{"id":82,"date":"2018-12-31T10:40:27","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T10:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=82"},"modified":"2018-12-31T10:40:27","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T10:40:27","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=82","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Foreword Reviews, freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, and blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com. Her reviews appear or are forthcoming in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho River Review, Monkeybicycle, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, <\/span>and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

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

Fiction<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

David Heymann<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

My Beautiful City Austin<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Houston: John M. Hardy Publishing<\/p>\n

Hardcover, 978-0-9903714-0-3<\/p>\n

176 pages, $24.00<\/p>\n

November 2014<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/span><\/span>The seven linked stories<\/span> in architect and University of Texas professor David Heymann’s<\/span><\/a><\/span> collection of short fiction are a testimonial to his passion for Austin and, hopefully, function as a warning. We flock to gorgeous, temperate Austin and that laid back hippie-techie-arty-nerdy-hipster-music-dude-everything-is-cool-or-soon-will-be vibe. But we refuse to respect what we love and destroy the qualities we claim to value. Suburban sprawl, disregard of ethical architecture and environmental considerations, and what Heymann calls \u201csteroidal houses, huge and tall and\u2026pretentious\u2026starter mansions\u2026\u201d are endangering our beautiful city.<\/p>\n

Heymann\u2019s protagonist is also an architect named David. He is funny, earnest, and frequently befuddled by his clients. In \u201cIntern Owners\u201d he is flummoxed when his clients choose a neighborhood and house plan that are starkly different from their personalities and values. In \u201cThe Honey Trap\u201d his older, retired clients want to build the personal equivalent of Six Flags as a lure for their grandchildren. \u201cA Life in Ruins\u201d finds David on a house tour suffering cognitive dissonance occasioned by a Shaker style master bedroom in a \u201cvaguely Italianate stucco and stone pile.\u201d \u201cPatterns of Passive Aggression\u201d contrasts Barton Springs\u2014\u201cthe psychic heart of Austin\u201d\u2014and Lake Travis.<\/p>\n

The author can turn a phrase: \u201cFacts, politics, money: the [Barton] Springs are gradually being strangled, as one landscape takes over another, like starlings, or hydrilla, or antibiotic-resistant strep\u2026\u201d Regarding a certain familiar collection of restaurants: \u201cThere are a series of barbeque joints positioned like Stations of the Cross in a ring of towns around Austin.\u201d A subdivision with a mixture of overgrown houses from widely divergent eras and styles looks like \u201csomeone had given a group of supersized drag queens the keys to the wardrobe of a historical society.\u201d<\/p>\n

And his descriptive skills are pastoral without being effusive. \u201cThe rolling reddish ground everywhere was covered in a ridiculousness of bluebonnets, to the edge of the horizon….A bit farther on we came upon a cowboy, fully duded out and saddled up, coming toward us through scrub cedar and cactus, riding herd on a flock of tiny Angora sheep, the legs of which disappeared into the purple blue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heymann\u2019s book is about the role architecture can and should play in our quality of life. He would rather we built innovative structures that incorporate the character of, and partner with, the land on which we choose to live. My Beautiful City Austin<\/span> is a love song. It remains to be seen whether that song is a rallying seduction or a bittersweet elegy.<\/p>\n

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

Michelle Newby is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Foreword Reviews, freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, and blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com. Her reviews appear or are forthcoming in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho River Review, Monkeybicycle, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, […]<\/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-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","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=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}