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/
I have read four chapters so far, and am impressed with its alternate world in USA of 1893, its prose style / characterisation and its conceit of dynastically arranged single sex marriages…
I have now read the first book of three books that make up this whole book. I was compelled to read it quicker and quicker with an attritional obsession, As obsessive as David’s passion for Edward and what he gave up to fulfil it, in this alternate world, a world of constraints and freedoms that one is made to believe in. Its history seems realer than our own! But what do I believe? What David makes himself believe or what Edward tells him? Or both!
The prose style is attritional as well as surprisingly amenable. The leitmotifs, too. Such as the water stain in David’s room and his Heaven of cakes…
And I feel bereft that I may not meet these characters again.
PART II
again, in fantasy.
Up to page 244
Very imoressed! The AIDS syndrome in an alternate world.
And the gestalt organism of David, Charles and Peter,
And the gestalt sculpture of David, Charles and Eden.
Not forgetting the chocolate mountain!