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| Book Your Stocking 2018 |
Book Your Stocking: December 17
For those celebrating the pagan, religious, or some mix of Christmas, we've now entered the last full week before that big day. So few days to write that book you want to give everyone, but enough time to order a book someone else wrote and hide it in your favorite person's stocking or under their pillow or wherever book-surprises happen where you live.
Here to recommend such a book is John Kenny, all the way from Dublin.
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| Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector |
I’d like to pop
Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector into other people’s stockings. It’s the story of Macabea, a young woman living in the slums of Rio who may or may not be real according to the author, Rodrigo, who may or may not be the author Clarice Lispector. It’s a short novel that is as much about the author, fictitious or real, as it is about Macabea; it’s about the act of writing, and of trying to avoid (or not) imposing a writer’s preconceived notions onto a life; it’s about fiction and the truth of fiction as opposed to reality, or so-called reality. It is at times a maddeningly frustrating read and yet, despite the digressions and the author’s hand very deliberately showing, the story of Macabea’s life shines through in all its splendid constraint; even as we witness the author’s intrusion and artifice, the reader feels for the person of the young woman and her lack of self-awareness and aspiration.
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About today's reader:
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| John Kenny |
John Kenny is a writer, editor and creative writing tutor in Dublin, Ireland. His short stories have appeared in
Revival Literary Journal,
The Galway Review,
Woman's Way,
Emerald Eye (an anthology of the Best of Irish Imaginative Fiction),
Transtories,
Fear the Reaper,
Uncertainties Vol 1 and many other venues. John was co-editor of
Albedo One from its inception in 1993 until 2013. He is editor of original horror anthology
Box of Delights for Aeon Press,
Writing4All: The Best of 2009, and
Decade 1: The Best of Albedo One. Learn more at
https://johnrichardkenny.com/
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