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THE PORT-WINE STAIN

Name: THE PORT-WINE STAIN
Author: Norman Lock
ISBN: 978-1-942658-06-1

From the American Novels series , Vol. 3

by Norman Lock ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 14, 2016

This chilling and layered story of obsession succeeds both as a moody period piece and as an effective and memorable homage...

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Doppelgängers, literary intrigue, unhealthy obsessions, and a secret society of the death-obsessed menace a young man in this novel of 1840s Philadelphia.

Lock’s novel is structured as a long remembrance told by an aging doctor, Edward Fenzil, working in Camden, New Jersey, in 1876. The story he tells is about his life in Philadelphia 32 years earlier, when he worked as an assistant to Thomas Dent Mütter, a surgeon fond of medical oddities, and became acquainted with Edgar Allan Poe. Gradually, Poe initiates Fenzil into an subculture of people who work with death. Fenzil’s mind begins to fray as he becomes fixated, first on Poe and then on his newly discovered doppelgänger. Both the presence of Poe and the fact that this is a long monologue by a not-necessarily-reliable narrator add an abundance of tension to the proceedings. Occasionally, the tone becomes dreamlike, as in a story told by a cohort of Poe’s about the fate that befell the captain of a slave ship. This is the third in Lock’s American Novels series: works that harken back to 19th-century history and culture. Each is self-contained, though readers of Lock’s earlier American Meteor (2015) will note that the “Moran” to whom this novel is told is that novel’s protagonist. (This book’s chilling final sentence has a secondary meaning for those who have read its predecessor.) Beyond the presence of Poe, other literary figures hover on the book’s margins—the framing story includes several mentions of Walt Whitman, and in his acknowledgements, Lock notes the influence of John Berryman’s Dream Songson one structural aspect of the novel.

This chilling and layered story of obsession succeeds both as a moody period piece and as an effective and memorable homage to the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

Pub Date: June 14, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-942658-06-1

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press

Review Posted Online: March 15, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
EDEN’S CLOCK
by Norman Lock

- BOOK REVIEW
THE CARICATURIST
by Norman Lock

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ICE HARP
by Norman Lock

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THE GREEN ROAD

by Anne Enright ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 4, 2015

A subtle, mature reflection on the loop of life from a unique writer of deserved international stature.

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When the four adult Madigan children come home for Christmas to visit their widowed mother for the last time before the family house is sold, a familiar landscape of tensions is renewed and reordered.

Newly chosen as Ireland’s first fiction laureate, Enright (The Forgotten Waltz, 2012, etc.) showcases the unostentatious skill that underpins her success and popularity in this latest story of place and connection, set in an unnamed community in County Clare. Rosaleen Considine married beneath her when she took the hand of Pat Madigan decades ago. Their four children are now middle-aged, and only one of them, Constance, stayed local, marrying into the McGrath family, which has benefited comfortably from the nation’s financial boom. Returning to the fold are Dan, originally destined for the priesthood, now living in Toronto, gay and “a raging blank of a human being”; Emmet, the international charity worker struggling with attachment; and Hanna, the disappointed actress with a drinking problem. This is prime Enright territory, the fertile soil of home and history, cash and clan; or, in the case of the Madigan reunion, “all the things that were unsayable: failure, money, sex and drink.” Long introductions to the principal characters precede the theatrical format of the reunion, allowing Enright plenty of space to convey her brilliant ear for dialogue, her soft wit, and piercing, poetic sense of life’s larger abstractions. Like Enright's Man Booker Prize–winning The Gathering (2007), this novel traces experience across generations although, despite a brief crisis, this is a less dramatic story, while abidingly generous and humane.

A subtle, mature reflection on the loop of life from a unique writer of deserved international stature.

Pub Date: May 4, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-393-24821-0

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WREN, THE WREN
by Anne Enright

- BOOK REVIEW
ACTRESS
by Anne Enright

- BOOK REVIEW
MAKING BABIES
by Anne Enright

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LITTLE FAITH

by Nickolas Butler ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2019

The novelist loves this land and these characters, with their enduring values amid a way of life that seems to be dying.

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A heartland novel that evokes the possibility of everyday miracles.

The third novel by Wisconsin author Butler (Beneath the Bonfire, 2015, etc.) shows that he knows this terrain inside out, in terms of tone and theme as well as geography. Nothing much happens in this small town in western Wisconsin, not far from the river that serves as the border with Minnesota, which attracts some tourism in the summer but otherwise seems to exist outside of time. The seasons change, but any other changes are probably for the worse—local businesses can’t survive the competition of big-box stores, local kids move elsewhere when they grow up, local churches see their congregations dwindle. Sixty-five-year-old Lyle Hovde and his wife, Peg, have lived here all their lives; they were married in the same church where he was baptized and where he’s sure his funeral will be. His friends have been friends since boyhood; he had the same job at an appliance store where he fixed what they sold until the store closed. Then he retired, or semiretired, as he found a new routine as the only employee at an apple orchard, where the aging owners are less concerned with making money than with being good stewards of the Earth. The novel is like a favorite flannel shirt, relaxed and comfortable, well-crafted even as it deals with issues of life and death, faith and doubt that Lyle somehow takes in stride. He and Peg lost their only child when he was just a few months old, a tragedy which shook his faith even as he maintained his rituals. He and Peg subsequently adopted a baby daughter, Shiloh, through what might seem in retrospect like a miracle (it certainly didn’t seem to involve any of the complications and paperwork that adoptions typically involve). Shiloh was a rebellious child who left as soon as she could and has now returned home with her 5-year-old son, Isaac. Grandparenting gives Lyle another chance to experience what he missed with his own son, yet drama ensues when Shiloh falls for a charismatic evangelist who might be a cult leader (and he’s a stranger to these parts, so he can’t be much good). Though the plot builds toward a dramatic climax, it ends with more of a quiet epiphany.

The novelist loves this land and these characters, with their enduring values amid a way of life that seems to be dying.