{"id":1074,"date":"2018-12-31T15:31:45","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T15:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1074"},"modified":"2018-12-31T15:31:45","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T15:31:45","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-112","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1074","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews<\/span> and Foreword Reviews, <\/span>writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine,<\/span> and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

CONTEMPORARY FICTION<\/p>\n

Will Clarke<\/span><\/p>\n

The Neon Palm of Madame Melan\u00e7on<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Middle Finger Press<\/p>\n

Hardcover, 978-0-9726-5883-6 (also available as an e-book); 354 pgs., $29.99<\/p>\n

July 19, 2017<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no coincidences, only the chess moves of an unseen hand.\u201d
\u2014Madame Melan\u00e7on<\/p>\n

Duke Melan\u00e7on left New Orleans for Houston<\/span> (\u201ca world that wasn\u2019t ruled by tarot cards and Aleister Crowley\u2019s incantations\u201d) as soon as he could, embarrassed by his family, especially his mother, the titular Madame Melan\u00e7on, queen of \u201cNawlins\u201d fortune-tellers, adviser to politicians and the mob, among others. Duke is a corporate attorney for Mandala Worldwide, an oil company whose Sub-Ocean Brightside well has just exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing dozens of workers and spilling millions of barrels of crude into the waters off Louisiana. Duke returns to New Orleans to rescue Mandala\u2019s reputation and revenue, but when he gets there he must also deal with another urgent catastrophe: Madame Melan\u00e7on has chased a calico cat (\u201cbasically text messages sent from the devil\u201d) out of her kitchen with a broom, running down the street after the bad omen, and disappeared without a trace.<\/p>\n

The Neon Palm of Madame Melan\u00e7on<\/span><\/a><\/span> is the new novel from Dallas\u2019s Will Clarke,<\/span> whom Rolling Stone<\/span> has dubbed a \u201chot pop prophet.\u201d This book is published by Middle Finger Press (\u201chand-crafted fiction written for titans of industry, Bilderbergs, and oligarchs\u201d), a Dunning-Kruger Company. In psychology, the Dunning-Kruger effect is \u201ca cognitive bias wherein persons of low ability suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is.\u201d Seriously, to get the full sublime effect go to www.middlefinger.press<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

Duke\u2019s first-person narration is fast-paced and wholly entertaining. The seventh son of a seventh son, he is a cynical nonbeliever in his mother\u2019s powers. As clues are uncovered in a sort of demented scavenger hunt, and a preponderance of the evidence shows that it may be Duke\u2019s fated responsibility to save the world from the soulless future of the Great Unseen Hand, a crisis of conscience forces him to reconsider his career, his choice of employer, his feelings about his family, and whether he can count himself a good person.<\/p>\n

Clarke reminds me of Thomas Pynchon.<\/span> His colorful characters include a Kurt Vonnegut<\/span> impersonator (or is he?); a Loup Garou (or is he?); Duke\u2019s uncle, a pot-smoking priest called \u201cUncle Father\u201d; and Duke\u2019s sister LaLa, who dresses as successful celebrities (Pink, Annie Lennox), hoping to trick the fates into bestowing the luck of the rich and famous upon her. Clarke is equally skilled at sweet family scenes with Duke and his wife and little boys, and slapstick scenes involving a plague of raccoons. Dialogue is smart and engaging, with a Cajun accent.<\/p>\n

There are footnotes, doodles, and chapter titles such as \u201cTurn to Page 5 of Dracula!\u201d and \u201cCab Smells Like SpaghettiOs and Febreze.\u201d Clarke is having a very good time, but he\u2019s also very serious about climate change and the environmental future of the only home we have. In the words of maybe-Vonnegut: \u201cWake up, you moron! The planet is dying as we speak. Whatever made you think that money was worth this? You can\u2019t breathe it you know!\u201d<\/p>\n

The Neon Palm of Madame Melan\u00e7on<\/span> is a smart, ultimately hopeful mystery of science and magical realism, a loving evocation of \u201call this broken beauty\u201d of New Orleans, and a riotous, rollicking ride with a message. One person\u2019s witch is another person\u2019s scientist. And vice versa.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Newby is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews and Foreword Reviews, writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine, and The Collagist. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}