Jerusalem Ablaze Stories of Love and Other Obsessions 9780995465701 Books
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Jerusalem Ablaze Stories of Love and Other Obsessions 9780995465701 Books
13 stories – of varying length, addressing love and obsession – set around the world, transporting the reader from Los Angeles, Quebec and Tokyo to Israel…A collection of stories about relationships, passion, lust and the darker side of human nature. They will certainly not be for everyone, that is for sure, but there is a quality of writing that goes above and beyond some of the darker interactions that kept me reading.
The first story titled “Torture of Roses” is exactly that. A reviled aesthete who revels in skewering his skin, feels it is time to choose a young man to be his heir – and servant. Theirs is a convoluted relationship and his heir, once the end is nigh, has little pity left…
In general the author tantalisingly plays with the fused neural pathways in the brains of his characters, where there is often a sharp link between sex and death; or a link between sex and voracious eating; or sex and religion. The author is clearly fascinated with exploring the skewed relationships that people can be drawn to. Oh, guilt and beguilement are only half the story. Control and cupidity (for both possessions and people) infuse the stories – consider, for example, the stealing of shoes from a hakujin beggar on the Ginza (Tokyo) by a young person. Or the wife of a lighthouse keeper who attaches herself to a body that has washed up on the seashore. She certainly doesn’t want to surrender the body as she discovers a strong need to care for it.
Then on to the story of the haridan wife who likes to intimidate her husband into clearing snow for new neighbours. Or the man who attempts to have sex down a back alley and gorges himself on his conquest as though she is something to be internalised and consumed.
I felt the author really got into his stride in the last two stories set in Israel, indeed one of the stories provides the title for the collection. But such is the nature of the short story, the reader is left wanting more. These stories will find their ideal readership amongst the lovers of European Noir.
The author clearly know his chosen settings and they certainly make a colourful backdrop to the stories.
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Jerusalem Ablaze Stories of Love and Other Obsessions 9780995465701 Books Reviews
Thank you NetGalley, Cloud Lodge Books and Orlando Ortega-Medina for the advance reader copy of Jerusalem Ablaze. I really enjoyed this dark fiction book filled with a series of short, taunting stories. Found this book to be completely original, unexpected, and creative. It was impressive how quickly the author built up the charters and their struggles. A quick read, dysfunctional, disturbing, and dare I say - addictive! Difficult to put down, and left me curious for the next chapter.
This was my first time reading this author. I chose this book because I am a fan of short stories. As in most short stories, some stand out more than others. All the stories are interesting and of various lengths. Some are longer than others, but it is written in a way to hold one's interest. My favorite was “The Shovelist”. Very good concept for a short story. If you are a fan of these types of books, you would be very happy in picking up this book for your reading pleasure. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book in return for my honest review.
"Stories of Love and Other Obsessions" is a very apt subtitle for Ortega-Medina's debut collection of short stories. Each of these stories portrays ordinary human beings who find themselves in the grip of compulsions or of malign external influences. Few, if any, of them are about "love" in the traditional sense.
The stories are set in Japan, Canada, the USA and Israel, and range from the expansive "An Israel State of Mind" to the mere vignette of "Eyesore in the Ginza". One character, Marc, appears in more than one story, but not much is made of that in any narrative sense.
The collection has quite a variety of styles. The opening "Torture by Roses" and the closing "Jerusalem Ablaze" are creepy and macabre. I found the sadness at the heart of "After the Storm", "And A Little Child Shall Lead Them" and "The Shovelist" the most affecting. The urban grit of "Eyesore in the Ginza" and "Invitation to the Dominant Culture" was OK, but I've seen it done better in the hands of writers like Junot Diaz.
I read this in a single sitting and am very much looking forward to Ortega-Medina's next effort.
A collection of 13 short stories of different lengths, the debut of Orlando Ortega-Medina, Jerusalem Ablaze is an exploration into the darkest labyrinths of the mind and the soul. Introduced as 'stories of love and other obsessions', each story is an emotional roller coaster, which brings you Tokyo's Ginza to the Israel's Masada, alongside with people on a journey to their inner self and dark sides.
Although a debut, the book is written in a style mature enough to reveal admirably hidden feelings, secret desires and a cultivated ambiguity of the being. You will encounter people searching for their own self or who already found it and are scared enough to show it to the world. People with strange and maybe too many identities and confused feelings, lonely in their unicity and difference. A big role in the emotional investigation pursued in each of the 13 novels is played by the sharp dialogues which compliment the equally well-crafted descriptions.
Very often, I felt I am part of an adventure set in the art of the Japanese masters of writings and it is no wonder as the author himself recognize his admiration for the mysterious Mishima Yukio. But the discussion on influenes is not so relevant, as long as the writer's style reveals to be unique despite all the literary references that can be identified in the stories. This is the case of Orlando Ortega-Medina, which promises even greater writing achievements in his next endeavours that I am curious to know and especially read about.
Disclaimer Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
13 stories – of varying length, addressing love and obsession – set around the world, transporting the reader from Los Angeles, Quebec and Tokyo to Israel…
A collection of stories about relationships, passion, lust and the darker side of human nature. They will certainly not be for everyone, that is for sure, but there is a quality of writing that goes above and beyond some of the darker interactions that kept me reading.
The first story titled “Torture of Roses” is exactly that. A reviled aesthete who revels in skewering his skin, feels it is time to choose a young man to be his heir – and servant. Theirs is a convoluted relationship and his heir, once the end is nigh, has little pity left…
In general the author tantalisingly plays with the fused neural pathways in the brains of his characters, where there is often a sharp link between sex and death; or a link between sex and voracious eating; or sex and religion. The author is clearly fascinated with exploring the skewed relationships that people can be drawn to. Oh, guilt and beguilement are only half the story. Control and cupidity (for both possessions and people) infuse the stories – consider, for example, the stealing of shoes from a hakujin beggar on the Ginza (Tokyo) by a young person. Or the wife of a lighthouse keeper who attaches herself to a body that has washed up on the seashore. She certainly doesn’t want to surrender the body as she discovers a strong need to care for it.
Then on to the story of the haridan wife who likes to intimidate her husband into clearing snow for new neighbours. Or the man who attempts to have sex down a back alley and gorges himself on his conquest as though she is something to be internalised and consumed.
I felt the author really got into his stride in the last two stories set in Israel, indeed one of the stories provides the title for the collection. But such is the nature of the short story, the reader is left wanting more. These stories will find their ideal readership amongst the lovers of European Noir.
The author clearly know his chosen settings and they certainly make a colourful backdrop to the stories.
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