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Book Review “Cinnamon Girl” by Lawrence Kessenich

Book Review  Cinnamon Girl by Lawrence Kessenich

North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.  Fiction 233 pages

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Cinnamon Girl, the debut novel from award winning poet and playwright, Lawrence Kessenich, is a poignant and compelling story about a young man and his group of friends as they come of age in the American midwest during the height of the Vietnam War era.

John Meyer, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is fighting his own war on an asymmetrical front. He is in the process of leaving the halcyon days and secure cocoon of his conservative suburban family. Meyer questions his entire belief system, as he finds himself drawn into the radical politics of the anti-war movement, new friends, a love affair, experimentation with drugs and a new lifestyle. He struggles to come to terms with the plethora of choices he must make in the face of events that occur at a dizzying pace.

Kessenich skillfully and accurately depicts a thoroughly engaging, nuanced and multi-layered story of a classic love triangle. the overwhelming rush of first love and an impossible relationship all set against the backdrop of social unrest, political upheaval and the tumultuous events of the times.

He writes through a lens of adult wisdom about a much younger version of himself and the dynamics of Meyer’s family life, and his relationships with parents and siblings while they all struggle to maintain balance as the once secure ground is shifting underfoot.

Kessenich’s skill as a story teller is bolstered by his ability to vividly describe events and carefully develop multidimensional characters with the keen eye of a realist. I became so enamored of the characters and so engrossed in what was going on in their lives, that I did not want the book to end.

I connected with Cinnamon Girl on a deeply personal level because of my own life experiences and familiarity with the history of that specific time and the location of the events depicted in Kessenich’s novel. However, given the current political climate and the societal divisions that exist, protagonist John Meyer serves as an Everyman whose story could just as well be happening right now. I think Cinnamon Girl is a story for the ages that examines universal questions about growing up and awakening, adult decisions where nothing is black and white, the responsibilities that come with freedom; and the insecurities, moral conundrums, and choices a young person faces as they move into adulthood. Cinnamon Girl guides the reader through a twisting, turning, up and down journey of self discovery, triumph and defeat, and ultimately redemption. It’s a thought provoking and emotional read; a trip down a rabbit hole that eventually leads back out into the warm sunshine.

About the author:

Lawrence Kessenich has written in a variety of genres, including poetry, plays, short stories, novels, screenplays and essays. He won the Strokestown International Poetry Prize in Ireland in 2010. Other books include Age of Wonders, (Big Table Publishing, January 2016) Before Whose Glory, FutureCycle Press, 2013) and Strange News, (Pudding House Publications, 2008) Lawrence Kessenich lives and writes in Boston MA.

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Drive-By Book Review: Beyond Redemption by Gary V. Powell

Book Review: Beyond Redemption by Gary V. Powell

2015 Fiction 121 pages

I tend to like flash fiction and short stories in general, but I am absolutely knocked out by the flash fiction and short stories in Gary V. Powell’s gem of a collection Beyond Redemption. I wonder if Gary Powell’s training in the law helped him to develop a disciplined approach to writing in such a powerfully concise style that gets straight to the point. He knows exactly how and where to pack the power in his punches. His prose is lean, compact and taut, yet lyrical and poetic enough to be powerfully evocative and compelling. It takes great skill to compress all of the necessary story elements into this kind of short form and Gary Powell does it with aplomb.

Beyond Redemption consists of 20 pieces, 18 of which have previously appeared in various literary journals, and every one of them is a winner. If this were an old school record album, then this could easily be a collection of his greatest hits.

Beyond Redemption explores the struggles of adolescents to assert themselves, young people coming of age, middle aged couples coming to grips with broken dreams and broken relationships, laid off factory workers, patients in a psych ward, people struggling to reconcile dreams of the past with the reality of the present, and people bumped, bruised and dinged up by life, but who find a way to dig deep and muster the resolve to keep on keepin’ on. Conflict lies at the heart of each piece and creates the tension that drives it. However, these are not depressing stories. Each one of them is, in some way, about resiliency of the human spirit.

Powell demonstrates an impressive ability to drop the reader into a specific time and place while wearing the character’s point of view like a second skin. He is not constrained by age or gender. Powell writes just as convincingly from the point of view of an angst ridden teenage girl looking for acceptance as he does from that of a disaffected middle aged man plodding through an unrewarding corporate career.

Many of the stories are colored by a very recognizable regional mid western flavor with references to Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan and the Great Lakes. However, Powell writes just as convincingly about the deep south and the bayou country of Louisiana. Gary Powell is a great story teller who is, in my opinion, in the same league as widely recognized contemporary masters of the form including Tobias Wolff, Amy Hempel and Ann Beattie. Beyond Redemption is a collection well worth reading and my only regret is that I came to the end of it.

About the author:

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Gary V. Powell’s stories and flash fiction have been widely-published in both print and online literary magazines including most recently at The Thomas Wolfe Review, Fiction Southeast, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Best New Writing 2015.  In addition to being the winner of the 2014 Gover Prize for short-short fiction, several of his stories have placed in other national contests including The Press 53 Prize (2012), Glimmer Train (2013) and The Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize (2014).

His first novel, Lucky Bastard, was recently published by Main Street Rag Press.

For this, and more of his work visit http://www.authorgaryvpowell.com

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Guest Book Review: Carol Reid Reviews Audrey by Beate Sigriddaughter

I am very honored to feature Carol Reid’s incisive review of Audrey by Beate Sigriddaughter. Welcome to Your Own Backyard!

Audrey by Beate Sigriddaughter

ELJ Publications 2015

Fiction: 316 pages

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Reviewed by Carol Reid

 Audrey is the work of a kaleidoscopic mind; every emotion and interaction is broken down, assembled and reassembled as its narrator chronicles four seasons of an almost unendurable love.

Set in 1980 amid a loosely knit community of writers and artists, the narrative relates in minute detail the all-consuming relationship between the young poet Andrea and Audrey, a painter and self-professed healer more than twenty years her senior.

To Andrea, nothing is trivial. Her fervent wish is to live an exalted life in which she is part goddess and part angel, with time and opportunity to produce poetry and magic. Employment and men encroach regularly on her precious time. She attracts and enchants many male lovers, and loves them because, “if there is sex, there must be love”.

Enter Audrey,

She came with a painted dragon and cinnamon hearts for Valentine’s. Her name was Audrey and I am hard pressed to remember what anyone else brought to the party.

Dragons are diverse in mythology. In this novel they are presented as a sort of spirit animal connected with Audrey, but which variety– malevolent or wise, fire-breathing or powerfully protective?

Their first important conversation is generated by the painting of “Serena”, described by Andrea as having “a timid fawn-like nose and forceful amber eyes”.

“I’m so glad you like Serena,” [Audrey] said, “some people are afraid of her.”

Before Andrea can devote herself fully to Audrey, she needs to close the door on her relationship with Joel, whose gentleness, wisdom and acceptance of Andrea linger at a distance throughout the story.

This scene takes place during a rafting trip after which Andrea intends to end the affair-

The raft hurled headlong into waves, stood almost upright, despite our forward weight. Then we were flat on the water again, rocking through turbulence. We were drenched with ice-cold water. But the sun was warm and there was hardly any wind to chill us.

I leaned back and shook water from my hair, my poncho. I watched Joel. He was still concentrating. His arms pressed into the oars. His eyes were filled with love and reverence for the water, full of attention….if it were possible for me to love a man, I would have loved him. But I no longer believed I could.

Audrey is in some ways a gender-free novel. Traditionally masculine and feminine traits are exhibited by both male and female characters. Andrea’s gender struck me as not yet fully formed. She is at her core a sort of pre-adolescent, or as a psychic says of her, late in the novel, “an innocent”. This innocence allows her to believe in the possibility of pure, perfect love but of course makes her prey to being manipulated up, down and sideways by the more experienced and perhaps more irrevocably damaged Audrey. Occasional glimpses into each woman’s real, painful history are just enough to reveal how and why they came to be the way they are, separately and together.

Andrea articulates every feeling involved in an ultimately poisoned and poisonous love- torment, elation, enthrallment, hopelessness, selfishness and self-abnegation. Luminous moments are eclipsed by moments of despair. Any reader with a similar episode at the back of her emotional closet will recognize both Andrea’s and Audrey’s experience very well. This passionate love between two women, although it exists as an ideal in Andrea’s heart and mind, is not idealized nor exempt from betrayal, possessiveness and violence.

No one can spend a year in the mouth of a dragon and emerge unchanged.

About the author:

Beate

Beate Sigriddaughter grew up in Nürnberg, Germany, not far from the castle where she sometimes sat in a corner to write poems or rewrite fairy tales. She now lives and writes in Silver City, NM, Land of Enchantment. The background to all this enchantment, though, is living as a witness and participant in a world that is steeped in misogyny, ranging from subtle avuncular belittlement to legal or vigilante execution for infractions of male entitlement. The background is a world where people are addicted to conflict and competition and where peace and partnership are simply not (yet) sexy enough. In all of this, she still hopes to one day fulfill her lifelong dream of creating a language of joy that will triumph over a language heavy with addiction to conflict and sorrow, no doubt created and sustained in an effort to gain love and attention that way.

Beate has a B.A. in English and Philosophy from Georgetown University. Her published works include two novels, a novella, and many stories and poems. Three of her stories received Pushcart Prize nominations. She has also created the Glass Woman Prize to honor other women’s stories.

Carol Reid is a writer and editor in British Columbia, Canada.Guest 

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Book Review: F250 by Bud Smith

Book Review: F250 by Bud Smith

Piscataway House Publications 2014

Fiction 230 pages

“It’s a novel about a noise band, some car crashes, kids with bloody faces, strange loves….” Bud Smith on F250

Thus reads Bud Smith’s hyper minimalist synopsis of his own novel F250. While this does summarize some of F250’s plot points with hilarious, deadpan understatement, needless to say, F250 is much, much more.

Set against a backdrop of the Jersey Shore somewhere around 2003-2004, the novel’s narrator and protagonist, Lee Casey, plays in a noise band called Otter Meat. The band teeters on the edge of either breaking big or breaking up and the dream of moving to LA beckons like some sort of mythical land of Milk and Honey. Lee works a day job as a stone mason. He hauls rocks, gravel and cement, his scant personal possessions, musical equipment, and his friends in his F250, a battered old workhorse of a truck that seems to crash into things like a heat seeking missile. Lagoon House is the dilapidated house in the process of being systematically demolished that serves as living space, party house, crucible and metaphor for a colorful and motley cast of characters going through life’s momentous changes together.

F250 depicts a group of friends whose lives are changing and evolving into something new as their old lives fall away. Preconceived notions of personal identity morph and grow into something new. It’s a story of farewell to youth and coming of age into adulthood and a story of self examination and self realization. F250 celebrates synchronicities and the peculiar kind of ephemeral magic that occurs as peoples’ individual orbits briefly come together before once again separating and twinkling into the heavens like the Perseid meteor shower. It’s about how the flash of one monumental event can change everything forever. F250 is about coming to grips with mortality and human frailty as we learn to understand our own individual gifts and strengths. F250 is about learning to forgive and to accept ourselves for who we really are and others for who they really are.

Some passages of descriptive prose are pure poetry.

“Outside, everything flickered like the world was film being fed through an 8mm grindhouse projector. Splatters of light struck everywhere reflective, creating a slowly rotating light show – glass and high sheen metallics caught the last rays of the falling sun. Reality was exaggerated. Colors were over-saturated: thick green, gold, plum.”

With references to regional cultural icons like Kiss, Bruce Springsteen and Thunder Road, Seaside Amusement Park, beaches, boardwalks, the Pine Barrens, Jersey salt marshes and 4th of July on the Jersey Shore, Bud Smith captures a unique slice of life and a snapshot of Americana at a particular time and place with lyrical agility and an unflinching eye. The book is also an exorcism, Last Rites, Kaddish, a memorial, and a celebration of life and love for each other.

With F250, Bud Smith has written his own “Moveable Feast” of sorts, with reflections based largely on his life as a younger man on the Jersey Shore; woven into a realistic work of fiction that is a totally enthralling and enjoyable read. With passages of cinematic prose and dialogue that captures moment to moment banter in spot-on colloquial fashion and characters large as life, Smith weaves a tale that is so engrossing and compelling that you won’t want to come to the end of it. At least I didn’t. It’s one of those books I could have devoured, but took forever to read, because then what the Hell was I going to do? It was like saying goodbye forever to my best friends.

F250 is a great book and Bud Smith is a hopeless romantic, which is a great thing to be in this fucked up world. I hope that Bud Smith revisits these characters in a future novel. The potential is there, and I would very much like to reconnect with these old friends as our lives once again intersect at some point down the road.

About the Author

Bud Smith is the author of the novel Tollbooth,  the short story collection, Or Something Like That, and the poetry collection, Everything Neon. He works heavy construction, lives in New York City and has a pet jackalope.

F250 Bud Smith

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Guest Review: Delicious Little Traitor ~ A Varian Pike Mystery by Jack DeWitt ~ Reviewed by AJ Sabatini

Your Own Back Yard is delighted to welcome Guest Reviewer AJ Sabatini aboard with his review of Delicious Little Traitor: A Varian Pike Mystery by Jack DeWitt

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Delicious Little Traitor: A Varian Pike Mystery by Jack DeWitt

Fiction ~ Black Opal Books, 2015     http://www.blackopalbooks.com      Reviewed by By AJ Sabatini

The settings and landscapes of Jack Dewitt’s Varian Pike mystery, Delicious Little Traitor, range from the small cities and sparse back roads of Connecticut to New York City and the outskirts of Philadelphia, circa the winter of 1953. This was an era when most ordinary Americans were settling into ways of living after the trauma and disruption of World War II. But the country itself was changing politically with The Cold War underway. Its dark winds chilled the pursuit of comfort as power hungry politicians, federal agents and ambitious government bureaucrats schemed to take control of the government and make life miserable for those who they accused of being “Un-American.” Although Varian Pike doesn’t bargain for it, he is thrown into the muck of vicious political intrigue almost from the moment he tries find out who killed a nineteen-year-old University of Connecticut college student, Lara Greenbaum. And why.

Pike, basically a loner, is a combat vet from the European theater with an acute sense of pain and human self-deception. He also has a low attention span for bullshit and thinks of himself, he tells us, as being part of a larger world, He talks about politics, jazz and painting, but also plays cards with his buddies and keeps up with baseball and boxing. After a poker game, one of his friends approaches him about the disappearance of his niece over the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend. Daughter of a Jewish dentist, Lara Greenbaum had an independent, intellectual streak about her and she was also alluring and sexy and knew it.

Pike meets with Lara’s parents and immediately takes the case. It is near Christmas and he drives up to for grey, frigid college UConn campus in what was a farm town then, Storrs. Pike is pretty frustrated by what he hears from a boyfriend, campus cops, Lara’s roommates and an edgy English professor who is frightened that his relationship with Lara and his political opinions could put him in danger. Varian checks out Lara’s room and steals her diary, only to find out that it is written in code. What did she have to hide? Within days, her naked and apparently tortured body turns up outside of Philadelphia in Abington, Pennsylvania. No arrests were made.

Lara, it turns out, was deeply involved in politics and had done research on a right wing, Communist hunting U.S. Congressman, Lindzey Hall. Even before Pike can track him down, so called Federal Agents start tracking him and telling him to lay off. The official story is that Lara was a rape victim, but no one can tell him why she was near Philadelphia. As Christmas nears and Pike wants to avoid everything to do with good tidings and the endless Crosby and Sinatra tunes on the radio, so he makes his way to Abington. A Happy Holiday does not ensue.

It is cold and dreary in the Northeast and everything Pike uncovers entangles him further in a sordid conspiracy which eventually brings him in contact with a handful of cleanly drawn though mostly unsavory characters. Some of them are helpful, a few try to kill him, he sleeps with one and has long, in depth conversations with others. Most of them have too much ego and something to hide. Louis, a friend of his, seems to have ties to the Mob, or worse. He lives alone in a modern style house in the woods, drinks French wine and owns abstract geometric art works. As Varian learns more from him and tries to get a handle on everyone’s motives, suspicions rise that Lara is not innocent in the dealings that surround her.

With a sure knowledge of American life in the 1950s, DeWitt drives the narrative from city to country, from a private Boy’s School to college campuses, to law offices, police stations and hideaways. Everyone Varian talks to seems to know something, but the whole picture never coheres. He does his best to stick to his code and find out the truth, but the Congressman and his goons play hardball and are not afraid to spill blood. But, through it all Varian is haunted by death of the smart, young woman and his obligation to her parents.

Varian drives a Chevy and finds radio stations that play his favorite Charlie Parker tunes, which give the reader the sense that the world is unpredictable and moving fast. His affair with a war widow throws light on women’s lives in post-war America. He and Louis ruminate about the real story behind ex-Nazis in America, spies and the Rosenberg trail and execution, the OSS, CDA, COS, FBI, Herbert Hoover and Joe McCarthy. What could being a “delicious little traitor” mean? Varian realizes he could care less about men in power, but is the murder of a young girl ever justified? And who knows the truth and who keeps secrets when it comes to historical and political machinations?

My guess is that DeWitt has more Varian Pike mysteries to write. The book has the feel of a serious novel of ideas, if not a movie. DeWitt, who has published several books of poetry and a study of hot rod culture (Cool Cars, High Art), knows the 1950s. I doubt Varian will start listening to rock and roll, though he might wind up reading Beat poetry and go on the road in a better car.

 About Jack DeWitt

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Jack DeWitt’s new novel, Delicious Little Traitor A Varian Pike Mystery (Black Opal Books), is the first in a series. His study of American hot rodding, Cool Cars, High Art: The Rise of Kustom Kulture is included in the Street Rodder Hall of Fame. For three years he wrote the column, “Cars and Culture,” for the American Poetry Review. One of the columns was chosen as a notable essay in Best American Essays 2010. Almost Grown, his latest book of poems, is about growing up in Stamford, CT. For many years he taught in the Liberal Arts Division of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. www.jackdewitt.com

http://www.amazon.com/Delicious-Little-Traitor-Mystery-Mysteries/dp/1626942226/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429482621&sr=8-1&keywords=delicious+little+traitor

 About AJ Sabatini

 AJ Sabatini is a Philadelphia –based writer and an Arizona State University Associate Professor of Performance Studies. For other reviews, see his entries at

http://www.broadstreetreview.com/authors/aj-sabatini

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Book Review: What Happened Here: a novella & stories by Bonnie ZoBell

My review of Bonnie ZoBell’s wonderful book What Happened Here: a novella & stories is up on MadHat’s Drive-By Book Reviews.

http://madhatarts.com/madhatreviews/book-review-what-happened-here-a-novella-stories-by-bonnie-zobell/

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MadHat Drive-By Book Reviews: Tollbooth and Everything Neon by Bud Smith

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Reviews of two books by Bud Smith, his novel, Tollbooth and poetry collection, Everything Neon are LIVE on MadHat’s Drive-Bye Book Reviews. Drop by and check ’em out!

http://madhatarts.com/madhatreviews/

Tollbooth

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Book Review: Elegantly Naked In My Sexy Mental Illness By Heather Fowler

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New Book Review: Elegantly Naked In My Sexy Mental Illness by Heather Fowler

On MadHat’s Drive-By Book Reviews

http://madhatarts.com/madhatreviews/book-review-elegantly-naked-in-my-sexy-mental-illness-by-heather-fowler/

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DOG TALK RADIO

DOG TALK RADIO

With

Chauncy

Chauncy In Formal wear

and

Ollie in Formal Wear

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ollie

Hello and welcome to our first edition of: DogTalk on DogTalk Radio! The internet radio show by dogs, for dogs. (BDFD.)

So pull up your dog beds and get ready for a fun filled hour of howlin’, yowlin’ , scratchin’ & lickin’ and just a whole lot of fun spewing plain old fashioned doggerel.

DogTalk on DogTalk Radio has been transcribed and translated into human English by Michael Gillan Maxwell.

So, without further adieu, let us introduce the hosts of DOGTALK, Chauncy and Ollie!

Chauncy: “Hello everyone and welcome to our inaugural broadcast of DogTalk!”

Ollie: “Yeah, what he said. Wait! I heard a noise! What the fuck IS that in our yard? I think it’s Sasquatch! It MUST be Sasquatch! We’re ALL gonna die! Hoooowl! Yoooooowl!”

Chauncy: “As you can see, my sidekick is a bit of an “excitable boy”! It’s just a case of the jitters because this is our first broadcast. He’ll settle down. But I just wanna say, you’ll never find a better wingman, er, I mean “wingdog” than this little feller!”

Chauncy: “ So, Ollie, now that you’ve caught your breath, the switchboard is lighting up, would you like to take the first call?”

Ollie: “Don’t mind if I do! Hello Caller. This is Ollie on DogTalk. Go ahead. I’m listening.”

Caller: “Yeah, Ollie. Thanks fer takin’ my call. This is Bert. I’m a mutt and an outside dog. I think I’m in love with a Cocker Spaniel, but she’s too rich for my blood. Whaddya think I can do?”

Ollie: “ Sorry Bert, but we’re Cocker Spaniels too. Forgive my impertinence, but this is just friggin’ “Lady and the Tramp” all over again. Sorry dude, but life ain’t no Disney fantasyland. Everybody loves us, but, let’s face it, half the time we’re just mean sons of bitches, or in some cases, just plain mean bitches. The best advice I can give is to go after another dog in the same social stratosphere as you. Is that even a thing? I don’t know, but I think you know what I mean. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but believe me, you’ll be happier in the long run. Thanks for calling DogTalk Bert! Keep on yowlin’!”

Chauncy: “Well can you believe it? We’ve already run out of time! But ~ really~ what is “time” to a dog? This show may have lasted minutes, or it may have lasted hours, even days. Who knows, when you’re dealing with “Dog Time”!

Until we sniff again,

This is Chauncy, signing off

Ollie, running over the hills and far away!

(Theme music and barking dogs)

Outro: “You have been listening to DogTalk on DogTalk Radio with Chauncy and Ollie. To get notifications of all upcoming broadcasts, send pee mail to the nearest tree or fire hydrant c/o Dogtalk Radio.” We welcome all your queries, questions and issues. You can contact us via this website or send us a tweet or a text or a pee mail to: DogTalk@peemail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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