Authors Books

Maizenberg surprised me with his terse fiction stylings in the first story, "Smoking with Felix-the-Super." I didn't want to think it at first, because it's a dooming thought if tossed around hastily, but I was forced to relent and make the comparison--it's like Carver, only fresher than the thousands of other imitators out there. Honest. Real.

That's what Maizenberg is in all these stories: honest and real. And sometimes that gives us a queasy feeling, like in "Looking for Jojo," and sometimes it just washes over us in a tide of recognition, like in Play-Doh Pill/Lego Life"; we know these people--we are these people.

But he's versatile, too. The collection's best story is "Dotcomicon," a story I dreaded from the title. "Hip," I thought. "He's trying to be hip and 'Now'." And he is current, but what he's trying to do is write an allegory. He succeeds. This is one of the best modern allegories I've read in a while. And that title is one of the best titles I've seen, too, the kind that grows in depth each time you think about its connection to the story. A must-read.

Short, too-the-point but not in-your-face, Maizenberg hasn't redefined contemporary fiction, but he's certainly refreshed it. Keep an eye out for more by this author.

If you're looking for a familiar landmark to compare this book to, try George Saunders. Although Maizenberg's targets are more real and immediate than Saunders's, this author possesses a similar wit and dazzling capacity for self-revelation through seemingly mundane details. This book will haunt you.

But read the last two stories, and suddenly you are thrust deep within a character's spirit, where dreams are not empty but virile, and for better or worse take control. This collection yanks you on a bullet-train from dirty realism to surrealism in 137 pages flat. "Invitations to a Bridge Burning" will appeal to everyone who might feel his or her life is not quite settled -- not because Maizenburg reflects our yearning for more with a pandering wink and nod, but because he realizes our dreams exist to serve us, not vice versa. By the last page, you feel wrong has been made right.

There is just so much to love about this novel but the one that I find interesting is that June's in love with a man no one in the "nosey" town of Grace even knows exist and she can't tell anyone, not even her father, as her lover happens to an undercover DEA agent.

If you're expecting a novel filled with violence and sex, this isn't the novel for you. But if you're looking for a novel about caring and sharing, where people actually about family, friends and neighbors -- usually whether you want them to or not, go pick up Just Over the Mountain. You're bound to be caught up in the magic as I was.

Read this beautiful book of poems and I think you will know what Wilder means! This is a book both poetic and saintly, a book of vision. Pavel's crafted and gifted words opens eyes and opens hearts. A good, good book.

Pavel's work is lyrical and intensely personal. There are observations of the physical world included in the verse [including a delightful response to the goldfinch in " The Small Musician"] but most of the poems are spiritual landscapes - poems that speak of a lively mind's encounters with guilt, grace, God, the World, the Flesh and the Devil. Observations of nature are essentially the beginnings of a spiritual insight so that a toad, a dragonfly, birdsong or storm becomes emblematic of a spiritual life that transcends the physical. In this sense, his work owes much to the nineteenth century Romantics; the same sense of the poet alone in the natural world characteristic of Wordsworth or Gerard Manly Hopkins pervades the poetry of Lion Sun.

Using simple verse forms, Chichikov brings a visionary style to the work. The poet's own voice is a constant feature of the verse. Many poems begin with and specificity the poet conveys. The weakness, perhaps, is that the poet may become baffling in the allusions spun. One sometimes leaves a poem curiously unsatisfied that the power of the message is lost when a crucial element is missed by the reader. There are few contexts in which to fix the poems. The works are largely undated and there is no introduction or biographical information in which to fix the work. Where the poems work well without contexts, they are powerful and winsome.

The spiritual landscapes drawn in the verse are often on the largest canvas. Saints and sinners, giants and angels, creation and redemption figure in the poems. Political features only intrude into the landscapes for their spiritual interest as in the sonnet The Voice.

Chichikov is at his best when he is most tender and personal, when the biggest allegories give way to the fine observation and instress, as Hopkins would have it. My favourite poem in the anthology is called Creation - a sonnet written for his wife Nancy. Like the person to whom it is dedicated, the poem is gentle, subtle and intelligent

The book is stunning in its design with an exquisite typeface and display. The illustrations by Eric Young are lively and attractive. This is a book that will puzzle, charm and inspire and deserves a wider readership than poetry usually commands