Member Since:
Feb. 19, 2012
Caroline Macafee
Smashwords book reviews by Caroline Macafee
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The Honey That Came From The Sea
on Feb. 19, 2012
(no rating)
These short prose pieces are selected from previous publications, where they were often interspersed with the Scots poetry for which Sheena Blackhall is well known. Her English writing is equally lyrical and eloquent, and crackles with metaphorical connections. The stories are full of dry wit and observations of human nature, sometimes but not always the particular foibles of the Scottish character. Some pieces explore the different viewpoints of people involved with a tragic or morally challenging situation. Many are in the nature of sketches, capturing a significant moment in a life – a bittersweet epiphany, a poignant memory, a moment of insight that results in despair, the loss of the sense of self, even suicide. The pivotal experience is sometimes hallucinatory, like the talking ants with their honey in the story that gives the collection its title, but more often it is something apparently banal – a chance encounter with a stranger, an intrusion of nature into a domestic space, engagement with a symbolic object. We are invited to see the world with a poet’s heightened sensitivity, to perceive the everyday as extraordinary, every detail unique.