#BlogTour Nick by Michael Farris Smith

 It's a pleasure to take part in the BlogTour Nick by Michael Farris Smith. - 'September marks the 125th Anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Birth - Nick Carraway steps out of the shadows and into the spotlight in this exhilarating prequel to The Great Gatsby, leading up to Carraway’s meeting with the enigmatic Jay Gatsby.'

About the Author

No Exit Press also publish Michael Farris Smith’s novels The Fighter, Desperation Road and most recently Blackwood. Farris Smith has been a finalist for the Gold Dagger Award in the UK, and the Grand Prix des Lectrices in France, and his essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife and daughters. Follow @michael_f_smith on Twitter, Visit michaelfarrissmith.com

About the book

This rich and imaginative novel from critically acclaimed author Michael Farris Smith breathes new life into a character that many know only from the periphery. Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg and into Gatsby’s world, he was at the centre of a very different story – one taking place along the trenches and deep within the tunnels of World War I. Floundering in the wake of the destruction he witnessed first-hand, Nick embarks on a redemptive journey that takes him from a whirlwind Paris romance – doomed from the very beginning – to the dizzying frenzy of New Orleans, rife with its own flavour of debauchery and violence.

NICK is an inspired concept realised with delicate, rhythmic prose, profound characterisation and deep emotion. Charged with enough alcohol, heartbreak, and profound yearning to transfix even the heartiest of golden age scribes, NICK reveals the man behind the narrator who has captivated readers for decades.

Review

First and foremost I now have to go back and read The Great Gatsby again in order for this prequel of sorts to find a better lace in my reading experience and literary consciousness - Nick Carraway before he meets Jay Gatsby, the story previously untold.

The author makes a really interesting point in the foreword, which is probably something readers who go back to the same books now and again will be aware of. Your reading experience is always subjective and always seen through your own frame of reference. Those frame of references change depending on what age or stage of life you are currently in. It changes the way you interpret and experience the words you are reading.

Take that concept and adapt it to a book of notable literary fame and then consider the experience. The awed young reader, becomes the disenchanted one and the older reader is perhaps the one who comprehends as never before. It's an incredibly insightful thought. Now combine that with the fictional backstory of  a character from The Great Gatsby, hence now needing to read the GG again.

It absolutely helps that the author does this with an astute emotional connection to Nick, the prose is both lyrical and at times brutally frank, which lends itself to the creation of a beautiful piece of work. It's an homage to the work of scribes of the golden age.

Buy Nick at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher ‏: ‎No Exit Press; pub date 24 Sept. 2021. Buy at Amazon com.

#BlogTour Blackwood by Michael Farris Smith

Today it's a pleasure to take part in the BlogTour Blackwood by Michael Farris Smith.

About the Author
Michael Farris Smith is the author of Blackwood (2020), The Fighter, Desperation Road, Rivers, and The Hands of Strangers. His novels have appeared on Best of the Year lists with Esquire, Southern Living, Book Riot, and numerous others, and have been named Indie Next, Barnes & Noble Discover, and Amazon Best of the Month selections. His essays have appeared with The New York Times, Bitter Southerner, Writer’s Bone, and more. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife and daughters.

Follow @michael_f_smith on Twitter, on Amazon, on Goodreads, Visit michaelfarrissmith.com, Buy Blackwood

About the book
In this timeless, mythical tale of unforgiving justice and elusive grace, rural Mississippi townsfolk shoulder the pain of generations as something dangerous lurks in the enigmatic kudzu of the woods.

The town of Red Bluff, Mississippi, has seen better days, though those who've held on have little memory of when that was. Myer, the county's aged, sardonic lawman, still thinks it can prove itself -- when confronted by a strange family of drifters, the sheriff believes that the people of Red Bluff can be accepting, rational, even good.

The opposite is true: this is a landscape of fear and ghosts -- of regret and violence -- transformed by the kudzu vines that have enveloped the hills around it, swallowing homes, cars, rivers, and hiding a terrible secret deeper still.

Colburn, a junkyard sculptor who's returned to Red Bluff, knows this pain all too well, though he too is willing to hope for more when he meets and falls in love with Celia, the local bar owner. The Deep South gives these noble, broken, and driven folks the gift of human connection while bestowing upon them the crippling weight of generations. With broken histories and vagabond hearts, the townsfolk wrestle with the evil in the woods -- and the wickedness that lurks in each and every one of us.

Review
This story is driven in various directions with a rural Mississippi town and its people in the midst of it all. Townspeople that live off the myths, the gossip and the paranoia of the darkness that consumes their town and the surrounding area.

The drifter family who wander in and play a pivotal part in the story are perhaps the most interesting, because the author never deems it necessary to name them, almost as if a name makes them real and gives them a better hold in the events that happen. It's just the woman, the man and the boy.

Then there is Colburn, a man who has never truly been able to escape the darkness and pain of his childhood. Is coming back a way to face his inner demons and guilt head on?

It's hard to pin this down, perhaps because it mixes multiple darker genres together. It has a noirish vibe, often the charm of a Southern gothic, but ultimately for me this was bordering on horror. No matter how much it had a pinky inclined tea-drinking feel to it - it always came back to creepy, mysterious and disturbing. A kind of Twin Peaksesque sense of plotting, which is thrown into disarray with the reality of things that go bump in the night.  The horror behind the mask of small town normality.

I think it's fairly easy to visualise where the author was going with the story, but in all fairness I can see why some readers might feel as if they aren't being given enough information. The kind of story that works well with imagery, as opposed to many words. It's appears to be a style thing. The author wants images to override the words. Feel the clinging darkness of the kudzu, the claustrophobic nature of the wet earth in the dank oppressive cave.

Buy Blackwood at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: No Exit Press; pub date 19 Mar. 2020. Buy at Amazon com.