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Wow! Mar 31, 2000 (8 of 8 found this helpful)
I'm not surprised - I knew Gowdy was an artist when I picked up her novel "Falling Angels" by accident. This book of short stories is an incredible and dizzying fall into the world of the bizarre - where everything that is off-the-wall, quirky, and unacceptable, becomes normal, textured, and sprinkled with a bit of reality - though not to the point of being ho-hum. Oh, no! Barbara Gowdy will grab you by the neck and MAKE you admit it's a beautiful world, filled with odd, gorgeous people. I love this author - she is the only writer I've ever known who revels and celebrates the crazy shapes and colours of the human animal.
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Weird, Touching, Unclassifiable yet Oddly Beautiful Aug 24, 1998 (6 of 6 found this helpful)
What a find! Gowdy is an almost unfairly gifted writer whose modus operandi is to take some off-beat, off-the-wall subject and make it both touching and deeply human.
What kind of subject? Well, there's a girl with an odd kind of siamese twin (two legs who stick out from her chest), who goes to school quite normally, is loved by her family and, of course, runs off to join the circus. She's beautiful, and normal-enough looking (when she dresses to hide those legs) to pass in "normal" society, and she meets and marries a man. It's an old story, yes, but in one line, Gowdy puts a twist on it that is at once liberating and heartbreaking.
There's an old, non entirely sane woman, whose only joy in life is in taking in deformed and abused foster children; a woman who rediscovers her own sexuality when a peeping Tom pays a visit; and a young girl who can only love corpses. Gowdy's self-confidence, in tackling these themes with both grace and ease, is astonishing; the beauty of her prose, in making them poetic, touching and almost unbearably poignant, is equally astonishing.
Gowdy's writing is never abstruse, she never leaves the reader hanging; her stories are told in a straightforward manner, with a classical structure (beginning, middle, crisis plot point, and resolution/end), her characters and dialogue completely believable. The book will probably be most favored by fans of horror or fantasy, only because they have an easier ability to suspend disbelief. Others, however, should be equally moved and impressed.
I am anxious to read any other stories by this brilliant and moving writer.
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Gowdy's a master at making the unusual Apr 24, 2003 (2 of 2 found this helpful)
An utterly amazing collection of short stories, many of which are related to one another, so they fit well together as a group. She has a knack for taking the most unusual or unconventional characters and situations and making them seem so realistic and sympathetic. One thing that always strikes me is that she seems to care about her characters so much. Despite their flaws, despite their outright freakishness at times, she, because of her affection for them, is able to convey to the reader their fundamental humanity. As a result, the focus is taken away from whatever makes them different, and we are instead drawn to see the similarities between them and ourselves.
Some images from this book will stay with me forever. Silvie and Sue as well as Simon and Samuel, two sets of siamese twins, each with their own story, for example. Incomparable characterization, simple but profound writing style, this book is absolutely unforgettable.
And, if I can sneak in another recommendation, check out "Mister Sandman" by the same author - as much as I loved this one, that one's even better!
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Every story is a gem! Sep 22, 1999 (3 of 4 found this helpful)
I savored these stories--only one a night. They were fantastic. Every one is truly bizarre but truly commonplace at the same time. The characters--freaks and victims of perverse circumstance--are revealed in the end to possess a kind of mundane sensibility. The everydayness of these characters is just captivating.
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Can necrophilia be heroic? You bet! Sep 18, 2008
If you have ever had romantic yearnings for a corpse, or imagined a prom queen boning ('scuse the pun) some embalmed remains, this books is for you. I have never experienced a mental pathology in a way that made me so wistful and contemplative, so empathetic and receptive and alive. Give it a try! This book will open you petal by petal, to the sun.