Book Review: 2008-004 In the Land of the Free by Geoffrey Forsyth

In the Land of the Free by Geoffrey Forsyth
2008 by Rose Metal Press 34 pages
978-0-9789848-4-7  $12.00

This 34 page, 10 story chapbook was the winner of Rose Metal Press's 2nd Annual Short Short Chapbook Contest and it's truly easy to see why it would have been selected.  Geoffrey Forsyth has a wonderful way of merging reality with the just slightly off kilter magical realism to create a world that we'd love to live in.  Perhaps most impressively, Forsyth does so in very limited space - no store is longer than just over 5 pages in this collection.

The best way for an author to get me interested in his or her story is to simply force that interest with their opening sentence or two and Forsyth does that over and over in this chapbook:

"I was born onto a cutting board in my mother's kitchen.  Breadcrumbs stuck to my hair and skin.  Every time I moved I picked up more and more breadcrumbs." ("In My Mother's Kitchen")

"First day back at public school and Maureen Groff pulls a knife on me." ("Excalibur")

"Molly McGovern and I were making out in the student parking lot of our high school, getting all hot and heavy in the back of her mother's Volvo, when a coin passed from her tongue to mine, and in the minutes that followed we played a great game of how long we could keep this coin moving back and forth between our tongues." ("Coins")

"This morning I found my grandmother sitting at the kitchen table.  She had been dead almost five years, but here she was now, sitting in my wife's old seat, covered in mud." ("Mud")

In each of these cases, as with the other six stories within In the Land of the Free, I found myself unwilling to not continue reading after these openings.  And Forsyth, even having raised my expectations with such introductions to his works, continually met them in the following paragraphs and pages.

His short shorts delve into disappointment, and longing, and even death, but do so in a way that isn't strictly negative or depressing.  Forsyth's given his narrators a resolve, a resolve to get past these disappointments, to search for and find that glimmer of hope that aids in their pushing past, that frequently find the reader coming full circle emotionally.

Between what the folks here at Rose Metal Press and New Michigan Press are doing and what Dancing Girl Press has put out, my expectations each time I pick up a chapbook continue to rise - and Geoffrey Forsyth's In the Land of the Free is right up there at the top of my recently read list.

4.5 stars

Comments

[james]

i wrote a comment twice but my computer is acting ridiculous and neither went through.

anyway, the gist is that if you have a chance to see geoffrey forsyth read, take it.

i frequent readings all the time and honestly, more often than not, i find myself getting bored. it's hard for me to pay attention at readings and i'd usually rather read the author's work on the page.

that being said, geoffrey gave one of the best readings i've ever attended. and it's not because he was the greatest orator, no he even rushed through some transitions between pieces, but it's because he was disarmingly sincere.

he talked about his daughter inspiring him to write a story and he even shed a few tears before reading a story based on the passing of his wife, grandmother and father. trust me, it was 100% genuine (i pride myself on my bullshit detector) and refreshing to see someone who truly came across as loving what he was doing. it's so de rigueur for authors to try and be cool, detached, try too hard to be funny and it usually comes off awkward, the only ones laughing their friends and family. for once, it was refreshing to see someone wear his heart on his sleeve. truthfully, as much as a reader might love these stories i get the feeling that that admiration of the work is only a fraction of the love geoffrey feels for his own work. for the act of writing. i look forward to seeing his career develop. oh, and the chapbbook is beautifully put together by rose metal press.