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Summary: For God's Sake...
Review: ...buy it already! And prepare yourself for that wonderful tickling sensation that is the stimulation of your grey matter, in a way you've not experienced before. Genius.
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Summary: Rising Young Star!
Review: For any speech coaches out there -- or cometitors looking for programs or scripts -- this book looks like it has a lot of stuff that could be used for competiton. As a performer, Dave Awl seems acutely aware of the aural beauty of his language, not just how it sounds inside your own head.
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Summary: I can prove it
Review: I've now bought seven copies of this book to give to people. I've personally read it three times and find myself refering to it periodically during the course of normal conversation. Sure, people look at me a little strange as we drive down the road in their car and I say something like "Please drive. Please drive slowly." but I simply smile with a self knowing satisfaction of what I'll be getting them for their birthday. It's really a fine piece of work this book. A bargain at twice the price.
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Summary: Feng shui for the heart and mind
Review: In this delightful debut, Dave Awl explores relationships, identity and creativity with a great mixture of sensitivity, lyricism, humour, honesty and surrealism. In pieces such as Bestiary, Talking to Myself, Talking to Myself: The Interview, Immense Buddha Under Fire, Points of Connection, The Idea of You and the deliciously mysterious What The Sea Means, the strangeness and poignancy of life is examined with a refreshing vividity of style and deprecation of self.By far my favourite piece is A Perfectly Empty Room, in which a man makes repeated attempts to clear out his room and, by extension, his life, only for everything to constantly find its way back in underneath his door - something I and, I'm sure, many other people can relate to. Dave Awl has a penchant for taking metaphors like this for a walk and seeing where they lead him. If you go along with him you'll find the journey is repeatedly interesting and above all, entertaining. The best thing about this book though is how much there is of it. Dave Awl has been busy since 1987, and there is plenty here for readers to get their teeth into. The book is bursting with things to say, and even when it's said them it goes into some fascinating notes about where many of the pieces originated and how they were staged. If you sometimes feel like the man that Vermeer painted over, and know that nobody can properly articulate the sadness of the tea kettle, buy this book.
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Summary: How to captivate someone with a short attention span
Review: The wonders of Dave Awl's book became apparent to me within 12 hours of it taking its place on my Kramer-style coffee table. A friend, not one normally to be seen within page-turning distance of a book - let alone to be seen sitting still on the sofa for longer than a nanosecond - suddenly (and without prompting) began reading aloud some of these stories, poems and monologues. Then she started laughing. Soon, she was recommending stories for me - I hadn't even begun reading 'What The Sea Means' at this point. Soon, we were passing the book back and forth, each reading aloud, exchanging "the good bits" (and there are many), and suggesting the book would make an excellent Christmas present for our friends.
OK. I'm biased. But I highly recommend, in no particular order: 'A Perfectly Empty Room' (story); 'The Idea of You' (monologue); 'Glastonbury' (poem); 'What The Sea Means' (poem); and a poem about Magritte, which I can't seem to find in the index but which I know has to be there ... Reading this book wouldn't be complete without its own little mysteries.
In a nutshell, word paintings that are surreal and full of revelations. Best of all, at the back of the book is a section of notes. It answers questions you haven't asked yet and poses some you wish you had.
Diving into Dave Awl's work is like discovering a continent or a magical island: You thought it might be there but you didn't dare hope it would be this weird, this different.
Do your brain cells a favour.
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