life between the pages

“I spent my life folded between the pages of books.
In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.”
Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Review: Turtle Moon


Turtle Moon
Turtle Moon by Alice Hoffman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



About halfway through this book I wrote the following: "One of my gauges for a great read is one that continually sends me back to a work in progress to do an inspired creativity dump that seems to come out of nowhere. It's like the story dials into my subconscious and tells me things I didn't know I knew. This is one of those books. It's quirky, human, and all-too-real. The characters are alternately loveable and maddening, just like most folk I know."

I really didn't want this book to end, but at the same time, it was time to leave the story, and further words might have become maudlin or mundane. That is not to say I understand every character's motivation, or that the book ended happily. You'll have to find that out for yourself. Still, I'd love to read a sequel set maybe twenty or thirty further years in the future, to see if the boy and the baby ever meet again as adults, and what happens then.

And now, it's back to my own writing, because - as I said in so many words - there are things tumbling out of every creative port of my psyche, that must be set down.




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Saturday, November 16, 2013

Review: Blue Camellia

Blue CamelliaBlue Camellia by Frances Parkinson Keyes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazing work, a story so skillfully crafted that its social anachronisms seem charming and quite forgiveable in the context of their time. Powerful and based loosely on historical facts, the story of a woman who found her own way in life and carved a niche for herself that, instead of rejecting family and society, carefully selected the finest yields and stoutest promise, enfolded a heart full of love and wisdom with the best portions of her heritage and fortune to triumph over her personal nightmarish tragedy and make a life well lived.

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