(pb; 2012: novelette)
Review:
When college professor Lou Meade is accosted by a talking owl - a familiar of the Greek deity Athena, "goddess of wisdom, the practical arts, and warfare, and the protectress of cities"* - it's the first moment in his new life phase, an era that will lead him further into the works of author C.S. Lewis and intellectual warfare against Eris, the wily Greek goddess of discord.
Burstein's writing is straightforward, smart and exciting in a dry-humored way, which serves this atypical, Lewisesque work well.
Readers of Lewis and gentler, clean cut-to-it readers of fantasy would do well to own this 70-page "neo-Pagan Fantasy" (as Burstein subtitles this intriguing work). Don't expect the epic bombast and graphic grimness of George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, but do expect to be entertained in a cerebral, sometimes phantasmagorical manner.
Worth owning, this. You can purchase it here.
[*The Free Dictionary.com]
[This review was originally published on the Reading and Writing By
Pub Light
site.]
#
Burstein's earlier, much-shorter work - The crawfish boil - graced this site on January 11, 2012. If you haven't read this story, check it out!
Showing posts with label Alvin G. Burstein. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alvin G. Burstein. Show all posts
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Saturday, April 21, 2012
**Alvin Burstein has published a novella, The Owl, on Lulu
Alvin Burstein, whose work, The crawfish boil, graced this site last January, has published a novella, The Owl – “a riveting account of an academic swept up in divine war" – on Lulu.
Support an independent author/publisher, and check his novella out!
Support an independent author/publisher, and check his novella out!
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
The crawfish boil
By Alvin G. Burstein
The sultry south Louisiana afternoon was buffered by the shade of tall pines and oaks that dominated the lot. Scattered under the trees were rough-hewn tables, eight foot long plywood panels supported by sawhorses that elevated them waist high. Clipped to the two holes in the center of each table, and hanging down from it, were black thirty gallon trash bags. Some kind of feast had been carefully anticipated.
People began trickling in, at first in twos and threes, then in larger crowds. The guests were varied: men and women, young and old, some bare-legged in shorts, some in chinos, some in gaily flowered dresses, some bare-headed and some in floppy sun hats. As the crowd increased, the clamor of talk, punctuated by bursts of laughter, got louder and louder. The humid atmosphere got warmer and warmer.
The food arrived, cascade upon cascade of hot boiled crawfish, their mottled red bodies setting off steaming paler red new potatoes, three inch cobs of shiny yellow corn and speckles of gray-green bay leaf, darker allspice and fire alarm red cayenne, all puddled in liquid boil. Bellying up to the tables, the crowd began to grab for the shellfish, twisting off and sucking heads, peeling open the armored bellies, squeezing out gleaming, moist tails, and, ignoring the black dorsal blood lines, fingering the white meat into their mouths. The laughter and talk didn't subside. It became a cacophony, a jangle, punctuated by the sound of fingers sucked, smacking lips and exclamations of approval: "Man, these mudbugs are some good!"
Mounds of spiny, multi-legged shellfish disappeared to be replenished by new cascades, welcomed by gleaming eyes and grasping hands. Mastication clotted, but did not diminish, the increasing clamor. Ejaculations of pleasure, shouted words and eruptions of laughter spiraled into the muggy atmosphere. Liquid boil and fish juices coated snatching fingers, and slathered hands and forearms. Oily stains splashed clothes and besmeared chins.
Suddenly the ground began to rock. Tables spilled their contents. Feasters staggered and fell, screaming. A monstrous basket of metal netting broke through the ground. Scooping up a squirming mass of people and broken debris, it dumped the collection into a huge steaming caldron watched by gigantic crustaceans looking on with expressionless ebony eyes.
Copyright ©2011 Alvin G. Burstein. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce in any form, including electronic, without the author’s express permission.
#
This story was originally published in Dark Valentine magazine in June 2011.
#
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Burstein is a retired psychology professor and psychoanalyst. He currently volunteers at the New Orleans-Birmingham Psychoanalytic Center where he teaches and serves as librarian. He is a member of the Inklings, a group that meets weekly at the local public library to read and critique its members’ writings. He is a committed Francophile, unsurprisingly, a lover of fine cheese and wine, and an unrepentant cruciverbalist.
The sultry south Louisiana afternoon was buffered by the shade of tall pines and oaks that dominated the lot. Scattered under the trees were rough-hewn tables, eight foot long plywood panels supported by sawhorses that elevated them waist high. Clipped to the two holes in the center of each table, and hanging down from it, were black thirty gallon trash bags. Some kind of feast had been carefully anticipated.
People began trickling in, at first in twos and threes, then in larger crowds. The guests were varied: men and women, young and old, some bare-legged in shorts, some in chinos, some in gaily flowered dresses, some bare-headed and some in floppy sun hats. As the crowd increased, the clamor of talk, punctuated by bursts of laughter, got louder and louder. The humid atmosphere got warmer and warmer.
The food arrived, cascade upon cascade of hot boiled crawfish, their mottled red bodies setting off steaming paler red new potatoes, three inch cobs of shiny yellow corn and speckles of gray-green bay leaf, darker allspice and fire alarm red cayenne, all puddled in liquid boil. Bellying up to the tables, the crowd began to grab for the shellfish, twisting off and sucking heads, peeling open the armored bellies, squeezing out gleaming, moist tails, and, ignoring the black dorsal blood lines, fingering the white meat into their mouths. The laughter and talk didn't subside. It became a cacophony, a jangle, punctuated by the sound of fingers sucked, smacking lips and exclamations of approval: "Man, these mudbugs are some good!"
Mounds of spiny, multi-legged shellfish disappeared to be replenished by new cascades, welcomed by gleaming eyes and grasping hands. Mastication clotted, but did not diminish, the increasing clamor. Ejaculations of pleasure, shouted words and eruptions of laughter spiraled into the muggy atmosphere. Liquid boil and fish juices coated snatching fingers, and slathered hands and forearms. Oily stains splashed clothes and besmeared chins.
Suddenly the ground began to rock. Tables spilled their contents. Feasters staggered and fell, screaming. A monstrous basket of metal netting broke through the ground. Scooping up a squirming mass of people and broken debris, it dumped the collection into a huge steaming caldron watched by gigantic crustaceans looking on with expressionless ebony eyes.
Copyright ©2011 Alvin G. Burstein. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce in any form, including electronic, without the author’s express permission.
#
This story was originally published in Dark Valentine magazine in June 2011.
#
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Burstein is a retired psychology professor and psychoanalyst. He currently volunteers at the New Orleans-Birmingham Psychoanalytic Center where he teaches and serves as librarian. He is a member of the Inklings, a group that meets weekly at the local public library to read and critique its members’ writings. He is a committed Francophile, unsurprisingly, a lover of fine cheese and wine, and an unrepentant cruciverbalist.
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