Member Since:
May 28, 2011
Margie Godwyn
Smashwords book reviews by Margie Godwyn
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Río Penitente, a novel of expiation
on June 20, 2011
In Rio Penitente author Angus Brownfield easily weaves a tale that could be the modern version of the Odyssey, but the uncharted waters are northern Mexico, off the beaten path. Gattling, the 51 year old wanderer, who wears the sin of taking another man’s life, travels to answer life’s unanswerable questions, but the further he goes the more he moves away from the truths he seeks and closer he is drawn to Sirens’ song. Crossing the old bridge over the Rio Penitente should have been an unnoticed few seconds in Gattling’s lazy drive into Mexico. But when Gattling’s efficient RV blows a tire just as a Mexican luxury bus and a gasoline tanker enter the bridge, they weave a dance for their lives. Gattling deftly avoids a head on collision. He stops both to change the tire and to collect his nerves. Below, during a brief respite from the midday heat, two ragged teenagers who seek their answers in flight to the United States have paused to make love beside the river of penitence. Not knowing why this gringo is being a voyeur, the young man engages Gattling in a life or death knife fight on the rough bridge. He vastly underestimated the aging Gattling and is forced to swallow defeat and devastating humiliation. Gattling, moved to help, takes these two lost soul under his wing. The reader discovers that Brownfield is equally adept in his portrayal of the young man who owns nothing besides his pride and his seething anger; the fifteen year old girl who lives by the dictates of her dreams and the ancient tradition of uncounted generations, and his raw biting insight into the deeply flawed Gattling. But the discovery that evolves before surprised eyes is that at its core, Rio Penitente is a novel of the feminist movement in its early unfolding; when the three women, each in love with Gattling come together leaving him to sort out their confluence, as confused as if he were trying to survive the whirlpool of three powerful rivers coming suddenly together. But in the irony of the times, the women find their power in their unexpected unity, and do not allow themselves to be defined by their relationships with him; that is until the young woman obeys her dreams and is torn apart by the violent current. The tragedy is made complete when the knife flashes again, ironically by a placid creek where children played. By these standards alone, Rio Penitente is worthy of your time. But, hidden in this adventure are treasures of unexpected wisdom. As the pages scroll by, you will find yourself stopped in your tracks; your breath taken when pearls of seldom realized truth flash across your screen. Memories of the powerful truths found in Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle and Bradbury’s in Something Wicked This Way Comes, are good parallels to Rio Penitente …timeless truths made more valuable because are discovered in the most unexpected places.
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She's Got Her Own, an entertainment
on July 04, 2011
“Who am I? “Where did I come from?” Universal questions asked by mankind since the nightly entertainment was watching the stars move through the night sky. Some of us wish the answer was anyone besides our real family. But what if you really didn’t know because you were kidnapped as an infant? Angus Brownfield’s She’s Got Her Own, an entertainment, is a page turning thriller. The deceased Penthouse Centerfold Angel DuCane leaves an infant daughter, and several men vying for paternity and access to the vast fortune she acquired. It was happy work to marry a very rich old man who was very willing to trade his fortune for a few years of having THE beauty on his arm and in his bed. When Anna Nicole Smith played out her tragic drama on the world’s stage, I felt a mixture of envy and sorrow. A little silicon to enhance what is God given and instead of marriage bringing dishes and laundry, you get so much money you can cover your casket with a blanket of sparkling pink rhinestone and ribbons. But when they slip you in your grave, no one knows if anyone really loved you. Like the real life Smith, Angel DuCane died too young and foolishly, and unlike Smith, left one heart to mourn for decades. Brownfield’s writing is full of the unexpected. Angel’s precious baby disappears and no amount of effort finds the kidnappers, who succeed because they were the only people not after money. Their life leads the adolescent Lizzie Mae Brown to ask the “who am I question” with the persistence of a blood hound. Naively, she is entirely unaware that she is being sought with the same vigor. Little does she know the real danger she is in every day. Brownfield’s character’s leap to life, be they a ten year old girl or a seventy year old man. I continue to be amazed by his mastery of dialogue. And his backdrops of the Bay Area and Miami transported me. It seems to me that no small detail of life and the stage on which it unfolds, goes unnoticed, which gives Brownfield a deep well to draw on in creating this work or his earlier books El Maestro and Río Penitente, both of which are as much worth a good weekend of reading adventure as I found in the aptly titled She’s Got Her Own, An Entertainment. Margie Godwyn
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Pool of Tears, a Murine Memoir
on July 16, 2011
Since you are reading this review on Smashwords, you like me, are partaking in the ancient art of storytelling in the most modern format. So, I expect like me, stunned will be an apt description of how you feel when you scroll down to the last line. It never occurred to me before how profound a difference the format on line presentation makes. Without a book weighing in my hand, I had no clue I was at the end. I wanted to shout at the screen, “Tell me more!” Thus, again, Angus Brownfield proves his mastery with the stroke of the pen; or in our modern era, the keyboard. In my undergraduate studies, I worked in the animal research labs studying nutrition. These were the labs that helped answer the question of how to re-feed the millions of starving who survived WWII. There were some things you could not do to conscientious objectors. I knew the eventual fate of the animals and at night the images would haunt my dreams, but our work went on. This was long before PETA. Brownfield takes the experimental mice, mixes them with a well intentioned researcher who inserts human genes, first to give them thumbs, then to give them speech. But, much like the Gary Larson cartoon where confused white coated scientists stand next to a chalk board on which the phrase, “Hablo Espanol?” is written over and over again while dolphins try to communicate with them from a near by pool, our esteemed researcher fails to understand her success and orders the now verbal mice destroyed. The “Great Escape” becomes part of their oral history. In our evolution, no one could predict when the first human visualized a wheel or when the first marriage ceremony was sanctified. Among our intelligent mice, who would know when emotions would emerge, so powerful that they would cause one very special mouse, Dorothy, to break the “Prime Directive” and expose the species to the destruction they escaped so perilously generations before. Dorothy tells the story of her tribe, in heavily accented English the first generations learned from the Scottish lab assistant whose empathy set them free. She moves beyond most of her kin by learning to operate the computer and even how to read handwriting in her quest to understand their beginnings and their fate. What would Homo Sapiens do if they learned another species shared their two most distinguishing evolutionary features: the opposable thumb and language? That I could be spell bound by this talking mouse and empathize with her struggles, reiterates Brownfield’s skill in dialogue and character development. Pool of Tears is a total deviation from any of Brownfield’s other works, some of which I have previously reviewed on this site. There is a short period when the comings and going of all the creatures is a little confusing, but it is worth scrolling down. The action quickly picks back up. You might find comfort when you get over being stunned; as in an end note Brownfield announces that book two is ready for publication. I eagerly await it.