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/
Unlike in my heyday in recent years regarding older literature and genre short stories and novels whereby I accomplished in detail many experimental or personal critiques as linked here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2022/12/23/some-of-my-serial-reviews-indexed/, my ageing and lazing brain now finds it more difficult to continue to do so.
I now feel satisfyingly imbued with the marvellous Green by osmosis as well as by efforts of a less conscientious reading-mind. Suffice to quote here from Goodreads about CAUGHT:
“When the war breaks out, Rose, a well-to-do widower with a young son, Christopher, volunteers for the Auxiliary Fire Service in London, and is trained under a professional fire officer, Pye. The two men discover that a quite different link already exists between them: it was Pye’s strange, disturbed sister who once upon a time abducted Christopher and kept him in her room until Pye rescued the terrified child. In the apocalyptic atmosphere of the Blitz the relationship between the two men develops as each of them grapples with his own troubled emotional attachments, the one to his dead wife, the other to his unhappy sister. Inevitably matters come to a head when history shows signs of repeating itself. The subtle handling of relationships, the brilliance of the dialogue and description – including one of the best accounts ever written of London under the Blitz – established ‘Caught’ as one of Henry Green’s most powerful novels.”
‘More power to his elbow mate, more power to it.’
— From the text of CAUGHT
My review of THE LULL by Henry Green in May 2022, also about a similar scenario in the Fire Service:
Also the ‘tin of sardines’ from Blindness
Now, perhaps aptly, on to NOTHING: