Aaron C. Bennett's Writing Journal

A Choir of Ill Children

A Choir of Ill Chlidren by Tom Piccirilli. Remember this book. I forgot to talk about it in my last post. If you have not read it, go out and get it. It will be coming out in mmp from Bantam on June 1st. This is Southern Gothic fiction at its best. It reads like Faulkner, if Faulkner hadn't let his writing get in the way of his writing. The stream of conciousness flow so well you are locked into the story even more. The asides to the reader also work. They do pull the reader out, but that is to the story's benefit in this case. If the reader gets too submerged in the novel, it might become too surreal and lose the effect. The asides give a breif gasp of air before submerging fast and deep back into the murky bayou of this novel. I read this with Updike, so the regionalism of the prose style was very evident. I also saw the influence of the horror genre writers (and not just because there are names of Pic's writer buddies slipped in as character names). Our Dark Father has really outdone himself with this one.
Withces that reminded me of the crones from MacBeth, a deformed siamese triplet brother. One head of which spouts poetry to the coke-head reporter girl from New York. A bajou girl with her own relationship issues with the family. A raging storm that treatens to destroy the town, that may be damned anyway. Characters that a so unique, they would become caricatures if it wasn't for Pic deft handling of their backstories and how they fit into the plot. They are at the same time over the top, and completely believable. This is one of those books that sticks with you like bad gumbo.