e c l e c t i c a r e v i e w s &
i n t e r v i e w s
e c l e c t i c a r e v i e w s &
i n t e r v i e w s
(These are excerpts—click on the title to view the whole piece!)
Ann Skea reviews...
all the beloved ghosts
by Alison Macleod
She also said that she is "intrigued by the dovetailing of fact and fiction." This is very evident in all the stories in all the beloved ghosts where fact and fiction are woven together, often with iconic figures at the center of an imaginative vision. A sequence of photographs taken on Princess Diana's last day form the basis of "Dreaming Diana: Twelve Frames." And "Sylvia Wears Pink in the Underworld" draws imaginatively on Macleod's visit to Sylvia Plath's grave, on her reading and re-reading of Plath's poems and letters, and on biographies written about her.
The Burning Ground
by Adam O'Riordan
What O'Riordan excels at is memories—fragments of the past that lie dormant and surface at unexpected moments, just as the web-like rash from a past allergy to penicillin does in the artist in the title story, "The Burning Ground." This man's memories of the married woman with whom he had an affair are prompted by the very expensive paint-brushes she had given him in their first year of their secret meetings and which he had used ever since.
The House at Bishopsgate
by Katie Hickman
Strange and exotic, too, is the life of Annetta, the tiny, irascible, Italian ex-nun whose caustic voice often fills Celia's imagination long before she arrives to join the family in London. And the life of Paul's childhood companion, the elusive miscreant, John Carew, is no less adventurous.
Gilbert Wesley Purdy reviews...
Run the Red Lights
by Ed Skoog
Of course, a cloverleaf is rarely called a cloverleaf anymore. Just like the cassette tapes, Virginia Slim 100s, percolators, and karaoke scattered around in odd corners of Run the Red Lights, the term is metonymic at a level we don't always find in our poetry.
and discusses...
There seemed nothing to profit from reading information on how advertising auctions work. I knew enough to know it would do me little or no good unless I committed to many hours of reading on the subject. Even then, my expertise, such as it might as a result be, would come to exactly the same result and exactly the same lack of leverage to correct whatever injustices I might feel I had suffered.
