Namesake – V.H. Leslie “…it was about finally being shot of her name.”
A story with an engaging plain style about a Plain Jane who is known throughout by the initial J that makes me strobe between her being her and I as I enter her world of her Internet dating, and a dancing club’s spiral staircase and a rope ladder coiled up in the supposedly empty “attic space” and those who inhabit the Internet, the crossing of names with nicknames, double-barrelled named marriages, Rapunzel, and Hitchcockian birds from the air now enclosed, birds from an air that literally and literarily becomes Jane’s Eyre. Or Eyrie. A plain style that packs a truly effective and arguably complex horror punch. Eerie as well as visceral. And messages for all us ‘puddle-jumpers’ in modern life.
With telling echoes of Leslie’s own Cloud Cartographer story.
The Festering – Ray Cluley “A cowl or a caul or something. All shiny with blood.”
…thus from Mr Rochester in the previous story to a female version here of David Copperfield. A modern, puddle-jumping version.
This Cluley also has a plain style that conveys a very powerful story, one that may shock some readers. It is as if the story itself speaks words into the drawer of your brain, just as the schoolgirl in the Cluley speaks words into her own drawer or ‘attic space’ equivalent. And if you see what these words actually create in her drawer, you may wish to give your own next nightmare a miss!
This story conveys a type of culture that grew up amongst us unnoticed, a pitiful society of turned eyes and crude physical and mercenary desires that grow and grow: the bloody pustular veil that grew over our own faces. And much more. The pilotless plane that plans its own prehensile, mock team-building ferality. The tontine where the unluckiest winner reaps the spiritual deficit when the rest of us are dead. That Attar Attack of concertina repercussions that we all take on like a burden, leaving the next one to bear this burden, till there is only one of us left. Coming full circle from the beginning of this review, here we have a Ligottian Anti-Natalism in essence, one that now subsumes Corporatism as well as subsuming all us puppets and papier-mache masks steeped in the actual mess of spawning, all now shown by this Cluley vision. Till we fire the righteous bullet, the only just murder.
Thank you, Mr Lewis. It’s always a pleasure reading your gestalt real-time reviews but even more so when you say such positive things about my story. Thanks.
Last Balcony: Essex Serpents and Pier’s Echo 
Namesake – V.H. Leslie
“…it was about finally being shot of her name.”
A story with an engaging plain style about a Plain Jane who is known throughout by the initial J that makes me strobe between her being her and I as I enter her world of her Internet dating, and a dancing club’s spiral staircase and a rope ladder coiled up in the supposedly empty “attic space” and those who inhabit the Internet, the crossing of names with nicknames, double-barrelled named marriages, Rapunzel, and Hitchcockian birds from the air now enclosed, birds from an air that literally and literarily becomes Jane’s Eyre. Or Eyrie. A plain style that packs a truly effective and arguably complex horror punch. Eerie as well as visceral. And messages for all us ‘puddle-jumpers’ in modern life.
With telling echoes of Leslie’s own Cloud Cartographer story.
The Festering – Ray Cluley
“A cowl or a caul or something. All shiny with blood.”
…thus from Mr Rochester in the previous story to a female version here of David Copperfield. A modern, puddle-jumping version.
This Cluley also has a plain style that conveys a very powerful story, one that may shock some readers. It is as if the story itself speaks words into the drawer of your brain, just as the schoolgirl in the Cluley speaks words into her own drawer or ‘attic space’ equivalent. And if you see what these words actually create in her drawer, you may wish to give your own next nightmare a miss!
This story conveys a type of culture that grew up amongst us unnoticed, a pitiful society of turned eyes and crude physical and mercenary desires that grow and grow: the bloody pustular veil that grew over our own faces. And much more. The pilotless plane that plans its own prehensile, mock team-building ferality. The tontine where the unluckiest winner reaps the spiritual deficit when the rest of us are dead. That Attar Attack of concertina repercussions that we all take on like a burden, leaving the next one to bear this burden, till there is only one of us left. Coming full circle from the beginning of this review, here we have a Ligottian Anti-Natalism in essence, one that now subsumes Corporatism as well as subsuming all us puppets and papier-mache masks steeped in the actual mess of spawning, all now shown by this Cluley vision. Till we fire the righteous bullet, the only just murder.
end
Thank you, Mr Lewis. It’s always a pleasure reading your gestalt real-time reviews but even more so when you say such positive things about my story. Thanks.