California Literary Review

Web Site:

http://www.drowningthefield.blogspot.com

Books on Amazon:

Perpetual Care

Articles written for the California Literary Review:

• Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers
  Posted on 20 Oct 2009 in Fiction Reviews
  

  As a cultural, literary, and historical icon, Virginia Woolf was celebrated by contemporaries and has continued to fascinate audiences long after her death. And why not? Her strong individualistic streak, perhaps anachronistic during her lifetime, fits in well with our post-feminist culture, and her ability to render life in intimate, almost cinematic detail has inspired writers for ages.

• The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan
  Posted on 25 Aug 2009 in Fiction Reviews, Great Britain, Mystery
  

  She sees faces in the flaking walls of the kitchen, fears for the soul of a matriarch’s fox fur, and interprets the ever-changing moods of the decorative beer steins on the mantle. Gwenni is a contradictory combination of fearlessness and naiveté, unable to discern the boundary between her imaginative world and the real one. In this way, she recalls such classic girl heroines as Anne of Green Gables or Jo from Little Women. But it’s her similarity with another classic heroine, Nancy Drew, which really draws readers into her world.

• Valeria’s Last Stand by Marc Fitten
  Posted on 15 Jul 2009 in Fiction Reviews
  

  In the end, the story of Valeria and her Hungarian town is about the sheer difficulty of change. Relics of the past are broken, beat up, thrown across rooms, and completely destroyed, all in the pursuit of the new and the next. Thankfully, Fitten leaves the future of his creations ambiguous, and keeps his political views (mostly) out of it.

• Castle by J. Robert Lennon
  Posted on 13 May 2009 in Fiction Reviews, Mystery
  

  For all his derision, arrogance, and unreliability, Eric Loesch is not an unsympathetic protagonist. In fact, as readers are slowly fed morsels of Loesch’s violent past (Lennon reveals himself here as a master of seamless flashbacks), they find themselves saddened rather than horrified at the person he has become.

• Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry by Leanne Shapton
  Posted on 06 Apr 2009 in Fiction Reviews
  

  Though we hope that love will conquer in the end, we are all too aware that these two are just not suited for each other, either on paper, or in real life. The fact that, as audience members, we are able to pick up on these things which are never overtly told to us is as thrilling as piecing a puzzle together or discovering the culprit in a mystery.