And Both Shall Row

Here _it_ is again...a form of fiction that reminds us who the brilliant writers are. We used to kneel before them, but magic fades and becomes real, like the blue light of Claiborne and its tarnished characters parading through the set of what we had hoped would be something as good as it is..

Great, I picked a book for my trip to the Maine Woods, and this one fit the bill in every regard. I thought there were no authors around who wrote with such intricate regard for the human spirit--whose characters are alive, real. That's a model all writers strive for, but few achieve. Lordan's keen pursuit of the truth in the lives of her characters and tales of small town America leaves me nostalgic, a bit melancholy, but ultimately refreshed. Give us more!

I was submerged this weekend, in the mystical town of Clayborne, lost in its lazy afterhaze, an Elysium gone bittersweet and very, very human. Yet these characters, for all their humanity, breathe of a golden place beyond the here and now. There are moments of light in this collection, when a character discovers that which gives joyous rapture to a moment, a hint of the divine which we all, even if secretly, aspire to. There are very few writers, in my forty odd years of publishing experience, who have so deeply moved me on first reading. Time will prove this volume to be little less than the foundation of some fantastic vision which we have only begun to glimpse. Lordan touches the bone of human experience without wallowing in the pathos. When a writer makes me wax poetic, there's something serious going on here. Watch this one.

I would have to agree with the New York Times: "this is one of America's finest new writers." Lordan's collection, "And Both Shall Row", contains stories which are haunting works of art, slices of the everyday immortalized. "The Widow", the first story, is one of the finest tales I've read in a long time. The ghost of the farmer's wife weeps, or attempts to, at the end of a reflective collage centering on the magic of her husband's love--an art of movement, not of this world. The poetic and timeless voice of this story puts readers into the wave of something mystical. Unfortunately, I am late in discovering this new American treasure.