What a wonderful read, "The Little Book" by Selden Edwards. Finished it last night, apparently it took Edwards 4 decades to get it published and finish it properly but wow, well worth the wait.
So much stuff to digest; beautiful English Jewish pacifist Flora Zimmerman falls in love with old Bostonian WWII veteran Frank Burden, dozens of conversations with Sigmund Freud, sexual scenarios with Gustav Mahler, Hitler as a youth, then evil incarnate, the Jung Wien, anti-semitism Vienna style, all visited randomly within vast voyages of time travel from 1897 Vienna to San Francisco in 1988.
He weaves quite an epic family tale of concentric circles through high historical drama, an intense journey covering so much time in such dramatic settings, and yet he finds a way to keep it deceptively light at times.
Jumping from Fin de Siecle Vienna to post Haight Ashbury San Francisco becomes almost too intense a time warp twice too often; just writing about it seems confusing, but it's really lovely stuff and it works. Women's sexuality has come an awful long way, explored through talk therapy, Freudian analysis and Greek mythology, all playing a role.
And listen, anytime a writer includes Persephone and feminine rising can only be construed as a good thing, all the female characters are easy to fall in love with, especially the pacifist, they provide the strength.
It's good to be in a foreign country, searching for a novel written in English, even if the selection proves painfully small. Good to stray away from the usual suspects and "The Little Book" is anything but a usual suspect. Glad I found Selden Edwards, happy he found a publisher, it was certainly worth the wait.
He weaves quite an epic family tale of concentric circles through high historical drama, an intense journey covering so much time in such dramatic settings, and yet he finds a way to keep it deceptively light at times.
Jumping from Fin de Siecle Vienna to post Haight Ashbury San Francisco becomes almost too intense a time warp twice too often; just writing about it seems confusing, but it's really lovely stuff and it works. Women's sexuality has come an awful long way, explored through talk therapy, Freudian analysis and Greek mythology, all playing a role.
And listen, anytime a writer includes Persephone and feminine rising can only be construed as a good thing, all the female characters are easy to fall in love with, especially the pacifist, they provide the strength.
It's good to be in a foreign country, searching for a novel written in English, even if the selection proves painfully small. Good to stray away from the usual suspects and "The Little Book" is anything but a usual suspect. Glad I found Selden Edwards, happy he found a publisher, it was certainly worth the wait.
No comments:
Post a Comment