Edward Hamlin
Autor von Night in Erg Chebbi and Other Stories (Iowa Short Fiction Award)
Über den Autor
Bildnachweis: Writer Edward Hamlin, Colorado, autumn 2015 By Alexgsd01 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52854544
Werke von Edward Hamlin
Getagged
Wissenswertes
Für diesen Autor liegen noch keine Einträge mit "Wissenswertem" vor. Sie können helfen.
Mitglieder
Rezensionen
A brilliant collection of short stories, varied, well-written, highly entertaining, with minimal but really interesting plots and full of characters so human, believable and well-drawn that you really care about them and even understand them when you perfectly know they’re not making the most sensible things.
It would be really a tough choice if I had to choose my favorite story, as I liked every one of them, and I’m sure that several of them will linger in my mind for a long time.
It would be really a tough choice if I had to choose my favorite story, as I liked every one of them, and I’m sure that several of them will linger in my mind for a long time.
In Night in Erg Chebbi and Other Stories, Edward Hamlin demonstrates in nine dazzling selections an uncanny insight into human grief and guilt and expiation. On his way to a very well-deserved Iowa Short Fiction Award for 2015, Mr. Hamlin has produced a series of vivid, highly varied, and completely convincing pieces - they’re stunningly clear in their emotional depth and uniformly excellent in execution.
They range from a tenebrous midnight in the Moroccan desert, to the parched aridity of an isolated town in the western U.S., to the backwoods of fundamentalist cruelty and familial abuse in the Ozarks, to murderous and frozen New York at its worst. The collection leads off with "Indígena", a gratifyingly balanced account of a woman whose father was a fugitive Irish revolutionary and assassin. Her familiarity with weapons and understanding of the true meaning of being on the lam may have saved her from drowning in the raging Amazon River. This memorable story sets the tone for what follows: swift pacing, unexpected plot turns, and reverberant finishes that generate questions as often as they answer them.
The cover story follows, a simply beautiful, clear, and wrenching story about a woman who finally begins to come to terms with crushing guilt, desperately firing an assault rifle in the middle of the Moroccan midnight, naked and screaming. "Light Year" and "One Child Policy" take up the terrible outcomes for two very different American women, a professional photojournalist who is losing her eyesight and a frightened Chinese immigrant trying to make her way in a New York populated with bigoted thugs and a blizzard. The author fills these stories with effective background, as he does with every entry here, with a minimum of language and a maximum of effect.
"The Release" is the most emotionally affecting story among a lot of strong entries. In it a woman tries to balance her interests with those of her recently deceased husband’s ex-wife, and the emotionally handicapped daughter from the first marriage. How she succeeds at this is one of the truly surprising results in this collection full of surprises. In "Not Yet", "Head Shy," and "Clemency," we witness men whose variety of misdemeanors come from their wildly different backgrounds and personalities, but in which death is a constant, but the movement toward redemption is not.
Even in these brief stories, Mr. Hamlin reveals character only gradually, as the disastrous, or unfortunate, or careless, or simply misguided, events and impulses become clear and overtake the action and resolution. I have not been so impressed by a collection of short stories in quite a long time. These are all splendid, each with their multiple attractions, and deserve as wide an audience as we can muster. Without a doubt, take these up!
http://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2015/06/night-in-erg-chebbi-and-other-stories...… (mehr)
They range from a tenebrous midnight in the Moroccan desert, to the parched aridity of an isolated town in the western U.S., to the backwoods of fundamentalist cruelty and familial abuse in the Ozarks, to murderous and frozen New York at its worst. The collection leads off with "Indígena", a gratifyingly balanced account of a woman whose father was a fugitive Irish revolutionary and assassin. Her familiarity with weapons and understanding of the true meaning of being on the lam may have saved her from drowning in the raging Amazon River. This memorable story sets the tone for what follows: swift pacing, unexpected plot turns, and reverberant finishes that generate questions as often as they answer them.
The cover story follows, a simply beautiful, clear, and wrenching story about a woman who finally begins to come to terms with crushing guilt, desperately firing an assault rifle in the middle of the Moroccan midnight, naked and screaming. "Light Year" and "One Child Policy" take up the terrible outcomes for two very different American women, a professional photojournalist who is losing her eyesight and a frightened Chinese immigrant trying to make her way in a New York populated with bigoted thugs and a blizzard. The author fills these stories with effective background, as he does with every entry here, with a minimum of language and a maximum of effect.
"The Release" is the most emotionally affecting story among a lot of strong entries. In it a woman tries to balance her interests with those of her recently deceased husband’s ex-wife, and the emotionally handicapped daughter from the first marriage. How she succeeds at this is one of the truly surprising results in this collection full of surprises. In "Not Yet", "Head Shy," and "Clemency," we witness men whose variety of misdemeanors come from their wildly different backgrounds and personalities, but in which death is a constant, but the movement toward redemption is not.
Even in these brief stories, Mr. Hamlin reveals character only gradually, as the disastrous, or unfortunate, or careless, or simply misguided, events and impulses become clear and overtake the action and resolution. I have not been so impressed by a collection of short stories in quite a long time. These are all splendid, each with their multiple attractions, and deserve as wide an audience as we can muster. Without a doubt, take these up!
http://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2015/06/night-in-erg-chebbi-and-other-stories...… (mehr)
Auszeichnungen
Statistikseite
- Werke
- 2
- Mitglieder
- 15
- Beliebtheit
- #708,120
- Bewertung
- 4.7
- Rezensionen
- 3
- ISBNs
- 3
The present-day narrative starts with world-renowned recording engineer, Ben Weil (our hero), receiving five wax recording cylinders, recorded 100 years prior at a private piano recital in Boston. An antiquarian from Maine has shipped them to Ben at his Chicago studio with the request that he identify the artist/composer if he can, and please report back to her. Ben immediately becomes intrigued, and he somehow fits his research into his already crazy-hectic schedule.
The story from one hundred years earlier deals with Elisabeth Garnier, a pretty young Frenchwoman, who works for Alexander Graham Bell, presenting the company’s wares to Boston’s Brahmin elite. Her father Jaques is the virtuoso piano player who has composed the marvel of a sonata. Ben’s research turns up a few tidbits of arcana, but through a misunderstanding arising at a point when Ben is ill and vulnerable, Ana Clara Matta, Brazil’s prima piano virtuoso finds his attempt at scoring the piece and thinks it’s his own composition. The ‘2018 Chicago’ narrative consists of Ben trying in vain to contain the lie that’s not entirely his fault. In his insular world, in which he is a widely respected and sought-after world class professional, the exposure will sink his reputation and end his career in disgrace.
As a layman music lover, I am thrilled at Hamlin’s descriptions of not only lovely passages of music, but also his knowing touch with the subtle flourishes and emphases world-class players add to make them their very own. It is these touches of genius in the rarified air of the very best that make virtuosos rich and famous. He is equally strong when capturing the zeitgeist of World War I Boston; the war plows an entire generation of French men into their graves, and this horror is followed up by another equally ghastly scourge, the 1918 flu pandemic.
Hamlin alternates his timelines expertly, unfolding his two plots to build a terrific tension. His two protagonists are vivid, honestly drawn, and very sympathetic. His secondary characters are fully nuanced, and even his portrayal of historical characters rings true. The the clever construction and unerring imagining of characters is the true draw here. This novel builds tension, ties several generations of a prominent American family together, celebrates brilliant music and its equally brilliant performance, and leaves the reader in awe. This is Hamlin’s first foray into full-length fiction; he already won the Iowa Short Fiction Prize in 2015. Take up this lively and imaginative work, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.
https://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2024/02/sonata-in-wax-by-edward-hamlin.html… (mehr)