Post by Adrienne on Apr 8, 2008 15:27:37 GMT -5
Nice review from author Joseph Suglia. And no, I didn't pay him.
After reading GYPSIES STOLE MY TEQUILA, I am convinced that Adrienne Jones can do no wrong. She is one of the only living writers of English who knows how to properly fashion a sentence. The writing tickles you, teases you. It glints and sparkles. It caroms off your brain. Ageing is a rather ticklish subject -- and there is nothing more pitiful than an ageing punk-rocker -- but at the end of her book, you are literally trembling with laughter. Not laughter as a response to humor, really, nor the laughter of embarrassment, but rather the laughter of giddiness and glee. Even when tendrils of pig intestines spill across the page a la REANIMATOR, you're convulsing from laughter. I attribute such a physiological response to the book's elegant verbal play, its charm and grace. I wrote down several of her sentences on the back of an envelope so that I could luxuriate in them later:
"The lines that separated the days of the month had a mossy growth protruding from them, black and rotted looking, like dead vegetation was pushing its way through the calendar from the back."
"The cliff was beauty, rage and death, swirling in a cacophanous shifting of imagery and emotion."
"A wash of pink and red chunks completely blotted out Max's face momentarily before the innards slid down his body onto the floor."
"He shook it off, but could feel the bloody wetness, clinging to his skin, painting it red."
"The cliff was silent save for the wind and the waves."
Even as the main character, Joe Blood, inches toward his fortieth birthday and possibly his self-imposed destruction, you'll be sliding slipperily down Jones's language slide, your nerves all aflutter.
Joseph Suglia
After reading GYPSIES STOLE MY TEQUILA, I am convinced that Adrienne Jones can do no wrong. She is one of the only living writers of English who knows how to properly fashion a sentence. The writing tickles you, teases you. It glints and sparkles. It caroms off your brain. Ageing is a rather ticklish subject -- and there is nothing more pitiful than an ageing punk-rocker -- but at the end of her book, you are literally trembling with laughter. Not laughter as a response to humor, really, nor the laughter of embarrassment, but rather the laughter of giddiness and glee. Even when tendrils of pig intestines spill across the page a la REANIMATOR, you're convulsing from laughter. I attribute such a physiological response to the book's elegant verbal play, its charm and grace. I wrote down several of her sentences on the back of an envelope so that I could luxuriate in them later:
"The lines that separated the days of the month had a mossy growth protruding from them, black and rotted looking, like dead vegetation was pushing its way through the calendar from the back."
"The cliff was beauty, rage and death, swirling in a cacophanous shifting of imagery and emotion."
"A wash of pink and red chunks completely blotted out Max's face momentarily before the innards slid down his body onto the floor."
"He shook it off, but could feel the bloody wetness, clinging to his skin, painting it red."
"The cliff was silent save for the wind and the waves."
Even as the main character, Joe Blood, inches toward his fortieth birthday and possibly his self-imposed destruction, you'll be sliding slipperily down Jones's language slide, your nerves all aflutter.
Joseph Suglia