Customer Reviews

The Shadow Cast

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Mike Broemmel's short story collection reverberates long after it's been read & reread. Not least because each story - while retaining its autonomy in a creative sense - serves as a tenuous thread, which Mike interweaves with such artistic subtlety that the transformation from parts to whole is almost imperceptible as the reader proceeds through the book. I was taken by surpise, just over halfway through: I realised that I was devouring a memorable novel and not a set of disparate, if excellent, stories. The Shadow Cast dances a delicious chiaroscuro, flickering from the banal/sentimental mode of seaside resort to the gritty horror of a latterday American psychiatric hospital. The stories are interlinked, seemingly at random, through happenstance, geographical coincidence, dreams, family trees, memories... His characters speak with their own voices and may their echoes echo. The overarching impression on closing the book is that Mike has inscribed a poetic, yet brutal, humanity in his living-breathing pages.

In case you wondered whether any writer could top his own achievement such as was "The Miller Moth," Mike has done just that in "The Shadow Cast." In this collection, he explores the range of humanity and experience like one who has been concealed behind the curtain of life--springing out with a unique arsenal of perception and insight just at the right time. A delightful and provoking read!