Synopsis
Book by Mclaughlin, Lissa
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Review
McLaughlin's unconventional stories often deal with characters existing in the space between the familiar verities of the everyday world and the incipient chaos of their own minds, moving about in a waking dream where past and present, conscious and unconscious intertwine. The best possess something of the strangeness and terror of dark forces surging into consciousness, such as "In Hock." where a professional woman suddenly finds herself becon-dng erotically attracted to a pig. Others verge on a sort of Kafka-like absurdity, as in "Me Stomach." where a man dates and finds his life increasingly ruled by a living, breathing, digestive organ. Stylistically, they strive for an effect similar to prose poetry. McLaughlin's use of sentence fragments, run-ons and semisurreal imagery works in a story like "Moving House" where they nicely capture an old woman's disorientation as she prepares to leave her home of many years. Often, however, the grammatical peculiarities merely call attention to themselves and the imagery is more opaque than illuminating. Troubled ByHis Complexion contains several good stories and an equal number of highly self-conscious, unsuccessful experiments. -- From Independent Publisher
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