The High Lonesome Frontier by Rebecca Campbell
My rating: 3/5 cats
It was hard to write about the green fields of somewhere-or-other when he heard only infernal pigeons, the clutter of wheels on pavement, the shout of boys, the rage of drivers. Despite the noise, Freddie still conjured moon-drenched country walks in terrible songs published as “F. Wilde” because he could not put his own name to them. Songs all written for a girl in Winnipeg with a quarter to spare and a pianola in the parlour.
here i am again—trying to get this “to be reviewed” list whittled down to a reasonable number by writing brief and unambitious reviews for all the free tor shorts that have been weighing me down. when you read one a week, and don’t review them right away, they sure do add up! so i’m just going to write brief impressions of them instead of doing what i usually do, which is to treat these like regular-length books and spending more time writing the review than it took me to actually read the story.
this is progress.
and this ‘review’ might be even more phoned-in than most. this is one of those stories that i wish had been written by someone else, specifically Steve Erickson. and it’s not that it’s poorly written or anything, but both the subject matter (music) and the structure (disconnected, eventually connecting fragments) are things that he is so freaking good at, and i read his sorta similarly-themed book Shadowbahn pretty much right after this, so it’s hard to appreciate the snack when you’ve eaten a fully satisfying meal.
again, not at all a disappointing read, it was just a very ambitious move to try to squeeze so much into such a small space. but good moody atmosphere, nice details, and it intrigues the whole way through.
read it for yourself here:
http://www.tor.com/2016/09/07/the-hig…
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