Merry Spring! Tis the time for daffodils, blue skies and wildly raging hormones. But wait, get that poor nude fellow down from the Wicker Man, you can burn him later. First on the agenda is a new pile of extremely odd books.
1. The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington. One of the surrealist crowd and lover of Max Ernst, Leonora’s life seems as bizarre as any of her work. The book itself is intriguing and oddly refreshing – the main characters are all women in their 90s, an age group usually included in fiction to generate sympathy or to hilariously utter a swear word at the wrong moment. However these are real characters featured among the increasingly bizarre carryings on.
2. People With Holes by Heather Fowler. The nominal first story in this collection made my brain crackle, which is my way of saying I found the thoughts it induced exciting. I will say there were perhaps one too many ‘people turning into animal’ stories but that’s my own opinion obviously, and there are plenty of other varieties of story. For any fans of magic realism or anything a bit different this is for you, and the way she writes pulled me right in.
3. A Million Versions of Right by Matthew Revert. Definitely an odd’un, this is also very funny. If your mind can take the battering from this surreal short story collection (one character’s job is to insult walls) I promise you chuckles a plenty.
4. Haunted Air: ‘A Collection of Anonymous Hallowe’en Photographs America c. 1875 – 1955‘ by Ossian Brown. Haunting, weird, fascinating and a little disturbing, this is literally a bunch of photos from various sources on Halloween, and yet it’s much more than that. Who are they? What did they do just seconds afterwards? With photos reminiscent of Diane Arbus, needless to say the foreword is by David Lynch.
Well, there we are! A few books to be going on with until next time. In the meantime here is a post about some lovely pornographic actresses, including that nice Stoya Doll, reading poetry and prose aloud. NSFW, kind of.
Madeleine Swann 