Glenda Millard
Stars at Oktober Bend
Alice’s words are broken. Her mind is broken. Her words on the page are broken. She composes poems that are broken. Manny is broken too, by what he has seen. Together, communicating through poems, they start to forge a new future.
Oh god. This is yet another slow paced novel. I just couldn’t get into it. Not only was the pace slow, the way of writing of the novel reminded me of Joyous and Moonbeam, which was another I guess, defective mind story? I didn’t like that novel either. So sue me for appreciating well formed and beautiful descriptive sentences, rather than disordered stream of consciousness.
The blurb has more details in it than what I got from 3/4 of the novel. I didn’t know that Manny’s past was as a soldier. I didn’t know that Alice was damaged from an assault. I get why it’s important to talk about the aftermath of these, but did it have to be so boring? I would have loved flashbacks, or warnings, or anything a little more racy.
On the only positive part of the novel for me was the cover of the novel. Very pretty. The title itself makes very little sense until later in the novel, but the cover is pretty! Those lovely black streaks. That didn’t redeem it enough for me though.
I feel like this is another 1 star from me, which is really disappointing. I have read a number of really good novels lately, and maybe that has set the bar higher. Seriously though, the pace was too slow, the writing was an odd style, and I didn’t finish reading it.
