Mark Gluth, The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis (Akashic Books, 2009)«Margaret Kroftis is a writer, living alone. A personal tragedy propels the narrative forward in an emotionally coherent manner that exists separately from linear time. As themes of loss and grief cycle, repeat, and build upon each other, they create a complex structure of cross hatched narratives within narratives, which mirror each other while also telling their own unique stories of loss that are both separate from Margaret's as well as deeply intertwined.»
«The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis begins during the later days of Margaret Kroftis's life. She is a writer, living alone. As she experiences a personal tragedy the narrative moves forward in an emotionally coherent manner that exists separately from linear time. Themes of loss and grief cycle and repeat and build upon each other. They affect the text and create a complex structure of crosshatched narratives within narratives. These mirror each other while also telling unique stories of loss that are both separate from Margaret's as well as deeply intertwined.
This groundbreaking debut demonstrates an affinity with the work of such contemporary European writers as Agota Kristof and Marie Redonnet, while existing in a place and time that is uniquely American. Composed in brief paragraphs and structured as a series of vignettes, pieces of fiction, and autobiography, The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis creates a world in which a woman's life is refracted through dreamlike logic. Coupled with the spare language in which it is written, this logic distorts and heightens the emotional truths the characters come to terms with, while elevating them beyond the simply literal.»
"In The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis, Mark Gluth does something I've never seen another author do: he captures perfectly the feel of daydreams. Though everybody in the book daydreams, Gluth doesn't simply describe their thoughts; instead, he does something better and more brilliant - he infuses his words with the deceptive simplicity and surrealism of the fantasies we dream up for ourselves. Like daydreams, his book is brief but powerful; like daydreams, it is both heartbreakingly hopeful and heart-stoppingly honest. It's a reverie that's a revelation. It is great."- Derek McCormack
«Maybe time isn't linear. Maybe grief cuts spacetime in diagonals and fiction is merely life considered on other planes. I couldn't care less about the conceit of time while enjoying Gluth's book like a solemn morning walk. This giving-in to non-linear, planes of grief. He does it well. The way in which Lynch doesn't have to really explain what his movies are about. The plot is just a scaffold. "Clocks click." Such a whispered, layered read here. Gluth frames and reframes his narrative realities, flowing seamlessly between lives, friends, dogs. It has an elegaic, Northwestern daydreaminess that I think you see in some movies that are filmed out there. Some Gus van Sant longing, Lynch's quieter moments near lakes and ferns in Twin Peaks. He captures the small weights of the mundane. How can we know that we're not fiction? That we're not someone's daydream? Really real? Nice choice for Dennis Cooper's series at Akashic, as he features similar blurred lines in his own novels between the illusion and the presumed reality. But I really appreciated this work for it's soft mourning, ephemeral simple prose, personal hollows.» -
commodityriskmanagement.blogspot.com
«Mark Gluth's writing is a spider's web in the rain, hidden under a bush and holding up beads of water like a strongman.
Mark Gluth's writing reminds me that thought and dream are types of membrane we pass weighted through.
Mark Gluth's writing is supple and drenched, he opens up fertile spaces in the imagination.
I have been looking forward to this book for a long, long time. When I get my grubby, sweat laminated mits upon it's beautiful cover, inevitably to read it in one go, i'll attempt a review.
Still, i think you should (if there is anyone out there reading this) order The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis right now, right this second. Everything I have been lucky enough to read of Mark Gluth's work has left me open mouthed, spinning and suspended... like being literally re-placed in the world.» - the-hunger-ground.blogspot.com
