I love it when writers I've worked with send me print copies of their books.
This particular one was exceptional!
Alex Aro's "A Lovely Appetite" is a collection of short stories written in a powerful prose style that hits you with all of the elegance and beauty of poetry. Each story punches holes in the mundane with sharp shivs of surreality that leave little of the old world intact by the end of a given piece. What remains hangs in beautiful tatters, like curtains almost stripped away, beyond which the eye can see grand vistas of color, of possibility and the maybe worlds of magic realism.
There's a richness here, not just in the words, but also in the beautiful presentation. The stark contrast between white and black, between sensuality and sadism, between simple kitchen implements and the code they obscure-- it all comes together to create something so much more substantial than any mainstream media book I've ever seen. I didn't expect to be moved to gush as I am, but if any book deserves a glowing recommendation, this one does.
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