Review plus post, the Star (NC)

Art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins for Glimmerglass.

A novel turn, rich and strange 

Review, Ben Steelman, StarNews 

(Wilmington, North Carolina) 

9 November 2014

   

3-page review begins here

Clip: "Fantasy and myth mix with classic whodunit in “Glimmerglass,” the latest novel from poet and South Carolina native Marly Youmans. This is only detective fiction, though, in the sense that “Hamlet” is a play about a kid who can't get along with his stepfather. Youmans takes a couple of overworked genres and makes them undergo a sea change into something rich and strange."

Photo by Paul Digby, July 2014
This one was taken in Ohio right after I taught
at the Antioch Writing Workshops.

The lady behind "Glimmerglass" 

Background post
by Ben Steelman, 

Bookmarks blog

at StarNews Online 

9 November 2014.

Read it here.

Favorite clips:

...Youmans writes one of the best writers's blogs in the ether...

Youmans’ poetry collections include “Thaliad,” “The Throne of Psyche” and “Claire.” I have been meaning to write for years about “The Foliate Head,” her 2012 poem cycle about the Green Man, published in Britain by Stanza Press, which must rank as one of the most beautiful books of the 21st century. Notable are the illustrations and illuminations by the Welsh artist Clive Hicks Jenkins. Jenkins also did the artwork for “Glimmerglass.” *

*Glimmerglass, Thaliad, and The Foliate Head all contain exterior and extensive interior artwork by Clive, and his art is also on the cover of The Throne of Psyche and Val/Orson. The design work on The Foliate Head is by Andrew Wakelin, wonderful UK designer.

Thank you, Mr. Steelman!

* * *

crew list here

There's a typo in the blog post that I find amusing. My father was a sharecropper's kid and teenage tail gunner on the WWII Incendiary Blonde who, thanks to the G. I. bill, later became a professor of analytical chemistry. (His teen train escapades, his farm home, and his father's love for one of his mixed race brothers influenced the creation of Pip in A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage.) As a professor, he couldn't help butting heads with administrators and often said, "The lightweights float right to the top." And so I found it comical that he appears as a college president rather than professor... He also liked to quote Lewis Carroll's "I'm mad. You're mad. We're all mad." That one is a little more generous, as it puts us all in the same zany boat!

If you click on the picture, you'll see my handsome young father standing at far right. Hubert Lafay Youmans of Lexsy, Georgia... Hu. His hand looks a little odd--swollen from a fistfight in town the night before.

Rounding up the little doggies--

THE BUSY-FRENZY
"Oh! the Duchess, the Duchess! Oh! won't she be savage if I've kept her waiting!"

THALIAD vignette, Clive Hicks-Jenkins

And now I need to go readreadread and also snag a ticket for "Aida" at Glimmerglass Opera... Hurrah for friend Yolanda Sharpe, who is not only a grand painter but is a spectacular soprano and is the really big-bodied voice you hear in the chorus. Also on the weekend burner: a quick trip to Crumhorn Mountain to see the Scouts in their fireside frolics. We won't mention the need for house-drudgery and a total dearth of house elves: too daunting.

THE BEST CAMELLIA LINK OF THE WEEK
The best new link for A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage is Ben Steelman's review at The Wilmington Star, "Youmans's novel might be her best yet." And I also updated the book page for the novel this week.

CLIVE and BETH and THALIAD
Both Clive Hicks-Jenkins and Beth Adams have posted lots of interesting news about Thaliad. Clive's Artlog overflowing with new work for the book. Beth's Phoenicia Publishing site also has a number of posts about progress on the book.

WHOOP-EE-TI-YI-O
More web-wrestling today. Boring! I managed to ruin my Val/Orson page after pasting in a post from novelist friend Philip Lee Williams that no longer existed except as a cached copy, as he has taken down his blog... That one little action gave Blogger unnatural fits. I finally made a new page for the book and chucked the old one. Ridiculous. So go look at the new one with Phil's post; maybe I won't feel that I wasted so much time!