Reviewed
by: Sam Waite
Genre:
General fiction
Approximate
word count: 60-65,000
words
Availability
Click
on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes &
Noble, or Smashwords store
Author:
“Eddie
Mark is a writer, researcher, educator, and former city chess
champion of Buffalo, New York. His prize-winning short stories have
appeared in the Hart House
Review and the anthology
Bloodlines: Tales from the
African Diaspora. The
Garden of Unfortunate Souls
is his first published novel.”
Description:
“In
1980s Buffalo, New York, the recession has transformed the city's
proudest African American neighborhood into a ghetto. Loretta Ford,
an eccentric single mother and religious fanatic, survives for years
by masquerading as the owner of a dead woman's house. Her reclusive
life is interrupted when an unlikely incident brings the mayor of
Buffalo to her home in the middle of the night. Their secret meeting
sets off a chain of events that will leave two families altered
forever.”
Appraisal:
The
story of abuse, betrayal and violence is told with a poetically
powerful voice that renders its characters as vivid as “Mac”
McMurphy and "Chief" Bromden in Ken Kesey’s Cuckoo’s
Nest. The Buffalo mayor’s
family is brought down because of neglect of an apparently dyslectic
and intellectually challenged child, who hides abuse by a teacher out
of fear of disappointing his father. He seeks revenge in the only
ways he can and brings destruction. A car accident connects the
family to a mother who uses religious fervor to cover her own sins,
and beats her son in revenge for betrayals by past lovers. The boy
creates his own reality and uses it to escape not only the ghetto,
but his mother’s ghost.
Eddie
Mark’s debut novel should be required reading for any culture that
embraces “spare the rod, spoil the child.”
Format/Typo
Issues:
None
Rating:
***** Five Stars
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