My previous review of NIGHTJAR PRESS publications HERE
When I review the above works, my thoughts will appear in the comment stream below….
DES LEWIS GESTALT REAL-TIME REVIEWS – established 2008
A Constructive Congeries of the Conceits, Coincidences and Cross-References of Fiction — Please use the Search Box and ‘Navigation & Backstory’ link in the top pinned post.
BREMEN by Claire Dean
“He returned to the Findling again and again.”
But I have been to Bremen only once, on a single day a number of years ago. And took this photo. Enough of a visit to be able now to imagine the market stall and its old woman who creates the Foundlings (or do they create her?), Foundlings who need to find each other before they are lost, it seems, some whose heads we enter. Amazingly this Bremen (breed-men?) piece also has many references to crows (ends with them, too), and only this same afternoon I have just finished reviewing here today’s episode of the novel KA by John Crowley whose characters are crows and have heads we can enter, too. Amazing coincidental resonance in my day’s gestalt, thanks to this Dean. Haunting, its style precise yet ornate, rich yet stark, obvious yet oblique. Was there a miracle working here?
THE UNWISH by Claire Dean
Copy 32 of 200: 16 pages.
“…where all the leaves were really birds…”
Whether Goldfinch or Crow, that seems something to help any reader keen on finding words for things that hide between the otherwise plain lines of this engaging story, more easily expressed than in Bremen, a story with a duty only unto itself, but containing implications towards things that remained concealed since the characters were last here. A family of parents and sisters returned to their holiday cottage of yore, the girls now grown up women, and everyone now beyond pooh-sticks except possibly for the Dad.
One sister happily settled and pregnant, but here alone because of her husband’s business commitments, the other sister waiting for the arrival of her new boy friend whose texts about his planned arrival are not up to loving scratch. I’ll leave you there balanced between a modern Austen and something quite else, creeping up on you as all good literature should. But not only what was lost in the past but also lost today? Another breed-man wished away? And who is that in the window above?
“In Scrabble she got F.O.U.N.D. on a triple word score…”