Customer Reviews

Blue Canoe [signed jhc]

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If you've read any of my other reviews of T. M. Wright's work, you'd know I'm just three consecutive cups of coffee away from being a fan-boy. This latest novel simply reminds me why. Wright's narrative is engaging, simple yet enigmatic, efficient but powerful. He can provoke more thought from me in two hundred pages than most writers can do in two thousand.

Blue Canoe, subtitled "a memoir of the newly non-corporeal", can't easily be described. The introduction by Tom Piccirilli does a good job of summing up Wright's style, the effect his writing might have on you, and even what the novel might be about. But here's what I think it's about:

The narrator has passed away (thus the subtitle) and this novel is his journey towards realizing that. He struggles with letting go of the physical life he once had and the fading, unreliable memories that come from it. He exists in a world of his own making, though he doesn't quite realize it yet, and in doing so examines not only his life as it might have been, but the residual effects his experiences and emotions have.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you'll have a different take on the story that leans more towards Wright's intentions, and that's part of its beauty. In any case, do yourself a favor and read Blue Canoe. If possible, do it in one sitting so you can really let the narrator sweep you into that dark world where he exists (or doesn't).

I read T.M. Wright's "Blue Canoe" in .pdf form, as a review copy (it's set for publication in August, 2009) and was, by turns, charmed, frightened, amused and delighted by this whimsical fantasy of "the newly non-corporeal" (to borrow from the subtitle). Not only does T.M. Wright know how to write, he knows how to weave a whimsy as well as anyone, and "Blue Canoe," though it may baffle some readers, at first, was a real treat from the first page to the last. Don't expect a dyed-in-the-wool horror story, folks. "Blue Canoe" is something different, altogether. It's a story, almost literally, for the ages.