Customer Reviews

First, Body

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I forget to breathe when I read this book. It's not just the voice and the characters--but the language that leaves me breathless. Her stories of homeless teens leave me frightened but I cannot get the scenes she paints out of my mind. Melanie Rae is good--very good--she is as graphic as Robert Morgan--maybe more. The only time I feel I'm reading stories of the same calibre of writing is when I read Annie Proulx. First body is powerful and you should not miss this book if you are a writer.

I completed a couple of Ms. Thon's workshops when she lived in Cambridge, MA. She was always stressing the voice of the character rather than the story. Teaching me that the characters will tell their own stories. In her latest collection, Melanie's characters tell and show us more than they ever have in previous works

First, body is a slim book of ten short stories...each one flowing or shall I say crashing into the next like something untamed, unmanagable.

Thon's writing is atmospheric...bringing the reader into a world of darkness, drugs, sex, and booze. I found my heart quickening, felt a sense of urgency; at times I wanted to quit reading but I could not.

"I know I am strange. I drift. Maybe I'm smoking a cigarette, leaning on the bricks. Somebody's talking. Then I'm not there. I'm a window breaking. I'm peices of myself falling to
the ground." -----Nobody's Daughters------

First, Body takes the reader into places we don't want to go...but we go anyway...It reveals other worlds we don't want to know about...but we listen.

We want to believe we live in a perfect world, but reading this book helps us crack open our little cozy cocoon....and we are forced to fly into the reality of it all.

Thon's prose is more like poetry...Intense and beautiful. I could almost smell the stale cigarettes and whiskey filling my bedroom, hear the sound of ice rolling around in a glass.

But I am still trying to figure out if I liked the stories or not! My suggestion....Read it and form your own opinion...Thon's voice alone is worth the trip to the book store.

I picked this book up while working my way through the Granta list of top writers.

It is well-written and harrowing, but the unrelenting grimness of it all wore on me. I had a hard time finishing the book.

I'd like to see at least a few rays of hope and light.

Bill Chance