But the ocean remembers, so we never did boast
Forget the Sleepless Shores has been reviewed by Publishers Weekly:
The magical realism of poet and fantasist Taaffe's luscious, melancholy, and literary second collection of stories (after 2005's Singing Innocence and Experience) drowns the reader in watery imagery and complex sensory landscapes while exploring the theme of mundane relationships transformed by the intrusion of the mystical and uncanny. In the heartbreaking "Chez Vous Soon," a woman devastated by her failure to keep her lover from fatally succumbing to insanity and artistic obsession encounters his embodied muse. "The Dybbuk in Love" leans heavily into nostalgia and Jewish heritage as a century-old ghost disturbingly inhabits the minds of a suburban woman's partners to entreat her to accept him as her beloved. "All Our Salt-Bottled Hearts" gracefully takes on the logical legacy of the Lovecraftian mythos with a deep empathy for those called to the sea but still connected to the human world. Though most of Taaffe's stories hit their unsettling emotional mark when encountered individually, her style falls into common patterns and her prose into lulling rhythms, so that readers who indulge in the entire collection at once may lose subtle distinctions and find themselves overwhelmed by a uniform sad strangeness.
I have warned![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch that uniform sad strangeness may be the title of my sex tape from now on.
The magical realism of poet and fantasist Taaffe's luscious, melancholy, and literary second collection of stories (after 2005's Singing Innocence and Experience) drowns the reader in watery imagery and complex sensory landscapes while exploring the theme of mundane relationships transformed by the intrusion of the mystical and uncanny. In the heartbreaking "Chez Vous Soon," a woman devastated by her failure to keep her lover from fatally succumbing to insanity and artistic obsession encounters his embodied muse. "The Dybbuk in Love" leans heavily into nostalgia and Jewish heritage as a century-old ghost disturbingly inhabits the minds of a suburban woman's partners to entreat her to accept him as her beloved. "All Our Salt-Bottled Hearts" gracefully takes on the logical legacy of the Lovecraftian mythos with a deep empathy for those called to the sea but still connected to the human world. Though most of Taaffe's stories hit their unsettling emotional mark when encountered individually, her style falls into common patterns and her prose into lulling rhythms, so that readers who indulge in the entire collection at once may lose subtle distinctions and find themselves overwhelmed by a uniform sad strangeness.
I have warned
spatch that uniform sad strangeness may be the title of my sex tape from now on.
no subject
I'd argue with that last sentence pretty hard, though, in terms of particular points and overall thrust. You do have a distinctive style, yes, but speaking as someone who did read the collection all at once, i don't think the stories lose their subtle distinctions in the least. As for overall effect of the collection, it builds and strengthens, but for me, and I'd say for people who like and want what you're doing in these stories, that's a *desirable* effect. And it's not uniform, it's many stranded, many faceted. To say it's uniforms is like saying love stories are uniform because they deal with the topic of love, or that war stories seem to talk a whole lot about loss and damage. There's a hell of a lot of breadth in love and a hell of lot to say about loss and damage.
... Anyway. You probably didn't need that pep talk because you probably are aware of the things I'm saying, but I just want to reiterate that for your fans and future fans, what the reviewer is expressing in the last sentence, insofar as it's true--which is only in part--is a feature, not a bug.
no subject
Thank you.
... Anyway. You probably didn't need that pep talk because you probably are aware of the things I'm saying, but I just want to reiterate that for your fans and future fans, what the reviewer is expressing in the last sentence, insofar as it's true--which is only in part--is a feature, not a bug.
I appreciate the pep talk very much, actually, because that sentence does sting: I don't think I'm that repetitive. And I appreciate the data point of how you read the collection as well. Bogi also read the stories in one go and wasn't bored by the end of them. I am telling myself to notice that, and how this reviewer is also an idiosyncratic person, and I hope it's a feature for more readers than it is a bug.