Crow’s Breath

 Crow’s Breath

Reviewed By  Janet Mawdesley       May 14, 2015

 

Author  John Kinsella

Distributor:     
ISBN:                 9781921924811
Publisher:         Transit Lounge
Release Date:    

   Website:   http://www.transitlounge.com

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Kinsella’s work is magnificent, raw; the words coming together in form and shape to evoke the essence of the moment in time he is creating.

 From the frightened child on the side of the road waiting for his Mum to collect him from the school bus, to the scroungers at the dump collecting the refuse of society, each piece, each person is bought into vivid perspective; you can smell the fear, relate directly to the experience.

As a collection of short stories, or snippets of life if you wish, many of them focus on the dark side of people, the evil disguised as friendship, the moment in time when they realise their plan has succeeded. You can feel the sense of satisfaction in ‘Binoculars’, when the plan works and there are no bodies recovered. In ‘Golden Gloves’ the sense of making things right during a fight in Carnarvon and the sadness of reflection, is very real.

The language used is as colourful as the story, people or background being portrayed with the look at life in the raw well crafted.

In ‘Crow’s Breath’ the opening words of the story bring immediately to life a town dying of salt erosion and the hopelessness of life still lived in the town. The desire of a young girl to try to bring a dead dog back to life and the harsh realities of trying to make a bad situation better are brutal in their reality.

Each of the stories is powerful within its own right, astonishing in the realism and almost desperate in their portrayal of the lack of compunction to be found in us all.

Powerful, emotive, evocative and challenging you will be left with a feeling of disenchantment, annoyed with oneself for the almost voyeuristic desire to read each separate piece to its final, stark conclusion!

Fiction