The following is based on an actual nightmare I experienced. It was easily the most vivid I have ever had, and will likely stick with me forever.
Featured image by Rachel King/Carla MacKinnon.
Nightmare
Tag: fiction
Book Review – Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick DeWitt
Undermajordomo Minor is the newest novel by Patrick DeWitt, published by Anansi House Press on September 5, 2015. DeWitt is well known for his previous and bestselling novel The Sisters Brothers, which received significant acclaim. The story follows Lucien “Lucy” Minor, a young man going out into the world to seek something more from life, gaining employment as an undermajordomo at the mysterious Castle Von Aux. Promotionally, the novel is described as “A love story, an adventure story, a fable without a moral, and an ink-black comedy of manners.”Read More »
Book Review – The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant is the seventh and latest novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, published on March 3, 2015, and it is the author’s first novel in a decade. It follows Axl and Beatrice, an old Briton couple living in Britain after the Romans have “long since departed.” In this world falling into ruin nobody seems able to remember much of the distant, or even recent, past. The couple embark upon a journey together to find their long lost son, whom they scarcely remember. Their travels through this misty and forgetful world threatens their love for each other as it brings them closer to their veiled past.Read More »
Book Review – Ablutions by Patrick DeWitt
This past week I finished reading Ablutions, the first novel by Patrick DeWitt — published in 2009 — who is better known now for his award-winning novel The Sisters Brothers. Structurally, the novel is a collection of notes, anecdotes, and recollections of the nameless protagonist’s experience working as a bartender in a seedy Hollywood bar. The story explores many of the bar’s vagrant, down-and-out regulars and employees, as well as the protagonist’s own spiraling life centred on an excess of Irish whiskey and popping pills.Read More »
Book Review – Sarah Court by Craig Davidson
This past week I finished reading my first novel of the year; Sarah Court by Craig Davidson. Published in 2010, the book is Davidson’s third novel — excluding those written under a pseudonym. The novel takes place in and around Niagara Falls, Ontario, following five families who all lived on the same block together — Sarah Court. Though not a collection of short stories, it is not a straightforward narrative either. The novel touches upon each family in sequence, never returning to each chapter’s narrator upon completion.Read More »
Book Review – Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
Though it took me longer than I had planned, this past week I finished reading Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk. The novel follows Carl Streator, a reporter who discovers that unsuspecting parents are reading a deadly poem to their children on page 27 of Poems and Rhymes from Around the World — an ancient culling song meant to give a painless death to the old or infirm. The lyrics of the culling song kill whether spoken or even thought. Streator begins a cross-country quest to destroy all remaining copies of the song and save humanity from its disastrous effects.Read More »
Muse with Me 