Rest Area : Stories

Rating:
Summary: NOT JUST BAD, SMELLY.
Review: A stunningly bad debut. These tales fall somewhere between short stories and rambling cracker monologues. Painfully obvious in their need to "SHOCK" and be "EDGY" they amount to little more than the work of a beat poet with tourettes. Self-consciously strange without being believable or even interesting I was left only with the conclusion: Hillbillies are impressively capable of buggery and squirrel hunting but the demands of character, setting and plot are way beyond this writer's gifts.

Perhaps this stuff passes for "daring" in the provinces but anyone who's taken Lit 101 will recognize this for what it is: hackwork.

Rating:
Summary: The caviar of the sick and twisted short story genre
Review: Clay has such an active imagination, and his use of language and imagery is truly masterful. There is no other in my opinion who can create metaphors as palpable and alive as this young gentleman. That being said, as much as I love to slowly drink from the elegant cup of this man's mind, the only way to get a true Clay Chapman experience is in person. Please, if you live in the Tri-State area, I urge you to attend one of his shows. You will never see anything like it again.

Rating:
Summary: Rest Area
Review: I feel without reservation the Clay McLeod Chapman is a talented, skillful, imaginative writer. This collection of short stories can make provacative reading in small portions to digest between readings.I have seen some of Chapman's PUMPKIN PIE SHOWS wherein he and other actors narrate his tales injecting some humor and all the required intonations of a drama.Remarkable watching which is mirrored in the Rest Area reading.This authors first novel I find to be a valid measure of his continuing progress as an author. Having just completed an Advance Reader's Copy of Miss Corpus I think Chapman's growth is quite apparent in this moving, macabre and painfully detailed story of death and dispair. Two totally different love stories that come
crashing together. I digress