Review: A Gnome Problem by Michael Crane

Rating: 3.3 out of 5

Michael Crane is an author with a wicked sense of humor. Just from reading his drabble collections (Lessons and Lessons II), you can easily see his sarcastic wit and ability to transform threatening, potentially harmful situations into a form of dark comedy. He’s gifted in turning a phrase and uses an economy of words to get his point across. In short, I think he’s brilliant.

When I purchased A Gnome Problem, his novelette, I expected much of the same, only in a wider format. And I wasn’t disappointed in that. The story follows the adventures of Pat, a pathetic down-and-outer, after he receives a panicked phone call from his buddy Spencer, who goes on to explain that he’s being tormented by gnomes. Garden gnomes. See? Already it’s hilarious.

Pat heads out to Spencer’s house, confronts his friend, thinks he’s just nuts, and then, when he discovers there really are gnomes attacking his friend, goes about trying to solve the problem.

That’s as much as I’ll give you for plot, since this is a short piece and revealing any more would be tantamount to full disclosure. And the story does work. It made me laugh multiple times, especially when Pat starts getting irritated when no one involved will listen to his advice.

And yet this is where I ran into problems with the tale. Pat, as a character, is a bit flat. Yes he’s funny, yes his quips are delivered with aplomb…but there doesn’t seem to be anything beyond that. The running plot about his girlfriend leaving him did nothing for me, and I couldn’t help but think that if the story had been written in third person instead of first, it might have come off much, much better. As it is, he’s an unreliable narrator in a tale that needs a reliable one.

Also, the ending really rubbed me the wrong way. When it finished I said, ”What…really?” Not that the conclusion is bad by any means. It isn’t. But it felt unsatisfying, as if the author had too many ideas in his head and couldn’t figure out how to use them all, so he used the simplest version he could think of. Not to be cruel, but that’s what the end felt like. A cop-out. There were so many different places the author could’ve taken it in either direction, darker or more hilarious. It demanded to be expanded upon, to be more fleshed out. But alas, it didn’t happen.

Now, of course, I can in no way state that this is a bad story. It’s not at all. I did genuinely enjoy myself, just not as much as I thought I should. Crane has oodles of ability, and I really enjoy reading his prose. If anything, the poor rating has more to do with my high opinion of his talent, with my expectation for what he produces, than anything. And I simply don’t think this tale stood as tall as it could have…ne, should have.

That being said, I would still recommend this novelette and not feel the slightest bit bad about doing so. You’ll end up laughing and cringing more than once, and by the end, I think you’ll want more more more. Because if A Gnome Problem does nothing else, it serves to demonstrate how well Crane can tell a story. He most certainly has the potential to be great. If you’re like me, you’re rooting for his next offering to fully deliver on that potential.

Plot - 8

Characters - 5

Voice - 9

Execution - 5

Personal Enjoyment – 6

Overall – 33/50 (3.3/5)

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Review: Anomaly by Thea Atkinson

Rating: 4.7 out of 5

When I received Anomaly by Thea Atkinson as a review copy, I set it aside, pretty much uninterested. I accepted it because the sample was well written, but I was deep into a new fascination with fantasy and other genre fiction at that time, and thought to myself, I don’t really like literary fiction, so this one can wait a while…let me enjoy myself first.

Well, recently I glanced at my to-be-read pile, saw that book still sitting there, and decided it had waited long enough. And when I started reading, all I could think was that I should’ve gotten around to it sooner. It surprised me in so many ways.

Anomaly is the story of J, a ne’er-do-well transgender/recovering drug addict living in rural Nova Scotia. This book doesn’t have so much of a plot in the traditional sense; it’s more an exploration of what it means to be J, taking place during a few tough, stressful, and let’s face it, downright depressing days out of his/her life. No, existence is not easy for our J, who has a big mouth and a bit of a masochistic streak. J’s struggles with his/her sexual identity create a character who’s constantly on the edge of darkness, questioning what it means to be man, to be woman, to be both, or to be nothing at all.

While recovering from a particularly brutal beating, J begins to worry about his/her neighbor, whose colicky baby has suddenly stopped crying. In a feat of humanity uncommon for J (and most addicts, really), he/she strikes up a protective relationship with said neighbor,, a young woman and fellow addict who (hard as it is to believe) is actually more pathetic than J.

The bulk of the story takes place in J’s apartment and a local bar, and we get to meet his/her friend Molly, a boisterous lesbian who, herself, has far-too-long-ignored substance-abuse issues. There is also a kind nurse who is a welcomed voice of reason to the rest of the characters’ insanity, who forms a quite beautiful bond with J and ends up being a lynchpin for suggested further growth, development, healing, and self-discovery.

It might seem like I’m making fun of this book and what lies inside, but I’m truly not. When I call the characters pathetic, it’s because that’s the way Atkinson created them – and purposefully so. Having known quite a few addicts throughout my life, I found their portrayal both accurate and heartbreaking, though not without a sliver of hope. But what I appreciated most of all were the reasons for this addiction, for J in particular. I have no idea what it’s like to not know my gender, to one day know I’m a man and the next know, just as strongly, that I’m a woman. But I can imagine how much pressure that must place on an individual, socially as well as emotionally. Like it or not, we have some pretty strict public codes of conduct in this world when it comes to gender roles, and for those who choose (or have no choice in the matter) to buck them end up paying a high mental and physical cost.

This novel is told in first-person, from J’s viewpoint, and we the reader get to hear his/her thoughts on so many subjects – from the nature of religious icons to the contradictory messages of the LGBT community to how pitiable the life of an addict really is. He/she’s a very reliable source of information, for no matter how screwed up J might be, he/she still has his/her head on straight…mostly. So when J latches onto a single phrase, one used to describe the reasons her neighbor’s baby was taken away, those words gain that much more importance and a new, particularly foreboding meaning.

Failure to thrive.

That phrase is repeated over and over again, and really, that’s what Anomaly is all about. It’s the story of how incomplete we are as people – all of us – and how our standard definitions, though they might help keep things tucked neatly in little boxes, often times hurt us more than anything. It’s about the malfunction of the concept of love and how often we don’t know what that word means. It’s about caring for others more than ourselves, and realizing that when doing so we completely disregard the fact we must care for ourselves, lest every action we make means nothing.

But most of all, it’s the story of life, of the struggle to survive in a world that really has no one’s best interest in mind, a world that, in effect, makes it difficult for anyone to thrive. In that way Anomaly is a difficult and occasionally stomach-churning read. But it’s a learning experience, and very much worth the investment of time.

I’m glad I invested mine.

Plot - 9

Characters - 10

Voice - 10

Execution - 9

Personal Enjoyment – 9

Overall – 47/50 (4.7/5)

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Review: Kafka's House by Gabriela Popa

Rating: 3.3 out of 5

I find it wonderful to read about a slice of life that is separate from my own, a sliver of reality alien to me in setting and social construction yet human enough to allow me to feel for the characters and wonder what it would be like if I, myself, lived under these circumstances.

In Kafka’s House, Gabriela Popa transports the reader to Romania in the 1960’s, a land where old ways are beginning to be ushered away at the onset of communism. In this tale we meet Sylvia, a precocious 10-year-old with a wandering mind, love of stories, and the unquenchable urge for knowledge apart from the everyday life she’s always known.

The story is simple. Sylvia lives in a small town with her parents and younger sister, Mirela. She spends her time (both in school and out) with her best friend Duck and avoiding a young boy named Florin who she dubs “the enemy”, the perpetrator of much of her youthful angst. She is constantly sent to pick up bors from a pair of older ladies down the street, Ana and Crina. Ana in particular captures Sylvia’s attention, as she is a woman of travel. Ana tells the girl stories of Prague and lets Sylvia see postcards from other countries, as well as occasionally smuggling snippets of wonderment (in the form of pages from a diary) into her bags. Sylvia laps this all up and her thirst for adventure is only heightened.

The most brilliant aspect of the plot is that while her thirst is heightened, Sylvia is inexorably trapped by her everyday life. Her parents are overprotective and the simple truths of her country’s conversion to a communist state and the ever-present threats from neighboring countries don’t exactly make it safe or practical for this child to explore her inner voyager. So she spends much of the book trapped in her own mind, questioning the reasoning for what happens around her and using fairy tales to try and come to grips with what she doesn’t understand.

Author Popa creates a Romania that is wonderfully unfamiliar and yet atmospheric. We the readers are transported to this land and by the end we come to at least a modicum of understanding of what life in this time, in this place, might have been like. She uses a delightfully innocent voice that gives the book the feel of being an autobiographical memoir rather than fictional tale, which this reviewer will go ahead and assume is done on purpose. With the intimacy with which Popa describes these people and their surroundings, this reviewer will go ahead and assume this is a story based directly on the author’s life.

But this voice is also part of the problem with the book. Whereas the story is told through Sylvia’s eyes and in the present tense, there are contemplations and language used that effectively pulled me out of the story every so often, for there is no way a sheltered girl of ten could be possessed of such worldliness. I wish the book had been written in past tense and constructed more in the way of a reflective memoir, because each time I was yanked from the wonderful atmosphere it canceled out what the writing is trying to accomplish.

The format and language used in the book was also a problem for me. Commas are abundant and often misused, words are constantly mashed together, grammar is spotty, and there are sporadic indents and spacing. Also, the author doesn’t use quotes around dialogue, instead relying on an em-dash to connote someone speaking. Taken on its own this is a writing convention I don’t necessarily mind (Cormac McCarthy doesn’t use quotes either, and he’s one of the greatest American writers of this century), but when placed atop the other issues it becomes noticeable, distracting, and confusing. It gives the book a sometimes amateurish feel, and also makes one think that perhaps English is not the author’s native language, which might well be true.

However, with all this being said and despite my rating, I can honestly say that I would recommend this book. It’s a slice of youth and innocence that serves to inform us that no matter how different two cultures might be, in the end we’re all human. We live, we learn, we encounter disappointment, pain, and fear, and yet still we may be able to rise above, even if it’s through nothing but our imagination. You will wonder at the idiosyncrasies that people possess and ponder just how much of the unknown is unknown for a reason, for when faced with dire circumstances and a society living on the edge of fear, morality is sometimes hard to judge. I think that morality play, and the loss your individual voice, may be the main points of the story, and for that alone I can say that I truly enjoyed the time I spent reading this.

Plot - 7

Characters - 9

Voice - 7

Execution - 3

Personal Enjoyment – 7

Overall – 33/50 (3.3/5)

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Review: Nectrotic Tissue #11

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

When the first issue of a certain magazine arrived on my doorstep, my wife looked at it, squinted, and said, “I never thought I’d marry a man who read something called Necrotic Tissue.”

Oh, but darling, you did.

As a writer who tends to dip towards horror, I’ve been following this particular magazine for quite some time. I’ve had the opportunity to have a few email conversations with R. Scott McCoy, the editor-in-chief of the publication, and a review of his novella, “Feast”, can be found a few sections down in the Journal. However, I never bought the magazine. Why? Most likely because I can be cheap.

Well, that was remedied when I ordered a subscription, and here I am reviewing the latest issue.

This magazine is chock-full of horror goodness – as well it should be, because it’s subtitled “The Horror Writers’ Magazine”. Inside are 116 pages of terror, more than I would’ve expected from an independent publication. But, independent though it may be, it’s one of the more professional-looking mags I’ve seen.

There are fifteen stories inside, as well as another seven one-hundred word bites. The stories range from tales of monsters and inter-dimensional travel to ones of the little things real people might do to each other in the name of love. There seems to be a theme running through many of the stories, as well, and that is of nature coming alive and turning against us. I’m not sure if this is on purpose, but it works.

Not every single story worked for me – there were three that I found bland – but even those I finished, which says something. However, I would like to point out my two favorites, as these two I can’t get out of my mind.

The first and my most desired is Mr. Klein’s Cancer by T.L. Barrett. It’s the story of an old teacher whose students drive him insane, and the physical manifestation of that hatred that grows inside him. The story is disturbing and funny at the same time, which takes skill. A definite diamond there.

The second is Bodily Harm by William Vitka. It tells the tale of renegade organs and the actions they take against their host, who has neglected them for far too long.

Honorable mention goes out to Meltdown by Matthew Fryer, Adaptation by Eric Hermanson, and Chums by Doug Murano. And to the rest of the authors who contributed their work, as well. They did a great job, even those I wasn’t fond of, for that is a matter of taste. All of them were well-written, well constructed, and consistent in their tone and themes. All deserved to be published, and there they were.

Necrotic Tissue #11 is a fantastic little magazine, folks. And in this market, where lovers of horror have to search high and low to find a periodical that matches their interests, it deserves – no, needs – to be supported.

Buy the magazine. Get a subscription. Read away. Support the writers and the editors who put their own time, effort, and money into creating something wonderful that all of us can enjoy.

Believe me, you’ll be glad you did.

Necrotic Tissue Website