I'm always interested to read B.C. authors and, after thoroughly enjoying Michael Turner's 2000 novel, The Pornographer's Poem, I was looking forward to 8 x 10.
Turner's newest book is neither a novel nor a short story collection; it's an ekphrasic series of snapshots that ambiguously connect to each other. The author writes poetically but also impersonally; there is no mention of time, place or character names (only pronouns are used). Despite this, Turner's sparse language creates effective and concrete scenes featuring the themes of addiction, loss, war, sexual dysfunction and immigration. The reader only catches glimpses of characters' conflicts before facing the next vignette and never really knows whether the same characters return in subsequent, related snippets or not.
The book is a short 163 pages but it begs to be read a second time, both to make connections between the snapshots and to enjoy Turner's talent at manifesting evocative, tragic, profound and sometimes hilarious scenes in so few words.
No comments:
Post a Comment