meghan rose allen

Not sure who decided the cover, but:

I had a hard time seeing that as a fish at first. Even now, I have to really tell myself it is one.

And it’s not the little black fish protagonist either. Why wouldn’t we have the little black fish on the cover instead of a picture of his mother, who is only in the comic for the first five or six pages?

I don’t get it.

Actually, I don’t really get a lot of this comic. I almost do — a beloved Persian children’s story, interesting art, a story that’s supposed to be a lesson (although I’m not one hundred percent sure what the lesson is supposed to be if we don’t go for the literal, and yet universal, don’t-get-eaten-by-a-heron-lesson). It seems like a great idea for a comic book. But I just feel that there’s something I’m missing, something off a little bit. Even how I would describe this book seems off. I’d say cute but that’s only because there isn’t really a word that means what I want to say otherwise. It’s kind of bloody and without a happy ending, but nevertheless, cute. See — that’s off.

Tesfa looked over my shoulder when I was reading it and was really interested in the art work. Maybe what’s off is that I’m not a kid. I’ve lost that by now. Maybe as a kid I’d appreciate this comic more.

Still, why isn’t the little black fish himself on the cover?

The Little Black Fish by Bizhan Khodabandeh went on sale May 15, 2016.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

First things first: I know nothing about contemporary poetry, especially contemporary poetry geared towards adults. Sure I can recite Disobedience by A.A. Milne and most of Alligator Pie, but grown-up poems — I think the last grown-up book I read with poetry in it was A Poet and bin-Laden, which seemed to have been written under the illusion that there simply wasn’t enough poetry in novels about Central Asian politics (it was kind of like reading Tolkien except the inclusion of poetry was even more baffling).

So I know nothing about poetry.

And I read a book of poetry.

And said I’d review it.

Even though I don’t know what I’m doing.

Can I end the review here?

I’m going to say I liked it. I’m going to say the poems were interesting. Divided into three (really four, but one section has one poem only) sections, one about Iraqi Kurdistan, one about the Northwest Territories, one about Azerbaijan, within the sections, the poems inter-relate, if only due to geography. I’m going to say I got a sense of each of the locales, even though there was no plot to weave together. This is big for me — I love plot. I love stories. The stories here were more ephemeral. Maybe they didn’t exist. Maybe it was negative space I put stories into. Or maybe the stories were deep and I only skimmed the surface, not realizing their depths.

As I said, I don’t know much about poetry.

Some of the poem rhymed though. I do have a great appreciation for rhyming poems.

Also, Patrick Woodcock seems to know a lot of kids to dedicate poems to. Not that the poems he dedicated to these kids would be of much interest, necessarily to kids. A kid would probably rather Alligator Pie. Maybe they’ll appreciate them when they’re older.

I think I’ll end the review now here.

You can’t bury them all by Patrick Woodcock went on sale April 12, 2016.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

In one of my many cookbooks, I have a recipe for freezer-cookies. Basically, the recipe is this: find a bunch of sweet things you like to eat, mix them into little balls stuck together with peanut butter, put balls in freezer. Done. I make them sometimes when I have a variety of baking supplies (chocolate chips, dried fruit, nuts, seeds, etc.) and just want something quick. Do they do the trick? Yes. Are they really that satisfying? Well …

And therein is my issue with Tears in the Grass by Lynda A. Archer. It does the trick of being a quick-to-make-out story; it has everything in it, and I do mean everything (residential schools, rape, forced adoptions, sexism, racism, discrimination, the thoughts of a taxidermied bison, First Nations rights, LGBTQ issues, murder); but, ultimately the peanut butter to stick the balls together (to return to my already weak metaphor) just isn’t there. In three hundred pages, so much is thrown at us, one thing after another, that by the final page, it’s a bit like getting to the end of a marathon. The book wears me out. Plus, much like my last review, there’s a bit of wish fulfillment it seems going on here. Everything ties up in a nice tidy bow. Uplifting sure. Realistic, well … (a missing Cree senior in Saskatchewan is on the news in Ontario? I don’t buy it.)

Plus I’m more interested in the side stories: What was it like for Louise to go to law school in the 1930s as a Cree woman? Are Alice and Wanda going to continue seeing each other? Why didn’t Elinor search for her baby earlier? Does John have any personality at all? Why is the whole novel set in the sixties when it could just as easily be set now?

Overall, an okay book. Would likely be improved with less internal thoughts of a stuffed bison and more plot and character development.

Tears in the Grass by Lynda A. Archer went on sale March 19, 2016.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A Mary Sue story of the statutory rape variety for the cinephile, white, CIS-hetero boys out there.

We have Joe. He’s seventeen. He has limitless access to alcohol, and drugs. He has no parental oversight and does whatever he wants. He has a quip and a comeback for every situation. Women drop their panties at the sight of him. FBI agents need his help. He’ll do anything to protect his sister. He knows everything there is to know about movies.

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Perhaps this is poorly done satire? I’m going to assume that this is just poorly done satire, otherwise I think I’d feel like I lost fifty IQ points for reading it. I’m also going to assume that my free preview copy hasn’t been fully copy edited yet because I don’t understand why someone like Joe who professes to love cinema so much keeps making mistakes regarding film, such as calling Brad Pittle’s character in Fight Club Tyler Dern. That’s right. Brad Pittle. Tyler Dern. Or watching the French prison movie En Prophet rather than a movie that actually exists, say Un prophète. I’m not even a movie buff and I seem to know more that Joe about movies. (And it isn’t as if all characters/movies/actors are slightly misspelled to avoid legal implications or something. Most are spelled correctly.)

The writing, sadly, is actually decent. The pacing is great. Just the story, of Joe continually and effortlessly saving the day while banging girls in their twenties (plus one teenager), is so moronic and facile that the whole thing smacks of stupidity and wish-fulfillment. Ebner should maybe try his hand at something a little more meaty and put this whole nonsense of a story behind him.

Movie Game by Michael Ebenr went on sale May 5, 2016.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.