jl jamieson

February 16, 2017

Peter S. Beagle’s IN CALABRIA is a masterpiece of magical realism

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized b&n sci-fi & fantasy blog, elizabeth story, fantasy, in calabria, jl jamieson, joel cunningham, nissi shawl, peter s beagle, pop culture beast, review, risingshadow, seregil of rhiminee, the last unicorn, the seattle review of books

The reviews keep rolling in for Peter S Beagle’s well crafted IN CALABRIA.

Photo: Rina Weisman

For RISINGSHADOW, Seregil of Rhiminee praises the book.

Peter S. Beagle’s IN CALABRIA is a lyrical, touching and exquisitely beautiful story set in Calabria. It’s perfect fiction for those who enjoy reading well-told literary stories, because it’s a magical tale for adults. It’s like a slice of real life that has been spiced with fantasy elements.

Before I delve into writing about this story and its contents, I’ll mention that it can be classified either as a short novel or as a novella. I personally classify it as a novella, because it is of novella length.

For a while now, I’ve admired Peter S. Beagle’s literary voice, because he writes beautiful fiction in his own unique way. I like his way of combining fantastical and realistic elements, because he does it extremely well and engages the reader’s attention from the very first page. In my opinion, this novella is an excellent example of his writing skills, because it’s a beautiful fable for modern readers.

IN CALABRIA is one of those novellas that are not meant to be read in haste (it is not intended to readers who skim through stories without taking the time to ponder their meaning). This novella is a relatively fast read, but please don’t let its length fool you into believing that it’s a simple story without depth. It’s anything but simple, because it features such themes as isolation and loneliness, which are explored in a delicate yet surprisingly strong way.

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One of the most important things why I love this novella is that the author writes lyrical prose. His beautiful prose is a pleasure to read, because his descriptions about the happenings are elegant.

Peter S. Beagle’s IN CALABRIA is a delicious and noteworthy masterpiece of magical realism for everyone who loves literary speculative fiction and enjoys reading beautifully written stories. It’s a captivating and rewarding story that should not be missed by fantasy readers, because it pulses with elegance and subtle beauty.

Highly recommended!

JL Jamieson of POP CULTURE BEAST finds the story to be the perfect Valentine.

Beagle writes a modern fairy tale with so much heart and grace, and rather than the world he writes being transformed by it, it’s the characters who are changed deeply and utterly by unfathomable events.

It’s always a pleasure to see a new Beagle novel, as he writes these wonderful tales that involve the supernatural–but are actually about the characters and the way they’re changed by fantastic events. He’s been at this a long time, and it shows in how well crafted the novel is. He’s created the perfect Valentine.

Pick this book up, you won’t regret it.

At THE SEATTLE REVIEW OF BOOKS, Nisi Shawl reviews the fantasy.

Peter S. Beagle’s story of an Italian farmer encountering a gravid unicorn, is reminiscent of his 1968 masterpiece THE LAST UNICORN. But the new book emphasizes the interior transformations caused by this mythical animal. A simultaneous affair between 50-ish widower Claudio Bianchi and a fierce motorcyclist young enough to be his daughter reads alternately as metaphor for the irrationality and vulnerability of love and as simple wish fulfillment. The unicorn colt’s sire, black and furious, appears near the book’s end as counterbalance to the dam’s white beauty, a compelling vision of the positive masculine principle lacking in Beagle’s early work.

Joel Cunningham of B&N SCI-FI & FANTASY BLOG announces the book’s release.

A master of fantasy returns with a new unicorn and a new story, set in the rural farmland of Calabria. Frozen by a past tragedy, Claudio lives a simple life with a few animals, writing poetry and barely surviving. He is astonished when into his life appears a unicorn, forcing him to remember the true freedom that all living things have lost in modern times. The unicorn attracts hordes of reporters and tourists, as well as animal rights activists and those who intend the creature harm. Claudio stoutly protects her, and when he helps her bear her foal, Claudio sees his own life returning to him, the birth of new possibilities. Anyone who loved THE LAST UNICORN knows the power of a Peter S. Beagle story.

For more info about IN CALABRIA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

December 2, 2016

Slick and stylish SLIPPING is exceptional on all counts

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized b&n sci-fi & fantasy blog, clara bacou, colleciton, elizabeth story, for the love of words, horror, jl jamieson, lauren beukes, popculturebeast, review, sam reader, science fiction, slipping, slipping: stories essays & other writing

Three fresh reviews for Lauren Beukes’ impressive collection SLIPPING: STORIES, ESSAYS, & OTHER WRITING.

At the B&N SCI-FI & FANTASY BLOG, Sam Reader loves the book.

Short story collections often function as a good introduction to an author’s work; SLIPPING, the first collection of stories and essays by Lauren Beukes, is no exception in that regard—but otherwise, exceptional on all counts. While imaginative novels like THE SHINING GIRLSMOXYLAND, ZOO CITY, have already established her as a major talent in the fantasy and science fiction realm, her short fiction delivers yet more potent, concentrated doses of her gift for strange ideas and vivid, unnerving prose. These 20 stories and five nonfiction pieces span multiple styles, from poetry, to prose, and even a section of literary mash-up tweets. No matter what form, though, Slipping is loaded with signature Beukes madness, a worthy introduction to her work whether you’re already a fan, or just waiting to become one.

The word that best describes these stories is “stylized.” Her words and worlds drip with an intense, wholly unique visual style, popping in neon-bright colors, even outside the more surreal stories like “Unathi Battles the Black Hairballs,” a comic-book poke at how the West perceives Japan. Beukes consistently manages to find a way to layer even more familiar worlds with bizarre visual flourishes, be it the way the title character’s shifting appearance and upward-falling tears in “Ghost Girl,” the gigantic sound-producing abomination in “Exhibitionist,” or the collapse of civilization in “Tankwa-Karoo.” These images are dreamlike, in the sense that they are all very concrete and surreal, but somehow make perfect sense in context—for only upon waking do dreams become hazy, disquieting, and liminal.

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Stories aside, I’d be remiss not to mention the five non-fiction pieces also featured, which strike a perfect balance between gonzo journalism and personal essay. Beukes is raw, personal, and vulnerable as she writes of horrifying injustices visited upon women in South Africa or severe inequality and racial disparity. The collection concludes with “On Beauty,” a letter to Beukes’ five-year-old daughter, imploring her to hold on to the qualities that make her special even as the world tries to force her to fit into a twisted power structure; it is heartfelt and utterly horrifying in tandem, as she matter-of-factly captures the unconscious pressure our culture puts on children in an effort to force them to conform. It’s a culmination of the dread, both fictional and non-, that comes before.

No matter your familiarity with Lauren Beukes, Slipping is an essential collection, one of the year’s best.

JL Jamieson at POPCULTUREBEAST praises the collection.

Slick and stylish, Beukes’ visions of the future both entertain and alarm in the way that great science fiction should. I really love most everything I’ve read from her, and Slipping is no exception. A great little collection.

FOR THE LOVE OF
WORDS enjoys SLIPPING.

The wide variety of genres cause the stories to lack a certain cohesion like a typical short story anthology might, but it does this collection a disservice to think this is a negative. Instead, each of these stories act as their own palette cleanser from one story to the next and it keeps the reader in a constant state of bewilderment not knowing what type of outlandishness to expect next. I was pleasantly surprised that my favorite part of this collection were the five Non-Fiction pieces included at the end. In these she discusses personal topics such as how she got into journalism, about the research she conducted for her book ZOO CITY within the inner city of Johannesburg, and some additional insight into why she wrote THE SHINING GIRLS, my personal favorite of Beukes, which made me love it even more. She leaves us on a resolute note, with a letter to her five-year-old daughter about the meaning of true beauty.

I’ve read (and loved) a few of Beukes’ full length novels and her writing prowess manages to be just as impressive in her short fiction. This obscure collection only proves that her talents are truly expansive and that we have much to look forward from her.

For more information about SLIPPING: STORIES, ESSAYS, & OTHER WRITING, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Clara Bacou

Design by Elizabeth Story

September 27, 2016

Peter S. Beagle’s SUMMERLONG is absolutely beautiful

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized a fine and private place, Ann Monn, elizabeth story, essay, jl jamieson, magdalena korzeniewska, moyas buchgewimmel, peter s beagle, pop culture beast, powell's books, review, richard dansky, summerlong, the green man review

Three fresh reviews of Peter Beagle’s masterful SUMMERLONG, including one for Magdalena Korzeniewska’s beautiful cover, and an new essay by Beagle.

Photo by Rina Weisman

Peter Beagle crafted an essay about SUMMERLONG for POWELL’S BOOKS.

I never know how long a book or a story is going to take me to write. My first novel, A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE, took me a year, starting in the summer when I was a music counselor at a children’s camp and ending the following September, when I left for the requisite young-writer-wandering-Europe year. I SEE MY OUTFIT — an account of a 1963 motorscooter voyage from New York City to Palo Alto with my lifelong painter friend Phil Sigunick — took five or six months, and was probably the most fun I’ve ever had writing a book. I started THE LAST UNICORN in the summer of 1962, and published it in 1968. It only seemed to take forever — I still think of it as an endless nightmare of revision, and would never have imagined it becoming the book known by people who don’t know I ever wrote anything else. The Folk of the Air took 18 years, and four complete rewrites, on and off. I don’t talk about it much. And my favorite, THE INNKEEPER’S SONG, was plotted in India, during siestas, and seems to have flown to completion back in the States. That’s the one I still reread — not The Last Unicorn — during the bad days, when I’m convinced that I’ll never again write a sentence that can possibly mean anything to any human being. I’m glad of that book, for a lot of reasons.

But SUMMERLONG… I lived on an island once.

At POP CULTURE BEAST, JL Jamieson loves the novel.

Beagle is a master of fairytale, deftly creating a gossamer magic on the page. SUMMERLONG is a tale that merges classic myth with modern storytelling. Absolutely beautiful. Saying anything more would give away the story, and I’d never want to ruin such a lovely read for anyone.

Richard Dansky at THE GREEN MAN REVIEW likes the book.

Peter S. Beagle’s latest, SUMMERLONG is an exercise in masterful, hopeful heartbreak. Deeply steeped in mythology yet relentlessly modern (if a bit sentimental), it tackles the big questions of love, compromise, dreams, and what you might do – or forgive – in the face of the sublime.

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Savvy readers will figure out pretty quickly the mythological underpinnings of Beagle’s story, which roles Lioness and her husband play and by extension, those filled by Joanna and Abe. And yet Beagle doesn’t have the characters retrace the roles laid out for them by Hesiod, strolling to the same old conclusions. Can the book be nitpicked? Probably. The author’s voice is prominent in the dialog, which can be jarring if you’re reading it naturalistically. If, however, you are reading it as modern myth, as a story told by a storyteller directly to an audience, then those foibles drop away.

Is SUMMERLONG a cheerful or light read? Not in the slightest, and there are moments that are wrenching. The journey, however, is more than worth it, a descent into an underworld of the soul and, hopefully, an ascent back into a new and different light.

The German language MOYAS BUCHGEWIMMEL reviews Magdalena Korzeniewska’s cover.

The new cover of the week is decorated with an illustration of the Polish artist Magdalena Korzeniewska who starts her drawings with gel pens and then digitally perfected. How exactly perfecting her of equip goes I do not know, but that is in such a beautiful result even care. When you get closer into the picture zoomed sees the countless small dots and lines that remind me a bit of Van Gogh if I’m honest. The dark lines give the illustration in any case an interesting and bustling base for gentle earth tones and subtle contrasts in color. And look at these many individual strands of hair on!

(Translated from German by Google)

For more info on SUMMERLONG, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Magdalena Korzeniewska

Design by Elizabeth Story

For more info on A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Ann Monn

Tachyon Publications

jl jamieson

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