Claude Lalumière

Here's a book with three strikes against it:

It's a collection of short pieces by different authors, most of which you probably haven't heard of

It's about superheros.

And they're all Canadian.

Still with me? Have to report I enjoyed it a lot.

Post "Dark Knight" and "Watchman" and Post The whole Marvel age it's not news that people in capes who fly can have problems and personal lives and human frailties just like the girl (or boy) next door.

Still these little stories really make you feel like show more - yeah - this is what it would REALLY be like if people REALLY had "super" powers and really had to deal with them.

If there's a complaint is that the stories are all too short. It feels like reading the origin story issue of a new comic book series and getting hooked - well hey I want to read the next issue.

(though some of the stories just dump you right into the middle of things, and you sometimes have to scramble to keep up. That's OK).

There are a couple of yarns in here that I won't be reading again, but honestly the quality is pretty high. The POW! ZAM! ZAP! quotient is mercifully low and the characters are interesting and involving.

I liked it. Glad I read it. Will be looking for some of these authors again show less

I suppose this odd little book is best described as a collection of linked short stories. All of them feature a bookstore called Lost Pages, which sells books about histories and myths and creatures that never existed, at least in our world. Collectively they involve a variety of misfit children, visions of a tentacled god of nightmares and the supernatural armies who oppose him, and people who experience encounters -- often sexual ones -- with the uncanny. I'm not sure it quite gels show more together into a coherent whole, and if it were any longer, that might be annoying, but as short as it is (about 200 smallish pages with good-sized type), the fact that we only get little half-glimpses of this weird reality that seems to exist behind our own works surprisingly well.

It's strange and interesting stuff, and apparently just exactly what I was in the mood for. show less

And now for something completely different…

I don’t know that I would have seen this little book if it were not for an intriguing review in PW catching my eye. And I think what intrigued me is that this slight novella of linked stories was set around a bookstore. Surely I am not the only hard-core bibliophile that is immediately attracted to tales involving bookstores and booksellers?

The novella contains a brief (skippable) introduction, followed by a prologue and six stories spanning a show more number of years. The bookstore is not the primary setting or focus of all the stories, but it is one of the elements that link them. As is Aydee, the central character of the first story, who is introduced as a neglected and abused 10-year-old girl. The store, Lost Pages, came into her life at a time of need, as it had done for others over the years. It’s not your average, florescent-lit chain store. Rather, it had echoes of Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s Cemetery of Forgotten Books. And, readers, who among us isn’t seeking a mystical bookstore?

There are many other mystical/mythical elements to the tales, some of them rather new-agey for my liking. (But my tolerance is low, and there wasn’t so much that it was off-putting.) But those stories, some of them, were pretty “out there” and weird. This is another thing that can be off-putting to some readers and appealing to others. The stories contained a provocative mix of stark realism and fantasy, innocence and experience. Do know going in that there are repeated references to substance use and abuse. Additionally, there are graphic depictions of a broad spectrum of sexuality, some of it unconventional. What I’ll say is that I think Mr. Lalumière showed restraint and didn’t get too carried away with the weirdness. His writing is very strong, and the imagery was vivid and interesting.

Interesting. That’s a word I returned to time and time again while trying to describe this book to a friend. It seems like such a bland word, but I’m stuck with it. There was nothing bland about this book. And there are worse things than being “interesting.” And if I can’t ever find the door to Lost Pages myself, at the very least I hope to find more of these stories. show less

The world building in the beginning of this book is insufferable and the prose is narcissistic to the point of being ridiculous but there are good moments in here and the further in you go the more rewarding the experience. The silly and long-winded art prose gets in the way of the interesting ideas and locales here. Many of the character's motivations seem abstract or nonsensical, it's hardest to empathize with the misanthropes among them and their unrealistically scathing hatred for the show more world around them for its daring to not accommodate their rarified tastes and lust for adventure. This comes off as cheap and forced even to an introvert who you'd think would be the perfect audience for that sort of fare. I can't even imagine how others must take it.

I have a suspicion that most of my points against this book come from it reading initially like a mockery or weird doppelgänger of my own writing from high school, sexually charged and laced with abstract imagery, strange items and monsters and places that are unhinged in time and space yet often lacking direction or cohesiveness. It is to the author's immense credit that after all this strange prejudice and distaste, I came away from this book smiling and feeling like I'd really gotten something from it. The only way to treat some of the most over-the-top prose is to laugh but laughter isn't so bad and where this book succeeds in making compelling creatures and mythologies it does so rather brilliantly. I'd recommend finding a sample of this novel's prose somewhere and reading just a sentence or two. You'll know absolutely immediately if it's for you because of the wry grin creeping across your face, if not, you'll probably grimace in disgust. It's just that kind of book I guess. show less