Tag: rikki ducornet

Review of Trafik by Rikki Ducornet

.Reading time 1 minute.
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Quirky even for Ducornet.

Suffused with her characteristic charm, wit, sensuality and signature linguistic exuberance. A vivid dreamscape of “tonguefeels.” A melancholic deepening of post-atomic exotic, nebulous human-wannabes on the edge of the pendulous nostalgia-fueled singularity of an entire dissolving civilization.

Memories, avatars, simulations, showerhead massages, spacey antics: both delicious and miraculous. Post-apocalyptic Consumerism, alive with the longing for vanished places, times, and idols, characters rummaging through plasma clouds of kitsch debris, full of colorful improvisation, experimental futurism. A cobbled scatological gumbo. Plenty of subliminal jokes, poppy references and goofy genius.

Containing unprecedented romantic and literary entanglements. It ponders how we are “wired”, how beings titillated by lasers and operating abstruse machinery in vast abysses of stimulating self-creation are only brief, playful extensions of our actual, tru-to-life selves. Written in its matrix latticescape is the secret formula for our doom. A descent through causality is present in its rollicking crescendoes. It is a marriage of low culture with high arts, meted out with aesthetic aplomb out of outer space flotsam. It is smart. It is “supermarvelous.”

I only wish it was longer.
Thank you Edelweiss for the ARC.

Review of Phosphor in Dreamland by Rikki Ducornet

.Reading time 2 minutes.
ISBN 1564780848 (ISBN13: 9781564780843)
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Extravagant!
Like Nabokov, Rikki Ducornet delights in the use of vibrant language. Unlike Nabokov, she has been hiding in plain sight for years. I had to ask myself why I haven’t read her work before. What took me so long?

Segments of this novel reminded me of the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. (Especially the use of inventions as a source of wonder, i. e. the juxtaposition of science and magic). The world the author invents is full of surprise and delight, myths and images that linger in the mind. The atmosphere is masterfully conjured and book is short and poetic: as digestible as one of Marquez’s shorter works. Its characters exist in a mystic alternate reality, where Jonathan Swift existed, but the trappings of the every day world have fallen away. Like Gulliver’s Travels, this book engages the reader’s imagination in a discussion of the outer limits of animal and botanical diversity, presenting us with variance and variety until our senses are awash. At the same time it hints with a subtle comment or two that society’s strictures and mankind’s foolish confidence are not as foolproof as we might imagine.

This book is more about texture, language, imagery, symbols and theme than it is about character. The caricatures within it are more vehicles for the colors and erotic underpinnings than typical people. Ducornet casts the spell of an enchantress with her intense evocations of island life, and I wanted the book to go on longer. Luckily, her other works are supposedly a treasure trove of similar delectations.

Lush imagery, man versus the animal kingdom, man versus man, historical aura, and finally, shamelessness!

Read something different for once, try out this novel!