Fal Publications - Book list

reviews and comments

Reviews

Many Waters by Victoria Field

Review in Church Times, by Martyn Halsall, 27th July 2007

Review in Lapidus Quarterly by Christopher Rush, Spring/ Summer 2007 - to read this review, click here

Dear Shadows by D M Thomas

from

Inside Cornwall June 2004

D M Thomas ... returns to his Cornish and poetic roots. The first section 'Snapshots' is a strong piece of autobiographical narrative poetry. Written in plain free verse and illustrated with old photographs depicting family life in the Cornish mining village of Carnkie, these poems will evoke many a memory as every family cherishes similar photographs. There is deep irony in one poem, also the title of the final section, 'Sunday Morning at Tesco's', where 'God, like the girdle, slimmed to light shapewear' contrasts sharply with the God of Thomas's chapel-going childhood, 'in the old world, where sinners bent in prayer,...'.

Comments:

Paul Newman, writer and editor, August 2007

Many Waters by Victoria Field

Thank you for your beautiful poetry collection which I read this morning. I found it most uplifting and enlightening and admired the way you were able to wring a poem out of the oddest corners and encounters.

I have a mildly churchy background - hence my several weird interests - and was able to relate the poems, many of which have a consoling bleakness, to that slightly grave liturgical tradition which Eliot tried his hand at.

I was interested in the man who came to Cornwall to top himself, which is as good a reason to take a holiday as any; this seems to often happen in 'threshold zones'.

I liked 'Human Lines' a lot, being a fully paid-up adherent to such inevitable formations, and 'If it die, it bringeth forth much fruit' was very well done, the analogy sustained perfectly.

Congratulations then on a collection that certainly worked for me.

Olga's Dreams by Victoria Field

Caroline Carver, poet, Cornwall, December 2004:

The quality and variety of the work is great, [her] wonderful
dreamy, languorous imagination, exceptional and most poetic, and the whole, the work of a most talented person.

Larry Butler, Convenor, Lapidus Scotland, October 2004

...book looks good, feels good, reads like an angel

Penelope Shuttle, Poet, September 2004

...I am reading Olga's Dreams with great pleasure, the poems have grace and wit and surprise and stretch around the world and back to Cornwall and travel the inner world also.

Seiriol the Dragon by Michael Power

Reinekke Lengelle, writer, Edmonton, Canada

As for the book Seriol the dragon - my nine-year old daughter Sophia and I had great fun with this. I read pieces to her every night for over a week. What we really liked were the twists and turns the story took - it was anything but typical/predictable and the characters were so flawed that they were likeable (or terrible!).

She and I would regularly laugh out loud at some foible or (mis)adventure Madeleine and Seriol were having and I enjoyed the marriage dynamics between granny & granpa (in part because my grandfather used to brag quite a lot about his adventures and my granny - Oma - would have to put up with that!) The names, for instance, Trickledown and Snaplock were also fun.

Sophia is a discerning reader and she much enjoyed the story and I was also entertained (and we quite regularly come across a book that we find boring and hard to get through). We looked forward to reading Seiriol at bedtime - it even motivated her to get her teeth brushed sooner, "Sophia, come on, we've got to read more Seiriol! You want to find out what happens, don't you!?"

I liked the drawings too - they were a bit primitive but in a home grown way.

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