George and Rue by George Elliott Clarke
My rating: 5/5 cats
WOOHOO GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE!!!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-sc…
okay – it is time to write a proper review for this book, particularly since i have been recommending it like crazy over the past few days, and since it is out of print, i should at least make the effort to try to explain why you should make the effort, yeah?
but damned if i know where to start. cover-blurbs compare it to james baldwin and faulkner. is that a start? i haven’t read baldwin, and i haven’t liked the one faulkner i did read, so let me dig a little deeper…
it is a luminous example of the lyricism of the afro-canadian literary tradition. yeah, that’s true, but what a chunkily pompous sentence to describe this whirlwind of a book that sweeps you away with its bluesy prose and brutal and violent episodes. but not gratuitously violent. see what i mean?? i’m all thumbs and redundancies and backtracking when it comes to trying to make you read this.
all i can tell you is how he makes me feel. he destroys me. just punches my heart over and over and then rubs it all over with whiskey poetry. if you want examples of his writing, i have “reviewed” about 5 books of his poetry, where i basically just typed out his poems because he is a much better writer than me, and he can sell himself. he just needs to be back in print to do so. read him read him read him.
kathy, alan, and bill have written more relevant reviews of this that should be read, and i am so glad they listened to me and took a chance and wrote good reviews about this secret gem of a book, because i am too in love with it to even begin to tell you why.
hardly a “proper” review after all, but i am hopelessly inept.
