Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew: A Novel by Stuart Ross
My rating: 4/5 cats
stuart ross wrote a full-length book!! he is all grown up now!! no more short stories and poems for him, he is officially a novelist!
although, shhhh, the book is comprised of shortish vignettes that work together like doozers to tell a larger story, mostly. so this might be some kind of “tween” stage of his writing career; a segmented novel.
but it is good, whatever it is…
the chapters connect in an almost random stream-of-consciousness flow, where a word mentioned at the end of one chapter will frequently serve as the springboard to the next chapter, like an older person telling yarns or a depressed man lying on a couch, avoiding the ringing of the phone and just letting his mind drift. the chronology is distorted, there are dreamlike episodes following chapters of stark realism, many situations are hinted at only, there are tantalizing omissions and some really sweet little-kid moments.
also, the word “boner” is used a lot.
it’s pretty short, so i shouldn’t say too much about it—the synopsis up top gives a pretty good idea of the scope of the story; everything else is just entertaining words and scenes. i like it when stuart ross writes words.
greg bear could take a lesson here in how to be romantic towards a lady:
If she would only cancel her trip, stay right here in Toronto, I would build her a house out of egg rolls…I would build her a two-storey house out of egg rolls. With an egg-roll verandah and an egg-roll patio.
trust me, that would work better than saying you “burn” for a woman…
GIS for “snowball dragonfly jew!!
GIS for “you call that a review?”
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