Customer Reviews

A Few Scattered Souls

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This book is well written and smooth to read. While it is a collection of short stories, they are interwoven w/ scenes and characters from one story reappearing in another story, often from a different perspective. That is well handled without being overdone. It deserves two reads to fully appreciate.

Hello, my name is Matthew Liddell and I am the author of 'A Few Scattered Souls'. The book was written in the summer of 2002 when I decided to either write a novel or commit suicide. (You'll have to read the book to decide if I made the right choice) I always wanted to write a novel but found the task so challenging that I decided to go about it my own way.

I decided to write a novel with no rules, where the narrative would pass from one person to another to another, often leaving the character we are focusing on anonymous. The book could be best described as 'short story sequence' the prose stops and starts in rapid fire style as the characters wander in and out of sight.

I love watching movies and reading books where there are hidden jokes to 'find' throughout. A Few Scattered Souls is like that, I had a friend read it and upon reading the last page he turned around and started reading from the beginning, trying to 'get' everything he might have missed.

As I looked at the completed book I start to realize the book is very much about my own journey as an artist. The stories of a a man desperate to save his beloved from the demons of drug addiction, an art-crazy terrorist who wants desperately to wake up the world and a violent anti-social military member are all reflections of myself. I feel this book is much more though.

When working as a playwright I was often told by people I work with, "You're a good writer, but everyone is afraid you're going to come in with a gun someday and start shooting people. You can't write about the things you write about and not be deranged."

I don't think that's entirely true, but in my fiction I try to create a world that is unlike anything you've seen before. Matt Liddell-brand fiction aims to take you from the art house to the slaughterhouse and everywhere in between, when cultures and idealisms collide, the result is often violent. When people are left to their own maddening devices and fester in their own unchecked emotions, the product is terrifying, and when you look at all of this in the grand scheme of things, it's all so small it can seem insignificantly hilarious.

AND AND AND AND---->

Click on the 'Used and New' thingy up there and I will send you an autographed copy. E-mail me, liddelm@washington.navy.mil , if you have any questions.

This novel has a lot of good things going for it. All the characters are well drawn and the various twists and turns that happen to them are bizarre and entertaining. From the very first chapter you are drawn into a world that is strangely familiar, yet in some ways, ghastly.
A Few Scattered Souls follows the lives and interactions of nine very different people living in Dallas, and like in real life, the actions of one affect everyone else around them with horrible, and hilarious results. From a highly religious mathematical genius who lives in the woods and makes her living winning contests, to a completely insane dentist with a penchant for molesting his patients and writing musicals, these characters span the human rainbow, while revealing the connections we all share with one another.
This novel isn't one that can be read and then forgotten, for one thing, characters you learn about early on, pop up later in the story to interact in some way. Yet it is done so subtly, that you really have to pay attention if you want to `get' all the various ins and outs.
But also, you could just read the book for entertainment and not have to delve into the depths to enjoy it.
If I had to compare this book to a movie, It would probably be either GO or MAGNOLIA. Since the story shifts perspectives as in MAGNOLIA but retains a lot of the insane adrenaline rush from GO.
I highly recommend this novel to anyone who likes reading, as there truly is a chapter for everyone in Matthew Liddells amazing first novel, A FEW SCATTERED SOULS.