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Beinhaltet den Namen: W. Clarke

Bildnachweis: Photograph by Sigrid Estrada

Werke von Will Clarke

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Attack the Block [2011 film] (2011) — Producer — 74 Exemplare
Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy 3 (2010) — Mitwirkender — 55 Exemplare
Super Stories of Heroes & Villains (2013) — Mitwirkender — 24 Exemplare

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Lord Vishnu's Love Handles is unexpectedly fleshy and overly brash. Its protagonist spends so much time shooting his mouth off that I think the author may have forgotten that, as readers, we're probably more apt to enjoy his work if we don't hate its main character. There's no redemption here. There's barely a coherent plot. What there is, in spades, is a lot of unnecessary bawdiness.

The premise is simple, and then convoluted. Yuppie man leads charmed existence, with a side of psychic abilities and a drinking problem. His life is turned upside down and he ends up making a deal with the devil (in this case a super-secret government ESP organization). Enter the bad guy and a dozen or so plot mishaps magically healed by convenient sixth-sense-iness. Sprinkle with lots of excessive aggression and pseudo-sexy undertones and viola!

Don't get me wrong. I love a good silly yet dirty romp as much as the next girl, but this one left me feeling unfulfilled. Like I'd somehow just read a big mac and then wiped the grease off my hands onto a second-hand negligee.
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dowswell | 9 weitere Rezensionen | Jul 25, 2021 |
CONTEMPORARY FICTION
Will Clarke
The Neon Palm of Madame Melançon
Middle Finger Press
Hardcover, 978-0-9726-5883-6 (also available as an e-book); 354 pgs., $29.99
July 19, 2017

“There are no coincidences, only the chess moves of an unseen hand.”
—Madame Melançon

Duke Melançon left New Orleans for Houston (“a world that wasn’t ruled by tarot cards and Aleister Crowley’s incantations”) as soon as he could, embarrassed by his family, especially his mother, the titular Madame Melançon, queen of “Nawlins” fortune-tellers, adviser to politicians and the mob, among others. Duke is a corporate attorney for Mandala Worldwide, an oil company whose Sub-Ocean Brightside well has just exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing dozens of workers and spilling millions of barrels of crude into the waters off Louisiana. Duke returns to New Orleans to rescue Mandala’s reputation and revenue, but when he gets there he must also deal with another urgent catastrophe: Madame Melançon has chased a calico cat (“basically text messages sent from the devil”) out of her kitchen with a broom, running down the street after the bad omen, and disappeared without a trace.

The Neon Palm of Madame Melançon is the new novel from Dallas’s Will Clarke, whom Rolling Stone has dubbed a “hot pop prophet.” This book is published by Middle Finger Press (“hand-crafted fiction written for titans of industry, Bilderbergs, and oligarchs”), a Dunning-Kruger Company. In psychology, the Dunning-Kruger effect is “a cognitive bias wherein persons of low ability suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is.” Seriously, to get the full sublime effect go to www.middlefinger.press.

Duke’s first-person narration is fast-paced and wholly entertaining. The seventh son of a seventh son, he is a cynical nonbeliever in his mother’s powers. As clues are uncovered in a sort of demented scavenger hunt, and a preponderance of the evidence shows that it may be Duke’s fated responsibility to save the world from the soulless future of the Great Unseen Hand, a crisis of conscience forces him to reconsider his career, his choice of employer, his feelings about his family, and whether he can count himself a good person.

Clarke reminds me of Thomas Pynchon. His colorful characters include a Kurt Vonnegut impersonator (or is he?); a Loup Garou (or is he?); Duke’s uncle, a pot-smoking priest called “Uncle Father”; and Duke’s sister LaLa, who dresses as successful celebrities (Pink, Annie Lennox), hoping to trick the fates into bestowing the luck of the rich and famous upon her. Clarke is equally skilled at sweet family scenes with Duke and his wife and little boys, and slapstick scenes involving a plague of raccoons. Dialogue is smart and engaging, with a Cajun accent.

There are footnotes, doodles, and chapter titles such as “Turn to Page 5 of Dracula!” and “Cab Smells Like SpaghettiOs and Febreze.” Clarke is having a very good time, but he’s also very serious about climate change and the environmental future of the only home we have. In the words of maybe-Vonnegut: “Wake up, you moron! The planet is dying as we speak. Whatever made you think that money was worth this? You can’t breathe it you know!”

The Neon Palm of Madame Melançon is a smart, ultimately hopeful mystery of science and magical realism, a loving evocation of “all this broken beauty” of New Orleans, and a riotous, rollicking ride with a message. One person’s witch is another person’s scientist. And vice versa.

Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.
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½
 
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TexasBookLover | Sep 25, 2017 |

If you enjoy Christopher Moore's books, you'll enjoy this: it's not as laugh-out-loud as Moore, but I had a big grin on my face much of the time while reading it, in between those times when I was horrified by the events of the novel. The ghost story part isn't horrifying; it's the college fraternity part that is.

LSU fratboy Conrad, recently murdered by fraternity supremo Ryan -- a sadistic sociopath who, who knows, if left unchecked might one day become President of the United States -- is a ghost who cannot leave this mortal coil entirely behind: dead Conrad wants revenge against Ryan and he also wants a general release of others from the extraordinarily violent hazing the fraternity inflicts upon its pledges. Oh, and if it were only possible, he'd like babe girlfriend Ashley back . . . though an extended dalliance with Ryan's babe girlfriend Maggie would be pretty okay, too. Trouble is, the only people who can detect Conrad's presence are the elderly cook Etta and the evangelical born-again student Sarah Jane . . . and occasionally the good-natured Jolly-Green-Giant-like fratboy pledge Tucker, into whose body Conrad can plunge for a brief burst of possession should Tucker get sufficient drunk.

The Worthy is a great romp with serious undertones. I'd buy it like a shot if I hadn't already bought it . . . or is it Conrad who's already bought it, hm?
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JohnGrant1 | 4 weitere Rezensionen | Aug 11, 2013 |
Absolutely entertaining, especially if you like psychics, spies, video games and karma...gotta love karma...
 
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ScoutJ | 9 weitere Rezensionen | Mar 31, 2013 |

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