by Joseph Quijote ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 27, 2012
Tells two stories that sometimes compete with each other, but brilliant billiards battles make it worthwhile.
Two billiards players—one older and disabled, the other ambitious and in a slump—try to improve their game.
After some punks hustle young Henry at pool, his father teaches him everything he knows about how to work the table. Henry learns well, but his trip to Vegas turns disastrous when he bests the wrong guys and winds up with a mangled leg. More than 20 years later, he works at a poolroom and meets Jason, whose billiard skills seem to have vanished. While Jason focuses on helping a man whose son needs a $100,000 operation, Henry debates whether anyone else can play pool “in the zone.” In Quijote’s debut novel, the 21-year gap in time, near the book’s midpoint, divides two stories. The first follows Henry from age 14 to his recovery from his beating, and the second details Jason’s arrival at Maxie’s Billiard Emporium and the subsequent tourney. While the merging of the two stories works well, some of it disorients: Henry becomes a supporting character in the second half, and significant people, such as Moe, who helps the crippled man, disappear without explanation. Henry’s girlfriend, Jasmine, plays an important role in his life, but most female characters are mere objects of lust or blatant displays of vulnerability—and usually the resultant tears lead to sex. Henry’s “in-the-zone” technique gets adequate explanation, but we don’t learn why only Henry can achieve this state of being. The author hits the mark where he should; he regales with scenes of cue-stick war and saves the most impassioned bout until the end. And Quijote cleverly plots the story—some of those characters from the first half do make appearances later, and a subplot involving a woman trying to blackmail Jason leads to an uproarious late-night confrontation at a motel.
Tells two stories that sometimes compete with each other, but brilliant billiards battles make it worthwhile.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2012
ISBN: 978-1458205926
Page Count: 220
Publisher: AbbottPress
Review Posted Online: Dec. 27, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by William Poe ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 16, 2015
Downbeat but often engaging poems and stories.
A slim volume of largely gay-themed writings with pessimistic overtones.
Poe (Simple Simon, 2013, etc.) divides this collection of six short stories and 34 poems into five sections: “Art,” “Death,” “Relationship,” “Being,” and “Reflection.” Significantly, a figurative death at the age of 7 appears in two different poems, in which the author uses the phrase “a pretended life” to refer to the idea of hiding one’s true nature and performing socially enforced gender roles. This is a well-worn trope, but it will be powerful and resonant for many who have struggled with a stigmatized identity. In a similar vein, “Imaginary Tom” presents the remnants of a faded relationship: “Now we are imaginary friends, different in each other’s thoughts, / I the burden you seek to discard, / you the lover I created from the mist of longing.” Once in a while, short story passages practically leap off of the page, such as this evocative description of a seedy establishment in Lincoln, Nebraska: “It was a dimly lit bar that smelled of rodent piss, with barstools that danced on uneven legs and made the patrons wonder if they were drunker than they thought.” In “Valéry’s Ride,” Poe examines the familial duties that often fall to unmarried and childless people, keeping them from forming meaningful bonds with others. In this story, after the double whammy of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hits Louisiana, Valéry’s extended family needs him more than ever; readers will likely root for the gay protagonist as he makes the difficult decision to strike out on his own. Not all of Poe’s main characters are gay; the heterosexual title character in “Mrs. Calumet’s Workspace,” for instance, pursues employment in order to escape the confines of her home and a passionless marriage. Working as a bookkeeper, she attempts to carve out a space for herself, symbolized by changes in her work area. Still, this story echoes the recurring theme of lives unlived due to forces often beyond one’s control.
Downbeat but often engaging poems and stories.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5168-3693-2
Page Count: 120
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.C. Salazar ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2018
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.
A collection speaks in part to the poet’s Mexican-American heritage.
In these multifaceted poems, Mexico-born, Houston-raised Salazar (Of Dreams and Thorns, 2017) explores general human themes like love and war in addition to specific experiences as a person of color. The book begins with a sensual meditation on desire, featuring luscious descriptions of a lover, from lips “moist like youth” to the body’s “softest velvet” slopes. The poems shift to odes to cultural icons like the Tejano star Selena and Mexican-German painter Frida Kahlo as well as occasion pieces honoring his brother’s 40th birthday and a friend’s mother’s memorial service. The author hits his stride when he delves into identity. In “I Am Not Brown,” he contemplates the societal implications of skin tone and his inability to fit into the rigid category of Caucasian or Latino. “For white and black and brown alike / Are slaves to history’s brush strokes,” he writes. “Grateful for the Work,” perhaps Salazar’s loveliest poem, catalogs the day of a laborer, starting with an early morning awakening and following him as he toils in 100-degree heat, enjoys tacos from his lunch pail, buys beverages from a child’s lemonade stand, and returns home to an equally hard-working wife. The author then makes an abrupt turn toward Syria in a series of poems that condemn that country’s president, Bashar Hafez al-Assad. They serve as a rallying cry for Syrians and grieve for the murdered masses. Salazar’s closing poem, “Sons of Bitches,” is a clunky rant about a 20-year-old immigrant shot in the head by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent. The gratuitous violence and political theologizing are ill at ease with the intimate, personal experiences that preceded them, such as the fablelike “A Mexican is Made of This,” in which Salazar beautifully describes the “rainbows, bronze, backbone, butterflies” that his people embody.
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9991496-3-8
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Bronze Diamond Productions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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