imaginary review #14 or maybe #15, I can’t remember

by uzwi

This contemporary fantasist is literate, clever, sentimental and evasive. His every scene swerves carefully away from its own realistic propositions and internal tensions and into whimsy & wish-fulfilment. Sometimes he’s good at stating the original position, sometimes that is freighted with whimsy too. The effect is increasingly egregious. As you move through the book, more and more of its worth–the observation of people and the tense condition of their relationships–is replaced by a kind of cod-Chagallism. What’s so irritating is that this happens on both sides of the divide–the real life and the fantasy-world by which he claims to be extending our understanding of it. Two people, usually a middle aged man and a beautiful woman, sit at a table outside a bistro in Confected Paris, they argue until it’s inevitable some strong emotion precipitates itself from the situation… and slip immediately from our world to adventures in the Confected Surreal. Everywhere is California and one confection acts as an alibi for the other, forever, encouraging fiction, author & reader to avoid the implications of the subject matter. This blunts any edge the book might have. It is not what magic realism is for. There is a lifelessness to work like this in an inverse ratio to its apparent energy.

Find more imaginary reviews under the imaginary reviews tag; or they’re collected as a single piece in You Should Come With Me Now, Comma Press 2017.