Sea, Swallow Me And Other Stories [Paperback]

Craig Laurance Gidney (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 23, 2008

Ancient folklore and modern myth come together in these stories by author Craig Laurance Gidney. Here are found the struggles of a medieval Japanese monk seduced by a mischievous fairy, and a young slave who finds mystery deep within the briar patch of an antebellum plantation. Gidney offers a gay teen obsessed with his patron saint, Lena Horne, and, in the title story, an ailing tourist seeks escape at a distant shore but never reckons on encountering an African sea god. Rich, poetic, dark and disturbing, these are tales not soon forgotten.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The best of the stories in this thoughtful debut collection make full use of African and African-American characters, such as when young slave Israel Jones meets a man he's convinced is the guitar-wielding Devil in The Safety of Thorns, or when white tourist Jed encounters Olokun, the patron spirit of enslaved Africans carried across the sea, in the title story. Some of Gidney's experiments with style hit the mark, as in a tale of Arthur Rimbaud riding a French train without a ticket in Strange Alphabets, but homoerotic encounters don't always mix well with folklore-like storytelling, and rich details sometimes pull readers in and sometimes leave the stories feeling saturated and drawn out. Those who don't mind a little digging should find several gems. (Jan.)
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Review

Craig Laurance Gidney loves words--sensually, sexually, omnivorously. He streams out floods of them in his stories so that you, too, can taste their deliciousness. He wields them with abandon and precision to create little worlds that rise off the page and engulf you in snow globes of sparkling beauty and perceptiveness. Each story in his latest collection, Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories, has a strong immersive effect. --the fix Online

Craig Laurance Gidney has a talent for putting words together in an evocative and often disturbing way. His latest book Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories takes the reader through a labyrinth of words in search of shadows and hauntings. ... Gidney is a master of the English language and his prose is evocative and sensual in the way that Anne Rice writes... --Edge Boston

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Product Details

• Paperback: 204 pages
• Publisher: Lethe Press (November 23, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590210662
• ISBN-13: 978-1590210666
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,091,066 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can't wait for my copy to arrive, November 12, 2008

By 

M. Kirshner (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sea, Swallow Me And Other Stories (Paperback)

I was lucky enough to catch a public reading by the author a few nights ago, and the book promises to live up to its name. The story he read was full of vivid imagery, beneath which seemed to lurk both the cold starkness of reality and a twist of sly humor. I imagine that I will feel swallowed up in these stories ... as soon as my copy arrives!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a vivid rainbow of promise, October 10, 2009

By 

Thomas Cardamone (Brooklyn) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sea, Swallow Me And Other Stories (Paperback)

Anyone who caught Kara Walker's retrospective at the Whitney was immediately challenged to think about race and art. Her surreal silhouettes carved meaning out of every room. Regardless if the viewer came away with a positive or negative impression, it was obvious that existing concepts had been broken, challenged, expanded and, as someone who was blown away by the show, I would add rightfully so. I discovered the same powerful intonations within Craig Gidney's collection, Sea, Swallow Me and other stories.

In the opening tale, The Safety of Thorns, the trappings of the plantation meld into the realm of myth and discovery with strong poetic imagery, yet the characters rise from up off the page with a stark realism. A slave boy is given a powerful elixir by a devil, but still has to find the strength he needs to grapple with reality from within. Equally impressive stories follow. It would be easy for the casual reader/reviewer to exclaim delight at discovering a gay black writer introducing gay black characters into the otherwise lamely heterosexual elf-white worlds of fantasy, but I found the author's pallet much more assured than that; like Walker, his art is not only arresting, subversive and naturally erotic, it stretches boundaries and genuinely puts the speculative back in speculative fiction. Importantly, the stories are as engaging as challenging; no one will close the book thinking they've been slipped a thesis a' la latter-day Delaney.

The three best stories, the aforementioned The Safety of Thorns, the titular Sea, Swallow Me, and A Bird of Ice, respectively open, support the middle, and (nearly) close the book. Sea, Swallow Me allows the reader to swim within some spectacular writing and nearly drown in a feeling of otherness. A Bird of Ice takes place within the snowy confines of an ancient Japanese monastery. A young monk is courted by a member of the fairy folk and ends up confronting much more than the homoerotic awakenings of adolescence. Not that the remaining stories are by any means filler. The few pieces I suspected of being early work still possessed all of the strengths exhibited in the best work. All offered a diversity of setting and theme, making the book one of constant exploration. In fact, when not paying close enough attention while reading the story Strange Alphabets, I thought I'd caught the author making that obnoxious freshman blunder of naming a character after a beloved writer: Rimbaud. I was genuinely thrilled to realize my mistake as the story concerns the train-bound sexual (and quite sticky at that) adventures of the actual poet, a nice historical twist, which, like the exceptionally short Magpie Sisters, keeps the book off-balance. Meaning it surprises. This is not your comfortable Renaissance Fair of modern fantasy and that's a good thing. Hell, it's startlingly refreshing.

Fantasy is seriously lacking in gay fiction written by gay men. Funny, that in writing this review I was initially hesitant to bring up race, for fear that by implication I would give potential readers the impression that in some way the polemic (as if that's somehow inherent to discussions of equality) shapes or invades these stories. Not so. The artist Kara Walker deftly works in black and white with obvious, evocative success. Craig Gidney wields a vivid rainbow of promise.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, lyrical and powerful, January 9, 2009

By 

S. Singleton (Wiltshire, England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sea, Swallow Me And Other Stories (Paperback)

Craig Laurence Gidney's anthology of short stories is a jewel box of literary treats. Evocative, sensual, passionate and beautifully written, Gidney communicates a powerful sense of place and conveys with compassion and insight what it feels like to be outside the mainstream. The collection provides many delicious confections for the lover of the arcane, the decadent and the gothic, such as the carnival (Catch Him by the Toe) and the penniless Parisian artist Rimbaud (Strange Poets). The tone is leavened by a dark humour (the mother in Her Spirit Hovering is a scream) and the stories contain many brilliant scenes. It is hard to pick a favourite but I think I'll go for Circus-Boy without a Safety Net because of the emotional impact created for me in the scene when CB's parents find his doll and strip his bedroom - the sense of the boy's precious dream and the shame his parents inflict on him are shattering. It's a marvellous collection, in both senses of the word.