The seven stories in this collected volume of short fiction, Do As
I Say and Not As I Do, reflect author Mark Lamb's experiences as a
parent. The trials and tribulations of being responsible for
children impacts all parents deeply, and Lamb has let his
formidable imagination run with this theme. The verities of human
commitment and development go to some strange, beautiful, and
disturbing places in these stories. Lamb's narrative voice is
distinct, simultaneously detached and vaguely sympathetic,
non-judgmental, but not quite comforting. He has arrived at this,
his first volume, with an identifiable style. What irony that is
found here is flat, then twisted through a kaleidoscope, making it
invisible or merely suggested. There is a Southern Gothic
seasoning, somewhere in the tonal and topical region where Poe's
less macabre vignettes and Capote's Music for Chameleons might
intermix. But his characters are all too real: Lamb shows us the
good, the bad, the ugly, and the perverse, and doesn't flinch from
representing the messy, at times grotesque, shortcomings of people
as they really live. The settings for the stories cover a broad
range: Science fiction ("You Must Remember This"); the dangerous
early American frontier ("Pigeon Roost"); unsettling psychosexual
set pieces ("Station Approach," "Grand Guignol," "Mr. Wiggin's
Jar"); the everyday, humdrum worlds of confused relationships and
motives that most of us inhabit, however tentatively ("The Gosling
Patch," "Mixed State"). There is an ambience - it is not magic
realism, more like rational surrealism - suffusing all of Lamb's
stories, even those grounded in the empirical here-and-now. A
certain spooky, ambient unity thus pervades the collection, handled
by a writer who knows exactly what he wants to accomplish. "Station
Approach" and "You Must Remember This" are destined to be
considered American short story classics. Lamb's love of both
classic and contemporary cinema suffuses his work with vivid scenes
and layers of dramatic implication. He occasionally shines an
Hitchcockian sentiment - humor so dry it cracks into dust, suspense
and twists to confound our linear expectations - onto the dramatic
proceedings. The tautness of the stories, intentional flattening of
character, and the condensed, potent atmospherics are really but
one step short of screenplays. Readers will, of course, discover
their own interpretive themes and historical and stylistic
comparisons when confronted with the seven masterful stories in
Mark Lamb's Do As I Say and Not As I Do. One thing is for sure:
They will never forget them.
General
Imprint: |
Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
November 2013 |
First published: |
November 2013 |
Authors: |
Mark Lamb
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 3mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback - Trade
|
Pages: |
58 |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-4929-9046-8 |
Categories: |
Books >
Fiction >
Special features >
Short stories
|
LSN: |
1-4929-9046-9 |
Barcode: |
9781492990468 |
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