Des Lewis will be 77 years old on 18 January 2025
Those who have read these episodic brainstorming reviews of mine must know they are very personal — rough-shod and spontaneous. Synchronicity and anagram mixed. I know they are not professional, never potentially publishable other than in the madness of my head, but I do hope they show grains of dark truth and cosmic panache.
These Des Lewis Gestalt Real-Time Reviews were founded in 2008.
‘What’s the loveliest word in the English language, officer? In the sound it makes in your mouth, in the shape it makes on the page? What do you think? Well now, I’ll tell you: E-L-B-O-W. Elbow.’ — THE SINGING DETECTIVE
“How shall a man find his way unless he lose it?” — Walter de la Mare
To any current genre author I have reviewed before — if you have a new story recently published or soon to be published in a collection or anthology, you may have a review by me of the story that also showcases where it is published. See HERE. (This is because I am no longer well enough to review as many books as I once did.)
Fresh Fictions, free to read HERE.
No AI input in preparation of my texts whatsoever.
THE NEW NONSCENIC
Photos here: https://conezero.wordpress.com/2024/02/24/d-f-lewis-recent-photos-1/
ROUNDS signed by without the ‘Menmuir’.
Copy numbered 93/200
The story itself from page 5 to 12.
19 year old Alice taking occupation of her own home for the first time, an empty-edgeside abode, taken there by her Dad in his car with a £50 loan to tide her over and then her finding some 50p pieces for the meter. Waking dreams and hemmed voile and used newspapers already there, items to be shown the door. And a glimpse of a small girl on a bicycle or two girls on bicycles in the street…
As I read towards the end of this work I was utterly confident that the ending would make the whole thing worth reading. I was not wrong, even though it was not until the story’s very last word that such confidence was fulfilled. Like opening a glove compartment in an old car from your past. Or simply shutting it?
Later ‘connected’ below…
FURY
Copy numbered 102/200
The story itself from page 5 to 15
“But as he watched the red scratches darken and bleed, he simply smiled –”
This story, as its own intended discrete work of fashioning you the reader inside it even against your will, standing alone as a powerful force of a fury from the buildings or crime scenes the narrated protagonist investigates as part of his job, ‘connecting’ him to them, flattening out our real three-dimensional world of objects inside them, people, too. There is of course more to it than that, as you will find out, without my need to spoil it for you first.
The work also connects with the connection of Alice to her own new house by a cord against her own Wyl.