Jan 01
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In a time when novels about love are so often shrouded in the tragedies and pain that accompany the emotional bonding of two people that they push the joy into the background, along comes new novelist Kevin E. Taylor with a love story so genuine, so beautifully developed, so free of angst, and so uncharacteristically about two men finding a powerful relationship that reading this novel is a pleasure - and a discovery of a fine new talent!
Writing from the African American stance on same sex love is a challenge for Taylor, but his ability to incorporate the beauties as well as the idiosyncrasies too often reported as the down low form of male bonding allows him to create a fresh and genuine approach to storytelling. Continue reading »
Sep 14
Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer
A Concerto for Orchestra is the term for symphonic works in which each section of the orchestra is given space and spotlight to shine as soloist. In L.M. Ross’ novel, Manhood: The Longest Moan, the orchestra is reduced to a quartet of friends and while Ross weaves the individual stories of each man’s life of choices, moments of triumph and slides of misfortune, each character is so well defined that the spotlight must move with each chapter for that solo moment.
Ross is one amazing writer, a poet who can move with ease into the area of storytelling and yet maintain the allure of brush stroke images too often found only in the terse poem form. He writes about the African American experience in New York City as well as any writer today, and brings all the juices and aromas and flavors of the idiosyncratic language of black conversation without missing a beat, and more importantly, without alienating his reader with a foreign language, so well molded is his conversational technique.
Manhood brings to life four men over a twenty year period, beginning with the high school years when the four artistic lads formed a group ‘Da Elixir’ (”Once there was this gorgeous, gorgeous time when we were all living our dreams..”) only to have the group splinter as each pursued his own dream. Continue reading »
