Edmond Manning reviews Sea, Swallow Me

Edmond Manning reviews Sea, Swallow Me with a lovely haiku here.

Tanith Lee Blurb

The legendary author Tanith Lee has agreed to blurb Sea, Swallow Me.  Future copies of the book will have an edited version of the following blurb.

Sea, Swallow Me is a wonderfully original and eventful collection, whose stories range from the supernatural to the historical to the right-now moment. Craig Gidney combines an exceptional gift for prose poetry – often as dark and steely as it is beautiful – with an unerring sense of the preposterous and the horrifying. ( But add to that also occasional hilarity that should make a stone laugh aloud.) He breaks rules and remakes them, as many talented writers will, and is undaunted by the murks of society or psyche. Though inevitably ( and rightly ) he brings to his work the voices of Black and Gay Experience, what speaks most strongly throughout is the Human Experience – yes, even when confronted by a god of the sea. Here are elements of the young Ray Bradbury, of John Steinbeck, of Toni Morrison and James Baldwin and Angela Carter. But most of all it is the uniqueness of Gidney’s own take on life, clad in vivid, cunning and, in places, Dionysian language, that make this a must-read ( and read again ) collection. With new writers producing work of this caliber, the future of books looks bright.

Thanks to Ms. Lee.  It truly is an honor!

Sarah Singleton Reviews Sea, Swallow Me!

One of the criminally underrated ya authors (whose excellent novel Heretic was published last year in the US as Out of the Shadows) says this about Sea, Swallow Me in her Amazon review:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, lyrical and powerful, January 9, 2009

Craig Laurence Gidney’s anthology of short stories is a jewel box of literary treats. Evocative, sensual, passionate and beautifully written, Gidney communicates a powerful sense of place and conveys with compassion and insight what it feels like to be outside the mainstream. The collection provides many delicious confections for the lover of the arcane, the decadent and the gothic, such as the carnival (Catch Him by the Toe) and the penniless Parisian artist Rimbaud (Strange [Alphabets]). The tone is leavened by a dark humour (the mother in Her Spirit Hovering is a scream) and the stories contain many brilliant scenes. It is hard to pick a favourite but I think I’ll go for Circus-Boy without a Safety Net because of the emotional impact created for me in the scene when CB’s parents find his doll and strip his bedroom – the sense of the boy’s precious dream and the shame his parents inflict on him are shattering. It’s a marvellous collection, in both senses of the word.

Valiant (Holly Black)

Link to Good Reads impression of the novel

Thunderer (Felix Gilman)

Link to GoodReads impression of the novel

Elisa Rolle reviews Sea, Swallow Me.

A reviewer by the name of Elisa Rolle had some wonderful things to say about SEA, SWALLOW ME, including:

As I said, the anthology is not simple, but it’s mesmerizing. It’s full of color and flavor, an intoxicating mix that catches you while reading and lingers afterward. All the tales are mostly sad, but not without hope; the romance is not the target of the characters and so it’s not even the final point of the stories; they are almost all self discovery journey, and the ending point of the journey not always is a light and beautiful paradise.

The rest of her review may be read here.