FFWD Weekly
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| Book Review by FFWD Staff Liar’s Moon Imagine the Romulus and Remus myth set in the old west. Sprinkle on some of the style of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Michael Ondaatje from their multi-character books and you have captured some of the flavour of the latest saga by blue-collar Fulbright Scholar Philip Kimball. His work feasts on the imagery of wide open land, "space for the soul to wander, people not wont to submit to a humorless, cantankerous and bullying deity" – a place of animal smiles, "calm rapture caught in honey light, the rhythmic trotting of horses swirling dust over the long, low rise of grassland, fitful heat lightening flickering across the dark line of the sky" – a land that stretches from the Canadian prairies to New Mexico – a land that Albertans know well. The characters are larger than life, from a fictionalized Buffalo Bill who farts in intimate greeting, to a family matriarch who crudely tattoos her brood "in case we got... kidnapped or carried off by child merchants." Surprisingly, Kimball holds together a story featuring the myriad views of events from his large collection of characters, with minimal incongruity. His pointed observations capture the reader’s imagination quickly and precisely as with: "a long, movable box on wheels where the yellow men slept who slaved in gangs to lay the iron rail," and "rumours thick as mosquitos in springtime along the river." The author draws you into his world of lies with comfortable, soothing guile. Liar’s Moon brings the feel of the log cabin and a need to snuggle before a raging, winter fire and read. Slip silently into a mythic world and the joy of what it means to be human. As you close the last page of this book you will smile in the knowledge that tall tales are the most entertaining, and that the novel is alive and well as an art form and most powerful when human folly is exposed. Alan Egerton Ball |
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