Howard Hughes Gets Her Second Wind. (Part Two)

[greygirlbeast]

Er...yeah. So. Anyway. There's also a pretty good review of Alabaster out from Publisher's Weekly. I quote:

ALABASTERCaitlí­n R. Kiernan. Subterranean (www.subterraneanpress.com), $25 (160p) ISBN 1-59606-060-3

Comments

Review Parsing

[mackatlaw]

“Which is, I think, all that a Publisher's Weekly review is supposed to do.”

I’ll buy that. I hadn’t thought sufficiently through that angle.

Similarly, "rich evocative prose" is a rubbish phrase, full of useless odds and ends that should be thrown out.

There's only three words in that phrase: you wouldn't have much left when you were done. Or with what would you replace it?

A better wording on my part should have included the word “all.” I’d take it out entirely; I don’t think it adds to the review. But then, my background is newspaper writing where space is a premum and every word has to count. Those three words only tell me the reviewer liked it. I’d rather know what emotions were invoked and why. “Rich evocative prose” sounds good but feels too vague.

Without making too much of this one sentence, I took it rather as a suggestion that the story exists more in the language and the atmosphere than in the actions. Which may not be not complimentary toward the plotting, but I don't think it's an inaccurate statement. What's important, in these stories, often happens in the spaces between what's seen or said.

I find what you said to be far more what I would like from a review. If that’s what the author meant, I wish he or she had said it more clearly! I agree that much of the atmosphere of Kiernan’s works seems to come from what she is invoking in the space between “panels.” Scott McCloud of “Understanding Comics” had a word for this specific effect, but I can’t recall it. Essentially the reader fills in the details of “B” between drawing “A” and “B” in a comic, and I get that feeling a lot from Kiernan. We are told enough to imagine, and then our minds take it from there.

“Okay. That was way more thought than should have gone into that review.”

I had time on my hands at the office. Sorry about that?

Mack