Patrick O'LearyReviews

A science fiction story about imaginary friends being real creatures. It is written as a person telling another person stories of their life. This makes it a largely flash back book, with the stories jumping all over the place. It made the story disjointed. The idea of the story is interesting, but I'm not a fan of flashbacks, so this just wasn't a book for me.

So this was pretty original but really strange and confusing. There was some poignant writing going on about alcoholism, divorce, love etc... and some of that was REALLY dark, especially if you've been through a divorce, and/or maybe if you're an alcoholic (I haven't experienced that so can't really comment).

The biggest problem I had with this book was the lack of dialogue tags. There's a LOT of dialogue in this book. There are a couple of "action" scenes but otherwise it's just two guys talking, and one guy telling stories. I often couldn't tell who was saying what. There was even a time when one character says "That's where the nickname 'Nuke' came from." But he was talking about himself, BUT he wasn't Nuke. So I was totally lost and thought it must just be a typo or something.

The frustrating confusion about who was talking and what was going on, was evenly balanced with some "deep" and imaginative writing. Hence the 3 stars. If it would have been another 50 pages it would have been too long and gotten 2.

A master class in the art of storytelling.

A number of intriguing pieces. Not quite sure if they add up to an equally interesting whole.

A journey into the dark and mysterious where perspective changes everything. Really a beautiful and sophisticated work. Excellent detail and development, throughly enjoyable and complete for a book of this short a length.

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

As I've mentioned before, I'm not the biggest fan of story collections, mostly because I find short stories to lack both the length and weight to justify doing an analytical write-up about in the first place; and so that makes it tricky whenever someone sends in a book of stories for me to review, in that the collection itself may be just fine but with me having almost nothing to say about it. Take for example The Black Heart, the new collection by Weird author Patrick O'Leary, one of a whole pile of books I recently received from British small press PS Publishing; it's a perfectly decent book, just as physically gorgeous as well as all of PS's other titles, yet at the end of it I find myself with not much more to say than, "...You know, it was fine. It was fine." For what it's worth, just from a content standpoint, it shares a lot of traits with fellow PS author Robert Freeman Wexler, just so you know what you're getting yourself into; they are stories that are not quite science-fiction, not quite horror, not quite absurdist humor, but a pleasing combination of them all, stories which then have endings that many times come straight out of left field and that you will never be able to guess at beforehand. (And might I mention, by the way, how much I particularly loved "Yo-Yo, Stradivarius and Me," about a guy who one day decides to beat the sh-t out of famous classical musician Yo Yo Ma, simply because he finds himself with a random opportunity to do so, and how he accidentally then finds himself in possession of a cello worth tens of millions of dollars but that he could never in a million years actually find a buyer for.) It's enjoyable for what it is, although I just don't have much to say about it; it's for sure a title you'll want to pick up if you're a fan of Weird short stories, though.

Out of 10: 8.5

Even though we all know everything will end, sometimes we wish things would last forever. But what if that wish were actually granted, would we be happy with the results? This complex and amazing book examines that idea by telling the story of two brothers and space aliens. While that might sound like a silly premise, the insights the author is able to convey are profound. I found the book to be thought provoking and an interesting read, mostly because there are many great plot twists that keep the pace up.½

I hate to say it, but I just couldn't finish this one. I really wanted to and it probably wouldn't have take that much effort to do so as it is a relatively short novel coming in at under 300 pages. But after fighting my way through half of it, I just didn't see the point in going any further. I didn't connect with any of the characters, in fact I felt confused most of the time as there seemed to be point of view and time jumps in the middle of a sentence at times. Just didn't have the energy to fight through it any more.

Very creative and unusual science fiction that takes place on earth