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A review by halfmanhalfbook
Shire by Sarah Wood, Ali Smith
2.0
This is a set of four short stories, the beholder, the poet, the commission and the wound, that are aiming to blend and meld fiction, myth, biography and poetry, with very strong influences from Virginia Woolf.
The first, the beholder is about a woman who visits a doctor about something growing from her collarbone, and how it becomes part of her. The poet is a fictionalised biography of the poet Olive Fraser, and the commission is a similar exercise on Helena Shire. It finishes with the wound, and the changing of a man from one entitiy to another.
In the end I thought that this was ok, it is beautifully written, and Smith has a mastery and control of language that make some of the passages soar. But I couldn't really get a long with it. The Illustrations and photography by Sarah Wood are good though, and even though this is only a small part of the book, I thought that the attention to detail by the publishers was excellent, from the font to the binding and layout of the book.
The first, the beholder is about a woman who visits a doctor about something growing from her collarbone, and how it becomes part of her. The poet is a fictionalised biography of the poet Olive Fraser, and the commission is a similar exercise on Helena Shire. It finishes with the wound, and the changing of a man from one entitiy to another.
In the end I thought that this was ok, it is beautifully written, and Smith has a mastery and control of language that make some of the passages soar. But I couldn't really get a long with it. The Illustrations and photography by Sarah Wood are good though, and even though this is only a small part of the book, I thought that the attention to detail by the publishers was excellent, from the font to the binding and layout of the book.