I quite liked Jamie Iredell's Prose. Poems. A Novel . It's another of these longer fictional works composed of fragments, vignettes, etc. presented more or less randomly but which come together to form a unified whole analogous to a novel. I seem to have been gravitating more to this literary form lately and so far have been most impressed by Ken Sparling's and Daryl Scroggins' examples. The Iredell is very well done in terms of the writing; creative sentence structure, language and imagery, but I still see this much more as distinctively stylized prose than the "prose poems" referred to by most reviewers. The characters and situations in this book are somewhat offputting to me with scenes of drunken mayhem and self destructiveness .
Jan 05, 2010 05:47AM
Jeremy M. Davies' Rose Alley has impressed me with its extravagance, its exuberance, its erudition and the virtuosity of its highly elaborate language. Paul West comes to mind as does Georges Perec's Life: a User's Manual as examples of writers exploring similar stylistic paths. There's a fair amount of work involved in following Davies' oddly twisting sentences and the ideas contained therein, but the effort is amply rewarded.
Jan 06, 2010 03:53PM
I'm all excited about Shane Jones' The Failure Six because it's so much fun. Wonderfully creative writing; very dreamlike and mysterious. Jones excels at surprising the reader with just about every sentence that comes along. A terrific little book.
Jan 08, 2010 07:07AM
I don't read all that much fiction by women that focuses on specifically women's concerns but I really liked Claudia Smith's chapbook sized short story collection Put Your Head in My Lap which is primarily that kind of writing. She doesn't in any way try to dazzle with linguistic virtuosity or flights of imagination. Her stories are beautifully simple, subtle and affecting and are frequently about women coping with the after-effects of tragedy or failed relationships. But among my favorites were actually several very upbeat and life affirming narratives. Very good stuff.
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