Dedication:

For Bob and Dash

22 photographs of both house and internees.

Opening:

Part 1 The House on the Hill
June- November 1940

All genuine poetry is in a sense the formation
of private spheres out of a public chaos. - WH Auden



In the town there were two mutes, and they were
always together. Early every morning they would
come out from the house where they lived and
walk arm in arm down the street to work...
- Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Summer in New York is never pleasant, as tempers rise with the temperature and the noises, smells and colors of Manhattan intensify in the humid air. In June 1940, conditions were made worse by the alarming state of world events.

Astounding reading that should have garnered a 5* but for the repetition by the author - once noticed, it became glaring. However that did not detract too much from finding about that year, and those people in a one-off situation.

Auden & Britten: http://youtu.be/zmciuKsBOi0
Danny Kaye: Tchaikovsky: http://youtu.be/hh-wOvuOHPE



Listopia linked to this book: http://www.goodreads.com/list/user_vote/2010063

bookshelves: published-2013, boo-scary, librarything-giveaway, summer-2013, shortstory-shortstories-novellas, young-adult, recreational-drugs, ghosties-ghoulies, suicide, noir, poetry, next, mental-health, north-americas, slit-yer-wrists-gloomy, washyourmouthout-language, under-50-ratings, revenge

Hmm, I thought this was going to be straight forward BOO!, yet reading through the premise it looks a little too out there for my usual taste. Nevertheless, I have been happily surprised on many an occasion.

for Johnny & Cabera

“Infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.” William Shakespeare

Opening: I want to burn down his house. I will. He used Karen. I can’t stomach that. He was older than piss and uglier than a worm. He lived just down the street with his lights on until late at night. He had an artic fox that turned blue in the summer. But then he had to gouge his kitty’s eye out when it killed his pretty blue Alopex lagopus one dreary midnight.

National Geographic photo of Artic Fox alopex lagopus

LATER: An extended prose poem featuring Jack, the narrator:'I have a decade on most of the high school kids who work here. They live with their parents too, but for them it’s more natural.'

...who is mourning Karen's suicide, even though she was hardly his girlfriend:'Karen would never understand if I told her all about those dates I’d arranged on the beach only to break and sabotage them ten minutes before they were to begin. I am not in a good enough place to commit.

...because she had an sexual relationship with an older man:'What do you see in her, old man? Why do all these antediluvian douche bags want to rip off her panties with their dentures?'

Interspersed with macabre doodles and vomit-inducing passages this Romeo and Juliet story is not something for me, yet I can see in it a great appeal to mid-teen hipster/ goth types, and that seems to be the niche Patnaude is aiming for. And my distaste is an endorsement to the good for this genre.