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A while ago my friend Louis Maistros (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
louismaistros) kindly sent me an ARC of his forthcoming* novel The Sound of Building Coffins. A combination of work commitments and repeated surgical invasions has meant that it's only now that I've been able to read what has become a slightly dishevelled ARC owing to much anticipatory thumbing during the period since its arrival.
I've enjoyed the book very much -- indeed, I found myself reading it almost in thriller mode, turning each page eagerly to find out what happened next. Set in New Orleans around the cusp of the 19th/20th centuries, it's a sprawling, mythopoeic piece, almost like an old man's tale (or series of tales), full of very vivid and often very beautiful images. Perhaps in part because of the painterliness of those images, and perhaps in part because of some of the characters and character names, I was constantly reminded of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast -- the middle volume of that sequence in particular. (Typhus Morningstar is an example of the kind of character name I mean; while there's also a veritable Steerpike at loose in Maistros's old New Orleans . . .)
I was going to do a report on The Sound of Building Coffins today, but on further consideration I want to let the novel fester in my brain for a bit rather than rush out a description just for the sake of doing so. Besides, it's feasible that before the book's publication in February I might find both the time to write a review andsome suc an appropriate literary venue eager to publish said review.
For the moment I can say, though, that the book's a goodie.
* And forthcoming from Toby Press, no less! -- a jealous seethe here.
louismaistros) kindly sent me an ARC of his forthcoming* novel The Sound of Building Coffins. A combination of work commitments and repeated surgical invasions has meant that it's only now that I've been able to read what has become a slightly dishevelled ARC owing to much anticipatory thumbing during the period since its arrival. I've enjoyed the book very much -- indeed, I found myself reading it almost in thriller mode, turning each page eagerly to find out what happened next. Set in New Orleans around the cusp of the 19th/20th centuries, it's a sprawling, mythopoeic piece, almost like an old man's tale (or series of tales), full of very vivid and often very beautiful images. Perhaps in part because of the painterliness of those images, and perhaps in part because of some of the characters and character names, I was constantly reminded of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast -- the middle volume of that sequence in particular. (Typhus Morningstar is an example of the kind of character name I mean; while there's also a veritable Steerpike at loose in Maistros's old New Orleans . . .)
I was going to do a report on The Sound of Building Coffins today, but on further consideration I want to let the novel fester in my brain for a bit rather than rush out a description just for the sake of doing so. Besides, it's feasible that before the book's publication in February I might find both the time to write a review and
For the moment I can say, though, that the book's a goodie.
* And forthcoming from Toby Press, no less! -- a jealous seethe here.
