Seymour Allan, resident of Florida, loses his girlfriend in unedifying circumstances. Short of cash, deeply depressed and drinking too much, he buries himself in a retirement community, a feral cat his chief companion. On one of his periodic forays to a local café he is accosted by the mysterious Raymond C. Dasher, who offers him a job. Seymour’s life changes this instant as he embarks on a new career: that of professional griever. Seymour is now paid to pay respects at the wakes and funerals of some very unpopular people. He cares for a dying criminal who tries to murder him; he attends unorthodox burials that may or may not be legal; he helps to celebrate the deceased in strange and macabre ways. In the Floridan Everglades he encounters trigger-happy gangsters and an alligator in attack mode and meets Yvonne, a sexy redhead mourning her mobster boyfriend.
Raymond C. Dasher puts in sporadic appearances, as elusive as the feral cat. Although Seymour is often irked by his boss, Dasher has shown him there is nothing like sex and danger, guns and gators – and the threat of death itself – to make a man remember how good it feels to be alive.
The Physics of Grief is a unique crime novel: quirky yet with universal appeal, profoundly serious yet engagingly humorous, it wears its wisdom lightly and spiced with frivolity.
The Physics of Grief by Mickey J Corrigan is published by Quo Script on 22 April 2022. I'm delighted to welcome the author here to Random Things today. She is talking about the books that are special to her in My Life in Books.
My Life in Books - Mickey J Corrigan
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
When I first began frequenting the local library near where I grew up in Boston, I read all three Harriet books by Louise Fitzhugh. I kept one out too long, then snuck it back on the shelf to avoid the fine. I blame Harriet for my early beginnings in crime.
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Sounds trite, but Jo was a big influence on me. I knew women could be writers, and after reading Louisa May Alcott's autofiction I accepted the idea that it would be a struggle. No matter the era, it's near impossible to find that work/life balance we all crave.
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
I read this classic true crime story in my parents' living room until late at night, too scared to walk down the hall to bed. Truman Capote captured the essential emptiness of two men who committed the kind of random act of violence that could happen to any of us.
Ariel by Sylvia Plath
Even before I began writing poetry myself I was in love with Sylvia Plath's work. Her rage ignites every line while the sensual beauty in her everyday observations makes the poems leap off the page.
The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger
J. D. Salinger understood what it was like to be an awkward adolescent trying exceedingly hard to seem okay—when one is very apparently not okay. The narrator's voice is amusing, insightful, and so natural it's as if he's talking to you.
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
The only book I still read annually, this beautiful and haunting short novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald seems to me a perfect tale of America. How we eat our young due to the national emphasis on amassing great wealth as an emblem of success.
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
If you read this novel as a metaphor for Wall Street in the roaring '80s, you can avoid the pitfall of judging it on the violence. It's satire and really well done. Like in Bret Easton Ellis's other novels, the view of American culture is not flattering but piercingly honest.
Squandering the Blue by Kate Braverman
Kate Braverman instantly became my favorite stylist when I read this collection of linked stories about a woman trying to make her life work. Braverman's unique application of sensory details helps to create stories as lush as the southern California settings she often uses to convey the problems with living in paradise.
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
This series of connected stories follows a troubled young man in and out of more trouble. Denis Johnson's writing is captivating, darkly funny, and immensely readable. Literary fiction at its finest.
Fight Club by Chuck Palahnuik
This book by Chuck Palahniuk really spun my head around. To observe what a writer could do using the voice of a narrator who doesn't know himself has influenced my own work. The short novel was my introduction to the unreliable narrator and I fell in love with that approach to storytelling.
The Waste Land and Other Poems by T S Eliot
What can I say? I don't understand them either, but I love reading these dense poems by T.S. Eliot. Somehow, his language wraps you up and transports you. Like a strange dream you can have over and over again.
Originally from Boston, USA, Mickey J. Corrigan writes tropical noir shot through with dark
humour.
Novels include the mystery pandemic tale Songs of the Maniacs (Salt Publishing, 2014), Project XX, which is about a high school shooting (Salt Publishing, 2017), and What I Did for Love, a spoof novel based on Nabukov’s Lolita (Bloodhound Books, 2019). In 2020, Grandma Moses Press released Corrigan’s poetry micro-chapbook Florida Man.
Mickey finds much to write about in the lush pulpy ruins of South Florida.
Physics of Grief is published in April 2021 under the Poisoned Chalice imprint by QuoScript.
No comments:
Post a Comment