Location: United States
Member Since: Aug. 26, 2011

Wayne Bentley

Biography

rebooting a life: becoming an older(but not wiser),gayer, fatter,left leaning, vegan, ex-hillbilly writer suddenly, improbably and impossibly in love again.

Where to find Wayne Bentley online

Website: http://wbent1.livejournal.com
Twitter: @wbent1
Facebook: Facebook profile
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/wayne-bentley/37/688/171
Wattpad: wbent1
Blog: http://wbent1.blogspot.com

Smashwords book reviews by Wayne Bentley

  • The Value of Rain on Aug. 26, 2011

    "There are dead people in my head." From the opening line to last, The Value of Rain by Brandon Shire seizes your heart and does not let go, even long after the book is closed. The story of a family that fuses love to hatred and life to death and rolls those two fusions together, so that it is impossible to ever separate them. Though only a few scenes take place in New Orleans, The Value of Rain echoes the southern gothic tradition, entangled and hidden bloodlines and all. Indeed Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty would be comfortable in this world, and would be envious of the writer. The characters are strong in their weaknesses, and their strengths always betray them. A first act of physical love propels a young boy from his already precarious existence into the living hell of a psychiatric hospital for a hideous 'cure' for his gayness. Charles's non-chronological narrative of his journey through that hell, and all that follows, is told with an unerring eye for detail, both physical and emotional. The Value of Rain also shows the strong emotionally warping effect of revenge; given the chance to escape, to just be loved for himself, Charles finds he can not let go of the emotional and deadly pas de deux with his mother Charlotte. This is a lyrically beautiful book, masterfully woven with intense emotion, insightful and frightening in its clarity.
  • Listening To Dust on May 24, 2012

    In Listening to Dust, Brandon Shire's first work since his stunning debut with The Value of Rain, the author once again drives with poetic abandon through the landscape of the heart, ruthlessly plowing through the intersection of love and pain, in this engaging and haunting new work. In London, Stephen Dobbins, whose parents were murdered for mysterious political reasons, meets Dustin Earl, a drunk American soldier with a troubled past and an uncertain future. Dustin's tour of duty has just finished and Stephen takes him home. Their night together engages Stephen's emotions but Dustin explodes with anger the next morning and disappears. He returns eventually and begins a tenuous relationship with Stephen that grows deeply over the course of eight months. From the outset Dustin makes it clear that he will, for family reasons, return to his home and eventually does leaving Stephen bereft and lonely. Stephen hides out in France for a year before finally deciding to go to America to bring Dustin back to America to bring Dustin back. He is unprepared for what he finds in America where an awful irony accentuates the paths that love and pain travel together, where love can not save anyone from death, but death cannot destroy love. Listening to Dust is well worth reading many times. There are no wasted words, no comforting platitudes, no perfect romances just life told by a master story teller with a razored and haunting insight into heart and soul.