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Friday, July 26, 2013

BROKEN PIECES by RACHEL THOMPSON

Author's Creative Brand:
"Broken Pieces"
Genre:  Expressionist Cathartic Essays
Length: 113 pages
Self-Published

My 9 Reader 'Hot-Button' Considerations:

1.  World's Immersion:

"We bring what we wring."  Many authors will do everything they possibly can to write away from who they are.  Authors will wear the guise of character, subtly playing truths about what they actually know about living...not so, Rachel Thompson, with her courageous BROKEN PIECES.  The author unlatches dead-bolts to her own inner rooms, inviting readers through the door for a guided tour of her emotional dimensions.

Reading into these pages will sift deeply into the terrains of a damaging, addictive love.  The throes of heated passion spill over into shards of hurtful confusion.  A quirky fragility blossoms into womanhood, plucked at by the stalking, and untrustworthy.  An examination of ignorance or psychological terrorism...also finds those moments of transformation when trust renews, and hidden strengths stand up and over the shadows.

We will recognize these interconnected places of the heart.  When we admit to ourselves that we have walked in our own darkness...how we have tripped and fallen in awkward uncertainty of ourselves...and why, when the pain hurts in that strangely exquisite way, do we go back for the ecstatic bruising of a dangerous allure...these are the intersects where we meet Author Rachel Thompson in her brazen honesty.

"We fold our stories inside ourselves.  We unwrap them when nobody is looking."

2. Character/Icons:

"This game of push and pull kept me hungry."

The GIRL we meet and get inside of, was starving...for love, for sustenance, for safe harbor in the mystery of this addictive passion she became swallowed by.  We experience this emotional pendulum with her.  Hers was no ordinary love of common sense chosen for what's best.  The 'push and pull' chemistry ensnared and manipulated the girl's heart-strings...for many years...those lessons bit hard and buried deeply.

The BOY we meet was a piece of bittersweet candy to her; he spoke the sweetest picture of what they would be together, and he knew how to push her hot buttons.  Then he would snap...he wielded his own hurt like a weapon, and her own hurt became secondary to his incessant needs. This was the one who crushed the Girl's spirit, even as he temporarily buoyed her hope.  His final act, above all, injected her with the unforgettable venom.

3. Structural Appointments:

The choice of essaying, capturing narrative moods, memories, or thesis explorations, allows Rachel Thompson to tell her story in 'pieces' as the book's title would suggest. R.T. shifts freely through expressive Time and Space. What bites freshly, is a liberal juggling of poems, 1st and 3rd person narratives, essays that read like open forum, and universal topicality that always complements the deeper themes of the book.

I like how Ms. Thompson names each of her essays in the Table of Contents. I have always enjoyed the hinting titles of chapters that many vintage novelists employed, to intrigue Readers as to what comes later.

4. "Visuality"/Sensory Appeals:

"Physically changed - forever.  Everywhere I went, this stony weight accompanied me..." What I find impacting, is the image this choice creates, of a woman whose sadness was so heavy, it actually weighted down her physical form as if mortally wounded (though invisibly so), leaking energy, body-shocked defeat.

In "Broken Pieces," R.T. wends images of warmth with wax and heated, melting kisses to the times she expresses, where we understand why she went through the agony at all. As the temperature drops cold and detached, and the lover lashes her with surprising selfishness, Rachel weaves painful longing as "the darkest recesses of this violet night of revelations."

"His scent of wood, wax, strength, love, sweetness, possession, desire, and sex - she buried herself in his neck as she always did, her favorite place in the world."

5. Thematic Mythic Appeals:

Possession / Obsession:  by a force outside of oneself, in various penetrating forms: inside one's heart, fears, submerged thoughts or stored memories, and yes, one's body.  With a range of growing wisdom, Rachel's narrative character learns her lessons:  "Even my tears had given up on him. I'd already moved on, his cheating was simply the key left in the mailbox."

Violated Trust & Renewal of Trust, an oscillating mirror of shattered feelings and unexpected healing.

Emotional Closure:  closed inner rooms (buried emotional wounds), that get flung wide open with released shrapnel, charged emotions, and graceful realizations.

Suicide's Effect on the left-behind:  a re-visiting, dreaming nightmare, that always finds the trap-door to the hidden heart-chamber.

Invasion: emotional / psychological / physical.  What fascinates me, are the events and their correlative time periods that Thompson shares, where destructive social taboos were still being protected by ignorance and media silence; violent behaviors and assaults were perpetrated that nobody openly spoke about, in decades past, putting women in peril.  What frustrates on a personal level in reading these essays, would be the lack of sensible, compassionate support or societal concern expressed, that may have made the difference in manipulative events.  Sociopaths used this cloak of secrecy to assault women without ramifications.  The flip-side of victimization, are empowered moments such as this one: "I take pride in the fact that I fought back against an enemy that, at that time, had no name." Chilling, when one considers the isolation of fighting without any allies in sight.

6. Story-Flow:

The duration of each piece is segmented into juicy bites, fulfilling an idea, but then moving with pace on to the next unexpected direction. There is an accumulative flow to the book, which invested me in her outcome.

Whether directions were sometimes unexpected, all essays holistically applied to my concern for what this girl was enduring, being engulfed by, and learning from.

What really worked, was how involving emotional immersion would give way for involving discussions or analysis of these dilemmas. Shifts to the conversational, animated anecdotal, or thesis-driven essaying, would give us a coffee-break from heart-ache. The re-charge primes the Reader to dive back in...

7. Innovation/Genre Blend:

Rachel Thompson has chosen "essays inspired by life" as the key descriptor of BROKEN PIECES. When I look back at this book I have just read, I consider her range of essaying:  dark and sensual poetry, taboo subject-busting through personal story sharing, 1st and 3rd person intimate narrative, direct addressing of the reading audience in conversational rapport, and time traveling the author's experiences through ages of innocence and ignorance.

I believe Rachel Thompson chose a strong and accessible descriptor for a book that actually defies categorization of the usual genres. R.T. colors outside of the box with her enthusiastic, creative crayon.  I am not surprised, because Thompson is one of the most media-savvy indie authors I have come across, and her insights have shown me new angles to today's self-publishing.  As is my customary way in these analyses, I do make an effort to pin-point my own descriptors for authors' books, mostly to shine a clarifying light; in the spirit of 'looking closer,' I consider this book's notable genre to be "Expressionist Cathartic Essays."

The author delves into the deeply personal by shifting randomly across an invisible line or 'fourth wall' as we would call it in theater.  In one essay, Thompson is telling us personal stories about 'this girl' in the distance-making, third person;  next, she steps into first person experience to make us feel her internalization of a relationship that shattered her.  She then expresses poetic illuminations of her agony and ecstasy afterwards. Speaking directly with us, the reading audience, R.T. analyzes a societal perspective of her universally-affecting events, so readers may identify and personalize events.  The overall effect here, is that of an author getting under our collective, psychological / emotional skins...with interpersonal understanding.

8. Author's Voice/Language:

"Unspoken words, held breaths."

Rachel is a chameleon in "Broken Pieces," as she shifts stylistic approaches; beyond the stylistics, R.T.'s language is all direct to the essence, with unexpected word arrangements, all within accessible perspective: we, the Readers, can relate to Rachel, and how easily she communicates to us, as if a close friend of ours.

The strength of Rachel Thompson's writing is that she always seems to be having this conversation directly with you. Honest, witty, surprisingly wounded, but with a humor about it all, coming from such a strong personality, in charge of her writer's voice. She knows from where she speaks, and knows exactly what she has come to say, and she says it all, with pointed daring.  Here writes an author who has the courage to be herself, first and foremost.

9. The After Resonance:

"So I go about my days now, my life bursting with my own family, and when he visits me in my dreams, I let him in. And then I let him go."

I admire Rachel Thompson for digging down deep inside psychic wounds most writers would hide from.  She owns her own experience, transforming all of these broken shards into refracting prisms of insightful light...hope that thrives beyond darkness, but still remembers it.  A part of the gem-gathering here, has got to have been derived from the journals R.T. had closed up inside a time-capsule for a couple of decades.

This broken girl of the deep past, is also the same spirit who, as a girl, "did back hand-springs, backs, aerials, and all other forms of tumbling...I was a flipper and loved it."  Between the stony weight of defeat, and the gravity-defying flipper, lies a journey of broken pieces reunited with emotional clarity, intensity softened with wised-up reflection, and a renewed meaning for what all the suffering proves to be about:  discovering one's once-shattered self, finally distilled, and found surprisingly intact.

To discover Rachel Thompson's self-published BROKEN PIECES for yourself:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AR0T74S

7 comments:

  1. I'm blown away, Andre. What a beautiful deconstruction of my book! You're a gem, truly.


    thank you,

    Rachel

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  2. For the uniqueness of your offering, Rachel, you are truly welcome :)

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  3. A beautiful, thoughtful analysis of Rachel's book.

    Thanks for writing it, Andre.

    Rachel .. Ace!

    eden

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  4. Thank you, Eden; abundance to your emerging erotic mystery novel.

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  5. Rachel's searingly honest writing is a gift to all of us. So is your review. Thank you!

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    1. Thank you so much, Patricia! I'm honored you visited and commented. Andre did an amazing job. I'm thrilled.

      xx

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  6. So appreciated, Patricia Sands ~ May your new release, "The Promise of Provence," sweep readers off to lush adventure.

    ReplyDelete