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| Detailed Book Review |
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| Salt Lick |
| By Brian Ames |
| ISBN: 978-1-929763-29-0
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| Price: $17.95 |
| Shipping: $4.00 |
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| Consider a common item of husbandry: the salt lick. Name a rural town after it. Put in authority a
megalomaniacal mayor. Populate it with foothills people bent to do his bidding. Set in the Cascades,
Salt
Lick shakes and burns as their lives carom from the orderly to the boundaries of control and beyond.
Whether Salt Lick�s citizens survive the resulting mayhem brews a black comedy part David Lynch�s Twin
Peaks, part Russell Banks� Trailer Park.
Salt Lick is also available as an ebook on
Amazon.com
for the Kindle. Brian Ames is also the
author of three collections of
short fiction; Smoke Follows Beauty, Head Full of Traffic, and As Many Hands As God.
His
website is tendollardog.com. |
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| Book Review Details: |
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| Reviewed Appeared In: Washington State Magazine |
| Reviewed By: George Bederian |
| Text Of Review: Anyone familiar with Brian Ames's short stories knows that they explore the boundaries between everyday existence and the chaos that lurks beneath the surface of ordinary life. Although the characters in Salt Lick, his first novel, aren't quite the hapless individuals we often encounter in his stories, what the novel does share with the earlier work are Ames's concerns with the origins of evil and the way we respond to it. But for all its seriousness of intention, Salt Lick is a thoroughly enjoyable read. Ames '85 is a gifted storyteller and on that level alone, his novel delivers. In fact, it's a very funny book--like Joseph Heller's Catch-22, a prime example of black comedy. |
| Date Reviewed: Spring 2008 |
| Link To Web Site:
Washington State Magazine
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| Author Appearances: |
| Contact Author:
Email Author |
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