The Line

The Line (2010) - Teri Hall


 Away
Crossing
 Labor Pools
The Council
Unified States

 Away
Close the door to problems
Mandatory status
Streamlined dystopia
Unified States

Elizabeth Moore
Matriarch of The Property
Vivian
Single mother
Rachel her daughter
Groomed in controlled beliefs
Apprentice orchid keeper

Away
Pathik
Jab
Kinec

Empathy
Stab
Kinetic

Curious gifts arise from
The bombs of change

 Unified States
Close the door to problems
Away

GOODREADS REVIEW

The Line by Teri Hall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Line is like the threatening, divisive prohibition of a Berlin Wall without the visibles of boundary and barbed wire. US - Unified States - alienate those trapped in Away due to Holocaustic circumstance. And Rachel, one of the young Regs, decides to connect with Pathik in the Away world, offering help and seeking answers to her own father's disappearance. The setting is intriguing but tends to dominate the novel. Somehow the questions around Ms Moore's The Property on the US side become a little weathered, verging on repetitive and there's a frustrating urge to get on with some action. We spend too long with the orchids in the greenhouse and too long gazing at digims (photos). There is a sequel called Away. Perhaps this long-winded "prologue" may seem more valid in the sequel.

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A Night in Hell

Jacko is a reporter with a
Tainted reputation
Launching into yesterday's news with a
Healthy dob of skepticism
And some 
Churning
Desperation

Meeting the echoes of
Yesterday's war in a
Small 
Village cemetery


Meeting their context of
Gunfire and
Muddy footprints

Unable to leave one of
His own


Meeting the voices

Hearing their tragedy
Their cursed
Blackened windows and
Closed doors


But he did
Inadvertently manage
To unsmear 
Some window 
To open 
Some door

To bring
Some 
Lost voices

Together

GOODREADS REVIEW

A night in hell by Liam Foxx
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The scenario was intriguing! The ingredients of World War I, a cemetery, the Somme village and a reporter seeking to mend a damaged reputation all waited to be ignited into a reality cloaked in mystery. But somehow the war got in the way. Descriptive detail of old action sounded a little too like many war stories! And the reporter paled back into an inhibited observer. Perhaps that was the author's intention. But somehow the drive of the story seems frayed at the edges and the conclusion doesn't really rescue the original purpose. Perhaps the story spiked with war action may suit male readers more than female.

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Birnam Wood

FICTION - BIRNAM WOOD BY T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE
in The New Yorker - September 3, 2012
(Notes/quotes in my Webnotes - begin from the bottom up!)


Existing in a chicken coop lifestyle
Plagued by 
Grim
Cold
Rain

Luxuriating at
Birnam Wood
A Tudor house in a
Lakeside setting

There was really no question of preferred choice
If opportunity 
Begged

But the glitter of luxury
Secreted 
A sticky substance
A kind of Macbeth consequence
Specially formulated for those who could lay no rightful claim of ownership to
Anything

Or
Anyone