Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In the Time of Assignments transforms a decades worth of feeling into a lyrical collection of verse. Readers familiar with Martins work will find a repurposing and revelation of the foundations for his prior experiments in prose. The work is divided into three parts, each with a geographical marker indicating the narrators evolving identity, from the formative, Red State landscape that colors the first section through the widening horizons, growing sexual awareness, and crush of experience found in the final two. The beautifully fragmentary narrative exhibited in Martins novels takes hold here in long, poetic sequences and angled interludes; lyric is the steady underpinning.