Tonight is the first event for the new book, and I've spent most of the afternoon at home with curlers in my hair and cucumber circles on the eyes...
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This is the compelling, beautifully written story of Lydia, a modern day Alice who travels to Japan, believing herself well prepared, even eager, for her trip down a cultural and sexual rabbit hole --- and who nonetheless comes home altered, reversed. Compulsively readable, from the foreplay and foreshadowing of the first paragraph, through every increasingly complex and compromised twist of the story.
And there are so many clever writerly details to enjoy as well, if you can ever tear your attention from the story proper. I admire the author's masterful use of contrasts to help place us in Lydia's shoes, to inhabit her disorientation and exhilaration at the constant shattering and reforming of her expectations. I love the offhand, culturally enlightening details; corn flakes on ice cream sundaes, and "love suicide puppet plays". And I particularly appreciate the play of "story" in this story; the stories the characters tell each other, the fictions they create and overlay over their own lives, the fantasies that sustain Lydia at crucial moments, and the way the whole novel is itself wrapped in its own frame story. Not, I suspect, a coincidence, given the author's name.
In all, a strong, rewarding, and arousing first novel. Not surprising, as it springs from an author who has already established herself as the writer of similarly strong, rewarding, and arousing short fiction.
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readerWPK has commented on (1) product.
Amorous Woman (Neon) by Donna George Storey
readerWPK, July 2, 2008
Excellent, Enticing, Enlightening,This is the compelling, beautifully written story of Lydia, a modern day Alice who travels to Japan, believing herself well prepared, even eager, for her trip down a cultural and sexual rabbit hole --- and who nonetheless comes home altered, reversed. Compulsively readable, from the foreplay and foreshadowing of the first paragraph, through every increasingly complex and compromised twist of the story.
And there are so many clever writerly details to enjoy as well, if you can ever tear your attention from the story proper. I admire the author's masterful use of contrasts to help place us in Lydia's shoes, to inhabit her disorientation and exhilaration at the constant shattering and reforming of her expectations. I love the offhand, culturally enlightening details; corn flakes on ice cream sundaes, and "love suicide puppet plays". And I particularly appreciate the play of "story" in this story; the stories the characters tell each other, the fictions they create and overlay over their own lives, the fantasies that sustain Lydia at crucial moments, and the way the whole novel is itself wrapped in its own frame story. Not, I suspect, a coincidence, given the author's name.
In all, a strong, rewarding, and arousing first novel. Not surprising, as it springs from an author who has already established herself as the writer of similarly strong, rewarding, and arousing short fiction.
(2 of 3 readers found this comment helpful)