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#52: The Glittering World by Robert Levy

2/22/2016

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I went to the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop with Robert Levy back in 2006.  He was one of my favorite people there -- there was something so peaceful, accepting, understanding, and intelligent about both this calm young man and his writing, and I felt rather graced by his presence.  His novel The Glittering World came out in 2015, and it is so much the same way.

The story is about four friends/lovers who travel from New York to Cape Breton in Canada to sell a house. With them, they bring all their deepest emotions  -- from profound devotion to deepest regret to the unrequited longing that haunts most human lives -- and these are sculpted into life by the otherworldly creatures that inhabit the wilderness surrounding them.

There are four sections to the book, each from a point of view from the four characters.  I found it a relief that this wasn't a particularly strongly driven plot -- some story lines end up ambiguously unresolved, like our real lives.  Too, like our real lives, the horror of this tale derive from the character's own foibles and histories.  I liked very much that each section of the book brought each character more and more to life, making both them and the story more interesting -- so that by the time I got to the end, it felt not only riveting, but true.

Well done, my friend.  Well done.

Lessons for writers: (Well, the obvious one is that I need to work harder on my own writing.  Could I have gotten a novel out in ten years if I had put more effort into it?  Yes.  Let's make the next ten years work better, shall we?  Okay: enough with envy.)  But the important lessons for writers here is that our shadows really are our stories.  Thank you again, Robert.

This is a wonderful book, so you might read it and visit Robert Levy here. 


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    In 2011, I began reading a list of 100 Great Fantasy Novels. I am listing them on this page.

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    Hi!  I am Nye Joell Hardy.  
    I write science fiction and fantasy.  The science fiction makes my head happy.  The fantasy makes my heart happy.  Although I sell all these things, none are making me rich.  But I'm happy, damn it.  

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