Drowned Moon

by Glenn Blake and Professor Glenn Blake

Book Overview

The stories in Drowned Moon are set in Southeast Texas, where the Old and the Lost Rivers meet and empty into the bay. This unique geographic location, with its unpredictable waters, its sinking swamps, its bayous and sloughs, provides a haunting landscape for Glenn Blake's characters.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801870933
• ISBN13: 9780801870934
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.1" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Amazingly detailed stories worth a look for sure

Glenn Blake is not well known, but gosh I wish he were. The stories in this slim volume opened up worlds for me that I never knew existed. The geography is the obvious definition of the worlds I am talking about, but also the characters. They are fresh, dynamic, and always a bit quirky, though not enough to make them unbelievable. They are perfect people, if there can be such a thing. They argue, they hold grudges, and they live without restraint, but it is these things that make them able to interact with their severe geographical settings.This is by far the best collection of stories I have read this year. Glenn Blake is an artist of much importance, and I can only hope that he continues to write and produce such beautifully rendered stories. Don't hold the thinness of this volume against the writer. The stories in here breathe new life into the short story form, and it is very rare for an author to do that in their first published collection.Bravo Mr. Blake, and please don't stop writing. Mr. Blake's gift is one that I hope all of you will explore and enjoy.Happy reading.

Masterful

This is a beautiful, haunting collection of stories about a part of the country I have no connection with, yet Blake brings me there, sits me down and says, "Look around." I didn't want to leave. Buy this book and read it again and again.

A real writer, real stories

Terrific short stories about things that matter written in a prose that knows that language might be music. Forget Franzen, buy this one instead. The only thing not first-rate about this book is the type-face, which is weirdly small. What were they thinking? Buy it anyway.

A collection of treasures

To read the short stories in Glenn Blake's Drowned Moon is to swim through a subterranean town like the one in his story "Chocolate Bay," just below the surface of the narrative. These are compelling stories, haunted by the unconscious life of the characters. Blake makes the subtext of their lives palpable by seamlessly interweaving character and setting--swamps and bayous, houses with back porches, dogs in the yards. The exquisite light and color of this world is grounded by the down-to-earth people and their alligators, trucks, fishing, kids. One of the most accomplished stories is "Hazard," about old rivalries between two brothers, with an ending all the more satisfying for taking the reader so completely by surprise. Some of these stories will break your heart, even as Blake's comic sensibility makes you laugh. This is a collection of treasures--literary and humane--not to be missed.

personal

I happen to know Glenn personally, and this is a very solid example of his work. The first story is especially good. His work is strongly steeped in Deep Southern culture, and well written. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in the forefront of American short fiction, expecially those concerned with this near floundering facet of contemporary art.Nothin' says lovin' like short fiction in the oven.