A Shadow in Yucatan- The Meaning (and feeling) of Birth and Loss

Today was the long planned for launch of A Shadow in Yucatan. Timed to co-ordinate with the Great Digital Book Giveaway. Instead it has been deleted from their site. Disaster for me but not for you. For it is ,however, still free (until 31st July) on Smashwords and can be downloaded here https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/454809

Instead of promoting I will let the reviews do that instead.

‘I was utterly awestruck by the writing skill and breadth of imaginative
evocation…..poetic, elegiac…almost unbearably intense…sensuous imagery
from both nature and modern urban living…musical, both rhythmic and
assonant…sustained dramatic tension within a simple everyday story….the
superficiality of the beauty salon is a very potent metaphor….’
Alison Jakes (Poetry Circle)

As with a highly literary novel, this ambitious story makes demands
upon its readers. As with most modern poetry it deserves to be read and
re-read…..
The story is a vehicle for some impressive poetry. It is highly emotional
and transforms the ordinary protagonist into an archetypal figure of
suffering motherhood.
‘Speech must now grow from silence and the stones that cockle the
black backs
Of women in pre-history, left alone with the consequence of men’
There is religious dimension too. Throughout there are subtle references
to the Christian Nativity, and on another level it tells of Christ’s birth
and Mary’s suffering in modern terms. It contrasts the cruelty of the
girl’s Catholic mother, with the compassion of her Jewish landlady.
There is implicit criticism of the hypocrisy of society as a whole….The
poem has a social purpose.
Katherine Knight (Real Writers)

Philippa Rees is as an immediately distinctive and striking poet
who writes with unfashionably – often brilliant – painterly verbal
play and colour, oozing with a sensuous love of language. Rees’s
almost tangible style dazzles with imagistic chiaroscuro; stark
contrasts of light and shade, subtext and texture:
This ripeness of verbiage and intrinsic musicality inevitably
bring comparisons with Dylan Thomas (particularly the densely
descriptive, rumble-tumble list- passages of Under Milk Wood): But this is not to detract from Rees’s individuality which throughout this book of poetic narrative interspersed with colourful dialogue is palpable and often beguiling…
…..A Shadow in Yucatán is disarmingly beautiful
(Alan Morrison, Editor The Recusant)

The back blurb calls ‘A Shadow in Yucatán’ a ‘distilled novel’ and it
is –a home brew, raw and omnipotent! Rees makes extraordinary the
sorrowful ordinary of an unwanted pregnancy and the resulting difficult
decisions. She celebrates the sense of community, despairs of family
and counts on the generosity of strangers. She explores problems and
finds solutions – hard through they are to take – in unexpected places
Through it we enter a world as real as we are, but as foreign to us as a
bad dream. This book is a must for any intelligent reader!
(Independent Reviews: SP Magazine)

Author: philipparees

A writer ( mostly narrative poetry) of fiction and non-fiction. Self publisher of fiction and Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God (Runner-up Book of the Year (2013), One time builder ( Arts centre) Mother of four daughters: Companion of old man and old dog: One time gardener, lecturer, wannabe cellist, mostly enquirer of 'what's it all about', blogger and things as yet undiscovered. View all posts by philipparees