Kate Gray

i'm sad that this is the last of the kate gray books that are published that i hadn't read, so i don't have more to read (until she publishes more). i'm sad that when she's writing prose that means she's not writing poetry. i'm sad that when she's writing poetry that means she's not writing prose. she is so talented.

this book is beautiful. physically, i mean; the cover is gorgeous, the paper, the printing. it's a work of art in and of itself. and on top of that there are the poems.

the book show more is divided in two halves. the first half is well done, certainly, but the second half is just so...much. every poem builds on the previous one, using a word or phrase (and sometimes a theme) from the end of the poem before to begin the next; it works so incredibly well to tie them all together and build this raft of emotion that just builds and builds from poem to poem. this last half of the book is astounding. (if the book was only this half it would get 5 stars for sure.)

my two favorites are two in a row from this second half, first Pleasure and Need and then The Flood:

Pleasure and Need

Imagine
you are an island parting
a river, a knot in wood, an iris
in grass, a volcano
cutting clouds. Imagine your legs
are the river parting, the island
supple, a tongue. Imagine waves
wrapping your island
in the flow, my hold
on you firm,
shimmering.

The Flood

now you firm beneath
the pull of me
lapping
my belly sliding down
my breasts dripping thick
rain rushing from hills sloped
like your neck once sinews of sand
now currents
converging

waters receding
you will remember white
kisses ringing each limb
water rushing sweet places as
I wane
you will rise up oh
island show less

just shy of 4 stars. kate gray is a poet, and it shows. the language in this book is gorgeous and lyrical, with wonderful imagery. each short chapter is its own story, its own prose poem.

for me, though, it's a little too often that she forgets that she's writing prose. i don't want to say that it was too poetic, but there were elements (specifically sentence structure/pacing) that work better in poetry than in prose, at least when used a lot, and i think this book suffered slightly because show more of it. because kate gray is a really, really great writer. (the acknowledgements section in this book is an amazing piece of writing; it's completely why i read those, just in case, and she totally validates me here. i would have preferred more of that style in the book itself, though. )

but what i really think makes this book not as great as i want it to be is that it tries to do too much. it's not sure exactly where its focus lies, or she muddles its focus a bit with side stories that would make good books themselves. i think this would be a stronger book if those peripheral stories stayed more to the periphery. bringing them so close to the forefront, i think, makes this book too little about too much. also, when the story is being told in the voice of one of the characters (carla) it isn't believable. there are a number of things that didn't seem believable, actually, in the context of the story, but this character's voice and some of the dialog were the main things.

that said, i was kept up late reading a couple of nights, and found aspects of the story or characters compelling enough that sometimes i had trouble sleeping because i couldn't stop thinking about them.

i do think that what i'll remember of this book is that, while i wanted it to be tighter from a story perspective, kate gray writes so many beautiful passages. many of them are unquotable, because she is relying on references she's made before, or she is building on an image she planted earlier. she trusts the reader to follow her, and she leaves a beautiful trail of writing behind her. the continuity of language, imagery, and metaphor throughout the book often made me sigh with appreciation, but probably won't sound as good as it is out of context. so fewer quotes than i'd like, and than she deserves.

"I made wakes. I cut the lake. I carved your name in water."

"All objects with mass will pull toward each other with gravitational force. Imagine the pull if a person carries the weight of the earth."

"The loneliness we feel is as sure as water. It changes into fog and rain and a frozen lake, but it's always water." show less

beautiful language and writing, even when much of the content is about things that are anything but beautiful. i didn't understand what all of these poems were about, but i did enjoy the language in each of them, and the ones i did understand were (mostly) quite powerful. as i don't know much about poetry i can't say for sure, but it seemed to me she was following different poetic structure in these poems and not just writing in free verse, which i presume to be harder or more restrictive. show more she really is a great writer. show less

Two couples, Erin and Jamie, Sophia and Mark are both on their honeymoon in Bali. Spending an evening meal together everything goes terribly wrong starting with a spilt drink.

This book for me was a typical thriller. There is a situation early on and then everything spirals out of control. There is the usual cast of characters such as the neurotic wife, dodgy husband and plenty of secrets.

I did finish the book and enjoyed it for what it was. I did think it was another one that went into show more thrillerland with several twists at the end.

The blurb on the book quoted by another thriller author says that this book is 'a nerve jangling tale of tension'. I would say that I wasn't jangling my nerves but I did want to keep turning the pages just to see how it all panned out.

I did receive a copy from the publisher via Netgalley to review this book. show less