, I say. Reading good books in moments of idleness is far better than sitting down with an intent purpose. And I am still dabbling, dabbling, dabbling in this one, in mutual synergy with it. A good book never ends. And lights itself from within. Sweeping elucidation across it and picking out what shall never be inundated. My previous review of Jeremy Schliewe: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2018/04/17/supernatural-tales-37/#comment-12391
My previous reviews of the Eidolon in Eibonvale: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/eibonvale-press/
Animals of the Exodus – Alexander Zelenyj
Eibonvale Press 2019
My previous reviews of this author here and this publisher here.
When I read this book my thoughts will appear in the comment stream below…
5 thoughts on “Animals of the Exodus – Alexander Zelenyj”
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TAKING KAREN AWAY
“He’d never known it before Karen.”
Surrounded by forming then fading walls, this is a short ever-resonating vision of love-making as an Anker in a “miracle-place” that is cruelly or kindly bespoke to its particular coupling, “before the crickets were awake to greet the new day”.
TAKING KAREN AWAY
“He’d never known it before Karen.”
Surrounded by forming then fading walls, this is a short ever-resonating vision of love-making as an Anker in a “miracle-place” that is cruelly or kindly bespoke to its particular coupling, “before the crickets were awake to greet the new day”.
“He’d never known it before Karen.”
Surrounded by forming then fading walls, this is a short ever-resonating vision of love-making as an Anker in a “miracle-place” that is cruelly or kindly bespoke to its particular coupling, “before the crickets were awake to greet the new day”.
Des Lewis reviews Tomorrow, When I Was Young.