More review clips for Seren of the Wildwood

Art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins

SETH WRIGHT at FRONT PORCH REPUBLIC

Youmans’ gift for creating primordial archetypal images that stir the gut and fascinate the eye of the mind places her among the best of the poets. If you’re a connoisseur, even a lapsed or dilatory one, of narrative poetry, buy Seren of the Wildwood and read it today...

What is particularly impressive about Youmans’ weaving is her ability to use such venerable archetypes freshly. Yes, I’ve met them all before, and given time I could tell you where... The same with the landmarks and inhabitants of Youmans’ Wildwood; they seem hauntingly familiar yet disconcertingly strange. Her power simultaneously to defamiliarize and reenchant is enviable and deliciously enjoyable...

My first encounter with Seren of the Wildwood brought to mind dozens of my favourite poems, poems that over the millennia people have taken the trouble to read, copy, annotate, memorise, and perform. Seren of the Wildwood reminded me of them by way of family resemblance; the poem is at home among the poems that last. It is a good poem. A very good poem.  

--Seth Wright, Front Porch Republic, 10 April 2023; read the long, thoughtful essay HERE

JONATHAN GELTER at SLANT BOOKS BLOG

Marly Youmans, in Seren of the Wildwood, now available from Wiseblood Books, offers a vivid fantasy. I will call it that even though the word fantasy appears several times in the story in its meaning of something untrue, a hallucination or deceptive visionary experience. And well it might—although by the end we witness a wonderful transformation of the idea of fantasy—for deceptive visionary experience sets the plot in motion. An invisible creature whom the young girl Seren (Welsh for “star”) names Ariel lures her into the Wildwood, on whose border she lives with her parents. She had two older brothers, but they died just as Seren was born: it is suggested by the narrator a curse emanating from someone in the Wildwood sickened them. 

Youmans’s command of the poetic form is masterful, and a superb choice for fantasy, invoking as it does one of the great medieval fantasists in English.  

--Jonathan Geltner, "The Spirit of Fantasy and the Sense of Place," Slant Books, 6 March 2023: read this interesting essay HERE

On traveling in the past: Charis in the World of Wonders

One of the demands of writing a novel set in the past is that a writer not put people and thoughts of his or her own day into fancy dress. Not give us woke people in linsey-woolsey. Not present people with our own concerns about climate (well, maybe if it's a Ruskin--so prescient!) or our own beliefs about how a woman may be heroic or our own attitudes toward childbirth or child-rearing or many another thing. In Catherwood, A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Maze of Blood, and now Charis in the World of Wonders, my desire is always to enter into another world, to believe that time is a realm I can find and walk around in if I am imaginative and reasonably knowledgeable. 

For the new book, one wish of mine was that Charis be a convincing citizen of the godly (Puritan to us), and that I would not fail to enter into her feelings about family, the wilderness, native peoples, the French, God, marriage, childbirth, community, and all the terrors and pleasures of the New World. And where she came to differ from the most common view, it had to be because she was forced by circumstances to learn something new that tempered or transformed what she thought to be the truth. It struck me that the most difficult thing to portray for contemporary readers would be religious faith and feeling, now so alien to many, and so easy to get wrong.

So I was especially pleased to see a comment about Charis's faith from poet Sally Thomas, discussing a review at the DarwinCatholic blog. Here it is, pilfered from facebook:

I particularly appreciate the allusion to Ron Hansen's Mariette in Ecstasy in this review. I hadn't thought of those two novels as parallel in any way, but among other things, a comparison on the point of the un-ironic handling of religious sensibility is apt. It is so very, very easy for the contemporary novel to wink and nudge at the reader – the religious characters are either dumber than we are in their belief, or are hypocrites whom we see through (wink wink nudge nudge). Or else they're caught in amber, as not-quite-living relics of a not-quite-living past. 

What I think both Charis and Mariette accomplish (though this is far from the only thing both novels accomplish) is to present a spectrum of characters, a whole human range of people, who all believe in God (and further, operate wholly within the world of a shared tradition of belief). There is awareness of a world outside that tradition – for Charis it's the indigenous tribes and the Catholic French. In fact, Charis goes farther in imagining the whole diverse tapestry of its world than I remember Mariette's doing. But the world that is each novel's focus is itself a tapestry of human personalities and livings-out of belief. This is part of why, as a novel taking up religion as a concern, each one rings true.

And surprise, Sally Thomas is doing a launch for her poetry book Motherland on Zoom on this very day at 3:00! Go HERE if you want an invitation.

NCLR

A poem and two reviews by me,

plus an interview in the NCLROnline,

plus much more...

Click on this link, and then click 

on the image of the cover you see.
Or click individual links below.

"The Woman in the Walls" 

James Applewhite finalist

p. 55

A Virtual Road-Trip Interview:

Conversations with Five Expatriate

North Carolina Writers

by George Hovis p. 56

Dale Ray Phillips p. 57

Tara Powell p. 60

De'Shawn Charles Winslow p. 66

Marly Youmans p. 68

Robert Morgan p. 75
(There's also a long piece about George Hovis
and his new book, The Skin Artist, on p. 44.)

Images of Mystery

(reviews of two new Nieman books)

Advice to the casual book reviewer--

Artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins.
Hand with heart from the interior
decorations for Thaliad.

If you google "how to write a book review," you'll find wheelbarrow loads of advice on writing a book review that looks just like almost everybody else's review. Since that's the case, I'm not going to repeat the usual advice. So here, my two cents worth of not-the-usual advice:

• Go on trust. Always assume that the writer might actually know what he/she is doing. Try and figure out what he/she is doing if it doesn't fit your ideas of what a book should be. Maybe the book's not working, and that's why it doesn't fit. But maybe the book is good but differs from your expectations. 
• Don't pay any attention to the label or genre that the publisher chooses. Remember that labels are for marketing. A label can be misleading, as it may well be incorrect or reductive. Many books are complex things, not happy with a label. Instead of relying on genre conventions for an idea of what a book should be, figure out what the book is on your own. Describe what it is--not the plot, but what it is, what it cares about, what terrain is important to the book and its characters, what purposes and vision drive its events and structure. 
• Think about shape. All made things have a shape.
• Each novel is its own world, with its own laws. It may resemble our world closely. Or not. You should be able to detect whether it fulfills its own promises, obeys its own laws.
• Think about what propels the story forward. Is it causality, or something else?
• Ignore the age label on the book, if there is one. It, too, may be incorrect, or the book may be what is often labeled as a crossover, and appeal to various ages.
• Does the book have energy? Is it alive? Are the characters alive?
• Does the book feel like a clone, or is it a unique individual? How so?
• Does the writer appear to take pleasure in words and sound? 
• Read some of the book aloud--mandatory! Get a feel for how the author writes; hear it in your own voice. You'll know more about sound and style and the writer's ear (tin or golden) by reading one page aloud than by reading a whole book to yourself. (This one is, of course, essential for collections of poetry.) 
• Rereading is the most telling reading. Even a little rereading is helpful.

Brazil interview for Maze of Blood

Art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins.
Design by Mary-Frances Glover Burt.
Mercer, fall 2015

Suzanne Brazil interviewed me about Maze of Blood for Women Writers, Women's Books. And as she did when interviewing me when Glimmerglass appeared, she asked interesting questions. You can find the brand new interview here. (See the note about Suzanne at the foot of the interview--she's a busy lady.) Thank you to Suzanne!

Interview for Maze of Blood at Women Writers, Women's Books

Review of Maze of Blood at Blogcritics by Suzanne

Interview for Glimmerglass at Blogcritics part one and part two 

or The Seattle Post-Intelligencer part one and part two

Review of Glimmerglass by Suzanne 

Art, Clive Hicks-Jenkins
Design, Mary-Frances Glover Burt

Maze of Blood in Baton Rouge

Title: "Maze of Blood combines romance, adventure, mysticism."

Greg Langley, for many years the wise and wide-reading Books Editor at The Baton Rouge Advocate, has written a review of Maze of Blood. Find it HERE.

Clip: So “Maze of Blood” is a love story. It’s an adventure story. It’s mystic in places. It’s literary and poetic. It’s a Texas Gothic tale. All that is wonderful, but the book does have one hurdle for readers to overcome: The end is at the beginning. Caradog has died. Maybelline is no longer Conall’s best girl. And Conall, hero of the tale, has taken a fatal step almost before the plot finds its first complication. Then Youmans writes the story forward from a past point. It is told in first-person in the rich and sometimes fantastic voice of Conall. This may sound confusing, and in the hands of a lesser writer, it would be. But with Youmans, you can count on the entree being just as sweet as the dessert — no matter which one is served first.

Glimmerglass giveaway and January review clips

Art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
Design by Burt & Burt

Clips from 3 January reviews 

One thing that I find interesting about this batch of reviews is that they suggest that the book is a "new genre," "something new," and a mixture of many things.

   1.  At Curled Up with a Good Book

Listed as a novel, I found Glimmerglass to be enchanted and quirky. It feels more like a fantasy or gothic mystery than a prosaic "novel," a fairly new genre that is indefinable....This is an amazing book and engaging tale. I sat with the finished book in my lap and wondered where this remarkable author found her muse and created such a oddly lovely place, peopled with the strange, laced with the usual human emotions--jealousy, fear, love and curiosity. I fully intend to read this again, and to explore some of Youmans' other writing. --Laura Strathman Hulka

  2. Novelist Scott G. F. Bailey at his blog, 
        Six Words for a Hat

I am currently reading Marly Youmans' 2014 novel Glimmerglass, a hard shining tale of art and wonder, about how life is art and wonder, how art and wonder are life, how wonder and life are art. I am trying to think of what it reminds me of, and the best I can do right now is sort of mid-period A.S. Byatt crossed with H.D. Thoreau under the tutelage of Lewis Carroll. The prose is vibrant and imaginative, the images of nature rubbing against and through fantastic and magical symbols... Youmans has written a magic book, is what I keep thinking as I read. Not a book about magic, but a book full of magic, made of magic. A lot of modern literature is about the existential problem and focuses with a serious mind on the pain of existence; Youmans focuses with a serious mind on the joy of existence, without sentiment and treacle....Youmans' literary conceit of presenting her characters as mythic figures while simultaneously presenting them as mudbound humans; the story threatens, as I've said, to tumble backwards through the landscape into myth; it's unstable and hallucinatory, but not in a C.S. Lewis "there is a hidden world accessible through my closet" kind of way. Youmans is doing something new: her world is both mundane and miraculous. --Scott G. F. Bailey

Signed hardcover-and-card giveaway

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Glimmerglass

by Marly Youmans

Giveaway ends February 11, 2015.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

And . . .  from the other side of the continent,
      3.  At The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Blogcritics

Part fairy tale, part cautionary tale with a dash of fantasy and allegory, Youmans has created a special world in Glimmerglass. Cooper Patent is a village rooted in the States, but it shimmers with hints of Neverland, the Land of Oz and a visit through the looking glass. The setting has an eerie beauty to it along with tingling suspense and a real-world mystery clamoring for resolution. The language is spare and illuminating and sparkles a bit at the edges. I finished it late last night "before threading the eye of the needle and sliding head first into the plush midnight fabric of sleep." --Suzanne Brazil

Snips of tinsel and gold

Follow Marly's board Glimmerglass on Pinterest. 

Life and trala: Here's the hot Facebook post of the morning: "Sometimes it's just great to be a teenage boy. Child no. 3 driving to school by himself for the first time (new license!) and last night pinned his opponent in the wrestling dual with Unatego--third meet, fourth pin. Rah!"

Highly important Yankee gossip (aka the weather): Everybody's talking weather after two snow days off from school... And evidently we are already at 25 inches for the season, which is supposedly 8 inches above where we would be normally at this time of year. I've been here for the last 15 years (plus an extra stray year earlier), and this is the slipperiest winter I can recall.

Life-in-letters: Next up event is December 16th, 7:30 at CANO, the Community Arts Network of Oneonta at The Wilbur Mansion on Ford Ave. Oneonta, New York. Here's a public invitation. Please send a link to friends in the area if you have any... If you're on Facebook, you can invite friends directly.

from the deployment series

Thank you x 3: To the many readers who have shared Glimmerglass and other recent books on facebook, twitter, and other sites--I've been very happy that you did so. Also thanks to some people who reviewed on Amazon or goodreads. I am grateful, as those things are critical for a writer now playing in the world of university and small presses. Even indie bookstores use Amazon for research. And thank you to those locals/regionals who turned out for recent events in Delhi and at the Fenimore and the Village Library and for the open house / book signing / open studio with painter Ashley Norwood Cooper, as a good crowd is much appreciated. It wouldn't have been nearly so much fun without you!

Marketing: I've just updated my Pinterest board, and it now gives a good, sweeping look at the new book, along with a lot of the gorgeous artwork by Clive Hicks-Jenkins and immaculate design by Mary-Frances Glover Burt. Please take a look by clicking the images above. And there are some interesting Amazon customer reviews and blurbs from writers and publishers here. Sample from a writer:

 Beautiful Inside and OutBy G. S. Thompson on December 2, 2014Format: HardcoverThis novel is beautiful inside and out. The story feels like a modern fairy tale with writing that dances on the pages in a way that can only be created by a spectacular writer. If you read this book you will know that Youmans is one of the most gifted writers living among us today.If you enjoy the twisting and building of words you will love this author's beautiful writing. If it can be called writing, because it seems more like she's pulling the whispers of angels down from a place we haven't been to yet and gently placing them on paper.

Here's good St. Nicholas of Myra,
who has just saved three boys
from the bad butcher--
now they need clothes
and a good book
for Christmas.

Next Glimmerglass event--

Writers Salon, December 16th 

Next up: a reading from Glimmerglass with The Community Arts Network of Oneonta. Here's an invitation on facebook from CANO. If you are on Facebook and/or have area friends who are, you and they may read, invite, accept the invitations, leave comments, etc. At any rate, please come!

Tuesday, December 16th

7:30 p.m. 

CANO / The Wilbur Mansion

11 Ford Ave.

Oneonta, New York

Thaliad review online

So glad to see that the Moira Richards review of Thaliad from the Cape Times has been reprinted on Not now, darling... I'm reading. Here's a clip:

One hundred pages of mesmerising iambic pentameter surge and swell, plunge and soar the journeying through the children’s grief and the rotting remains of what was our civilisation until at last (very) few of the seven triumph over danger and lingering evil and grow into adulthood to parent a new, post-apocalyptic future for humankind... Blank verse on grand scale, heroic imagery... 

See the whole thing here. And right below is a review of friend Lesley Wheeler's latest book!

Credits

Cover and interior art for both books by artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins of Wales. Design of Glimmerglass for Mercer by Mary-Frances Glover Burt. Design of Thaliad for Phoenicia by Elizabeth Adams. See tabs above for more information.

Caleb Seeling reviews Glimmerglass

from Notes from the Publishing Underground
(November 12, Conundrum Press newsletter.)
"In 2011, Conundrum press was acquired by Samizdat Group, LLC, owned by Caleb Seeling... Conundrum Press is a stand-alone, traditional model literary press. Future plans include a Rocky Mountain Poetry Series, the details of which are forthcoming, and a philanthropic plan to support literary endeavors from sales of our books."

Fiction Review by Caleb J Seeling

Glimmerglass: A Novel
By Marly Youmans
 

Marly Youmans is one of those rare literary figures who excels at both poetry and prose, each informing the other. Her latest novel, Glimmerglass, is a beautiful and skillfully told modern-day fairy tale. Cynthia Sorrel is a failed artist trying to rediscover herself and her place in the world, and we are drawn with her into the scenic, slightly mysterious New England hamlet of Cooper Patent. The residents of Cooper Patent seem as serene and peaceful as the lake, Glimmerglass, beside which the village is nestled. There are of course secrets and jealousies lurking just below the surface, but Youmans lulls the reader into a dreamlike state until, as in all good fairy tales, she sinks the reader into the dark waters where reality is blurred and bent like a half-submerged stick. It is here that the reader begins to feel more than know the meaning of what happens to Cynthia. A gorgeous book that is quick to read and meaty enough to digest slowly, Glimmerglass is a wonderful novel with which to curl up next to a fire and spend chilly nights.

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.

Another new review--

Glimmerglass reviewed at BookLoons here.

"Highly recommended."

Thaliad goes to South Africa

     This is modern day epic poetry about the destruction of our 21st century world and the seven children who escape topping mountains and the great inferno.
     One hundred pages of mesmerizing iambic pentameter surge and swell, plunge and soar the journeying through the children's grief and rotting remains of what was our civilisation, until few of the seven triumph over danger and evil and grow into adulthood to parent a new post-apocalyptic future for mankind.
     Blank verse on grand scale, heroic imagery, narrated by the latter day Bard of the Clave tasked with preserving the best of old world literature and recording the new.
     Wise beyond her years but, so endearingly, as susceptible as any 19-year-old to charm spun by a stranger with eyes "green as Glimmerglass in a storm."
          --Moira Richards, Cape Times, South Africa, 22 August 2014

Honey bee, bee honey--

Interior art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins for Thaliad.

I strongly recommend Thaliad by Marly Youmans ... it is a remarkably innovative book in its structure, set in a post-(nuclear?) apocalyptic future, written in the form of an ancient epic, peppered with Greek and biblical references, steadily building towards redemption despite obstacles and hardships throughout.

Thank you, Forager Bee at The Well-Trained Mind...

Thalia on the move--

Montreal: Phoenicia Publishing, 2012.
Hardcover from Phoenicia only
and paperback from the usual suspects.
Interior/exterior art, Clive Hicks-Jenkins
with design by Elizabeth Adams.

In this country, where a small press poetry book sometimes sells in the dozens and is doing well when it sells a few hundred copies and where long poems are rare and surprising, I am pleased to say that Thaliad appears to be alive, still trickling into the world, and even appears to be picking up a few small classroom orders. (Last year I visited two classes at Wofford College taught by writer Jeremy L. C. Jones; they were reading both Thaliad and A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage. I know it is being taught in St. Louis this fall, and would love to know more about where it might be popping up, but those things are hard to know.)

I have been happy with reviews of the book, including Amazon reviews and Goodreads reviews, which show me that the book's readers (including quite a few writers) like the wedding of a wild novelistic adventure tale, developed characters, and a beautiful, ruined setting with the largeness and force of the epic. I thank them for playing in and helping to create one of my worlds.

To confess the truth, I was prepared for the idea that this book might find only a handful of readers. I am glad that some people in this country and elsewhere are proving me wrong. It is thrilling to find that readers are daring the quest for a home and re-building the world with Thalia.

One of Clive's many interior decorations.

Energy and persistence conquer all things. 

--Benjamin Franklin, wordsmith, founder, inventor, diplomat, etc.

Seonjoon with white camellias--

Here's a sort of mini-review from Seonjoon in the realm of Twittery. I like it! Tweets are short but can encompass a surprising amount of thought. And at the end there's a review of the review... At her blog, Seonjoon describes herself this way:

Ordained Buddhist monastic.

Incorrigible bibliophile.

Novice shutterbug.

Aspiring practitioner.

Coffee-lover.

I am glad she is an incorrigible bibliophile. She read the book in the air between Seoul and New Haven, finishing up with her feet safely planted on the ground. Thank you, Seonjoon (and DeathZen!)

* * * * * * *

Seonjoon @seon_joon · 8h

I'm wasn't entirely sure what to expect when I started @marlyyoumans' A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, but it surely wasn't this:

Seonjoon @seon_joon A contemporary American epic, tenderly and piercingly rendered, resonant with the rhythms of the American south.

Seonjoon @seon_joon · 8h

The novel's language is lush without excess, a rare feat, and characters are brought to life with deft surety. My favorite read so far year.

Seonjoon ‏@seon_joon  9h @marlyyoumans But #ADeathattheWhiteCamilliaOrphanage was fabulous. Finished it afternoon. Looking forward to your book this summer!

Death Zen ‏@DeathZen  5h@seon_joon As well you should! :) Seriously, who else could write such a strong book review in two sentences?! @marlyyoumans

White Camellia review at Commonweal

Edward T. Wheeler, "There and Back Again." A review of A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage

in Commonweal,
June 2013

A few clips from a long, thoughtful review:

There is much to delight a reader in this novel, an abundance of riches: a four-page bravura description of an arrival of a train as seen through Pip’s eyes; his creation of a new mythology based on the anagrams that can be formed from the word “Earth”; and an extraordinary scene in which a grieving child gropes to find an opening in the air in hopes of accompanying the soul of her dead brother. We have the requisite Gothic characters, those pure, crazed products of America—like Till, Pip’s adoptive grandfather, and his tenant “Princess Casimiria,” self-proclaimed descendant of the Revolutionary War hero Count Pulaski, whose presence with Pip at a parent-teacher conference provokes a hilarious clash of misunderstandings. The novel’s scenes of hobo travel, replete with the casual brutality of rail-yard “bulls” and the violence in the boxcars, are set against the generosity and simple goodness of so many caught westering in the Great Depression. Youmans’s prose is highly metaphoric, rich in evocations that reverberate profoundly, like Pip’s evening wonder in a eucalyptus forest, where “He touched a tree like mottled silver marble. The wind fell away, and the mosaic of leaves above him grew still: blue, light green, gray-green, and jade.”
That rich prose fashions a journey of substantial self-discovery. In one camp-fire scene, a fellow farm laborer jumps suddenly for Pip’s seat near the fire and lashes out with his knife, lacerating Pip’s hands. What results, for Pip, is something approaching a revolutionary understanding of violence and what it means in the pitiless life of the underdog. “Maybe it made him feel free,” he reflects later. “Maybe he had to tear his way out.... Maybe he was breaking his fetters.”

As a form, the picaresque novel is dependent on great storytelling, and Youmans spins a captivating yarn. Her voice is expressive and cajoling, her tendency to rhapsody chastened by the gritty detail with which she furnishes her young hero’s adventures. Even as it displays its traditional stylistic elements, A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage offers something distinct and modern, transcending the Southern Gothic form. The traveler completes his journey; he has not only come home but found out what home is. As is so often the case in a tale driven by myth, the end rests squarely on the beginning, death and birth inevitably conjoined, conveying to us a sense of experience that is both rampire and release.

Another review for Pip--

Thanks to Curled Up With a Good Book for once again reviewing a book of mine. Here's the opener:

With “A savage laugh, a riddle and reply,” it is immediately apparent why Marly Youmans’ novel A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage won Mercer University’s Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction. Youman’s prose perfectly captures Southern culture, speech patterns, and the difficulties faced during the Depression Era, just as the acclaimed author Sams achieved in his classic coming-of-age tale, Run with the Horsemen.

Read the whole review by Leslie Raith here.

On the road & a new review--

Thanks to books editor Greg Langley at The Baton Rouge Advocate for this morning's new review, tracing the path of a Pip who by the end of the book "is not yet out of his teens, young and beautiful and already a thousand years old." He writes that "Youmans tells Pip’s story in her lyric, poetic voice, offering readers vivid characters and unforgettable scenery. The tragedy that begins the story is almost lost in the general misery that was the Great Depression, but the fire of memory burns steadily in Pip and keeps the plot simmering to the end of the book."

It's 6:00 a.m. in Statesville, North Carolina, where I just spent the night with a high school classmate and her husband, pastor at New Salem Methodist. I think this is the first time I have ever been asked to visit a Sunday School class on my book travels! The prior few nights I spent with my friend's older sister and her husband in Raleigh, where I also saw more high school friends. I am midway in my North Carolina events and will be heading back to Cullowhee for a few days before going to Chapel Hill and Pittsboro for more readings.

Up: BookLoons review of A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage: "Highly recommended."