Heart on a Sleeve eBook Mark Lamb Ali Pfenninger Dave Pfenninger William "Buzz" Rasmussen
Download As PDF : Heart on a Sleeve eBook Mark Lamb Ali Pfenninger Dave Pfenninger William "Buzz" Rasmussen 
In Heart On A Sleeve, Austin-based writer Mark Lamb continues his dive into the sordid, sensitive, and sometimes hopeful deep end of everyday social and family life. A master of riveting psycho-dramatic portrayal, Lamb focuses his clear-eyed social dissections on the ways families injure their members internally, especially those whose sensitivities make emotional wounds difficult or impossible to heal.
Lamb’s first (2013) collection of short stories, Do As I Say And Not As I Do, was a brilliant debut, with a distinctive, sui generis authorial style which impressed itself upon Kirkus Reviews, who described the book as
“A collection of seven curiously crafted tales of malevolence and melancholia... Lamb's imagination runs dark, and his stories of haunted lives, repressed memories and sordid pasts creep into the psyche like spiders."
Well, it’s safe to say that the spiders keep on crawling in Heart On A Sleeve. By offering us a haunting, five-stage novella tracing the multi-generational transmission of alienation, Lamb again permeates the reader’s psyche with his shadowy but familiar worlds.
Lamb’s inherent word-economy, winnowed plotlines, and tight narratives create a happy paradox a book with a long time-span that is nonetheless a quick read and ripe with both explicit and hidden layers of possibility and implication. It’s the sort of book one re-reads in short order, to soak up more of the tenuous ambience, simmering conflicts, historical oddities, and other little details of lives that carry big but hazily visible stakes.
Readers experience a pathological yet common family dynamic as it germinates, then metastasizes, over several generations. Lamb somehow musters our primal identifications with even the most deplorable or off-road of human variety. He knows instinctively that “normal” is a myth, and that all closets are choking full of skeletons. He makes us empathize with some pretty cruddy people, all right, maybe to remind us that but for the grace of God…and, in this, Lamb consistently emphasizes in his work how much a product of our circumstances and of dumb luck we all are.
With Heart On A Sleeve, Mark Lamb has also developed a unique format. Each of the chapters can actually stand alone nicely as a short story. Read front-to-back, it is a novella, a short novel that carries an inherent organizational logic and temporal and thematic unfolding. The “feel” of it is noir - Nelson Algren. There is some seedy stuff going on. But there also is dignity in the most unlikely corners.
Lamb takes us at times to the edge of magical realism in some stories; and yet, his narrative is matter-of-factly empirical, a “just the facts ma’am” presentation of life in its weirder moments. Who doesn’t think they’re nuts, see things, hear voices sometimes, believe in ghosts or elves or angels, experience déjà vu; who doesn’t have carnal ideas about the people in their lives, or want the world to just go away? Perfectly ugly, in a beautiful way, because it’s how things are.
By loosely connecting his generations of struggling people in a family along an axis of cascading ennui, Lamb leaves plenty to our imaginations, and this makes for a compelling mental dialectic with a provocative writer. What he doesn’t say seems to loom larger than what he does say.
Indeed, Lamb has begun his writing career with a perhaps unintended, yet very wise and writerly stratagem he always leaves you wanting more.
Heart on a Sleeve eBook Mark Lamb Ali Pfenninger Dave Pfenninger William "Buzz" Rasmussen
Mark Lamb's Heart on a Sleeve is a series of five vignettes of family dysfunctionality seen through the eyes and personal experience of family members, generations apart. The social settings are classically American, the dysfunctionality revealing itself in ways only credible at each moment in history. Each glimpse leads you eagerly to the subsequent tale hopefully to reveal an underlying cause to the pain and angst that befalls successive generations. The author's writing and ability to capture dialogue and the inner thoughts of the protagonists ensure an absorbing read that draws you from page to page. My only regret is I wanted more, more from each tale which left me grasping at where the hurt, pain and anger would lead or whether the author's world view is truly as bleak as these brief episodes suggest.Product details
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Tags : Buy Heart on a Sleeve: Read 4 Kindle Store Reviews - Amazon.com,ebook,Mark Lamb, Ali Pfenninger, Dave Pfenninger, William "Buzz" Rasmussen,Heart on a Sleeve,Black Squirrel, Ltd.,FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS General
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Heart on a Sleeve eBook Mark Lamb Ali Pfenninger Dave Pfenninger William "Buzz" Rasmussen Reviews
Powerful narrative momentum, complex characters rendered efficiently, haunting themes of alienation and fractured loyalties. Lamb is a Nelson Algren for our times, writing in a minimalist but prose-poem manner about the gritty lives of people trying to make it in a confusing world. Each of his books has been notable for their crisp style and pungent interpersonal explorations; in addition to Algren, one thinks of Capote's 'Other Voices, Other Rooms," and also some of the work by writers like Vollmann and Highsmith. This novella, Heart On A Sleeve, traces estrangement in a family across five successive generations; yet each story also reads as a stand-alone piece. With a deft touch, Lamb takes us into the sordid and sometimes heartening developments of character (or lack thereof) across generations. The reader is left with unsettling impressions and a desire for more of whatever literary magic Mark. Lamb has on offer.
Powerful narrative momentum, complex characters rendered efficiently, haunting themes of alienation and fractured loyalties. Lamb is a Nelson Algren for our times, writing in a minimalist prose-poem manner about the gritty lives of people trying to make it in a confusing world. Each of his books has been notable for their crisp style and pungent interpersonal explorations; in addition to Algren, one thinks of Capote's 'Other Voices, Other Rooms," and also some of the work by writers like Vollmann and Highsmith. This novella, Heart On A Sleeve, traces estrangement in a family across five successive generations; yet each story also reads as a stand-alone piece. With a deft touch, Lamb takes us into the sordid and sometimes heartening developments of character (or lack thereof) across generations. The reader is left with unsettling impressions and a desire for more of whatever literary magic Mark Lamb has on offer.
Heart on a Sleeve by Mark Lamb is genuinely original and honest, guiding the reader on a trip throughout time. The characters are highly relatable and resonating, if only to your thoughts or phases of life. The novella takes the reader through generations, each one encompassing the reader with thoughts of the human psyche, drawing the reader in almost immediately. With the uncertainty of an ever evolving world and the crucial impact of our circumstances, it is easy to loose yourself in this book. Heart on a sleeve proves that sometimes, although family is the most influential part of ones life, it is not and has never necessarily been perfect. I was completely wrapped up in the book!
Mark Lamb's Heart on a Sleeve is a series of five vignettes of family dysfunctionality seen through the eyes and personal experience of family members, generations apart. The social settings are classically American, the dysfunctionality revealing itself in ways only credible at each moment in history. Each glimpse leads you eagerly to the subsequent tale hopefully to reveal an underlying cause to the pain and angst that befalls successive generations. The author's writing and ability to capture dialogue and the inner thoughts of the protagonists ensure an absorbing read that draws you from page to page. My only regret is I wanted more, more from each tale which left me grasping at where the hurt, pain and anger would lead or whether the author's world view is truly as bleak as these brief episodes suggest.
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