the Crying rooM

This book of short stories, The Crying Room by Chris McLeod is available through the Fremantle Press website or perhaps Chris McLeod's website. 

Do you love poetry, text that finds its way into those crevices of meaning and emotion that are beyond the reductionism of plain language usage; text that seems to extend beyond metaphor itself? And beyond the story, the melody line, is jazz-like improvisation, playing subtext, subterranean flow, exploring the rifting tributaries of underground rivers. To follow, the reader needs a willingness to suspend linear thinking, a certain stillness of mind, the commitment to go deep, to wait in silence perhaps, as we have heard that the Quakers do.

What is this compilation all about? Here is a quote from the inside cover blurb:

"Concerned primarily with the shifting ground between men and women, and within families, The Crying Room opens out into an exploration of the rhythms, moments and stories that pattern lives begun in hope, and lived in flux."

Better still, from the beginning of one of the stories:

"Nights in the forest: an owl flies at a dark window, sees, reflected for a moment (there is a moon, big moon) an owl, flying. In its eyes, huge, cold, impassive, sees an owl flying at an owl flying at an owl ...
     Behind the glass, sleeping, a child, a girl, dreams of a bird swifting through darkness, white bird, flying at her eyes."

I've read three stories so far, powerful stories that encourage this writer-reader to be courageous in experimentation. And, as a writer, I have a theory: for each book that we read, for each work of art that touches us, a palimpsest will remain, and our own work will be richer for it.