A Fish Trapped Inside the Wind

by Christien Gholson

It all begins in a small town in Belgium near the French border on the morning of the festival of St. Woelfred. There are dead fish scattered everywhere seemingly blown in by the wind. The empty quarries of Villon are soon to be used as toxic waste dumps. Are the fish a sign from the saint or a trick played by Contexture, the dance group who once got naked at the Vatican?

The lives of six people who live in the town are about to be changed forever.

A story with magic and fish...and the lost poems of Rimbaud.

Genres: Fiction

268 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Christien Gholson is an American born writer currently living in the United Kingdom.

His first published work was the critically-acclaimed book of poetry, On the Side of the Crow (Hanging Loose Press, 2006).

His stories, both literary and speculative, have appeared in many magazines and literary journals, including The Sun, Alaska Quarterly Review, Quarterly West, Cimarron Review and the influential speculative magazine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

He has been a union organizer, bookseller, cartoonist, teacher, itinerant poet-musician and freelance editor. He grew up in a navy family, never settling in one place for very long, a pattern he has continued as an adult. His childhood years in Italy, the swamps of Florida, and in Belgium – where he spent weekends riding his bike through the alternating industrial and pastoral landscape – have deeply influenced his art. This is his first novel.

Reviews

[April · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't finish it..just not my thing. Too much zen and surrealism.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird as all hell, but charming with it, and fun to read

8/10

[Andrea Cheung · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel the author is trying too hard here to create a certain deeply philosophical and poetic style around a thin story. Read half way and could not make myself continue.

[Lindsay · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poetic but hard to follow. Couldn't keep up with all the characters and different but interspersed time lines. I am still clueless.

[Ellie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a strange and interesting book. It explored some very philosophical and though provoking concepts in a unique way. It battles with the idea of illusion and comes to a satisfying, odd and slightly humorous conclusion. I enjoyed the range of characters and found myself routing for them all despite their oddities and flaws. Occasionally it was a little hard to keep up with in places as it keeps changing from past to present and there are so many characters sometimes I lost track of who was who. It was however, overall, an enjoyable if slightly bizzare read.

[Fran · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm going to give the author the benefit of the doubt and say that I didn't get it. I didn't understand the book, the random italicized text, the codenames, the numbers that swapped around between them. The book ended abruptly without closing the plot, which could have been a reflection of how one character lost a friend, but that's a stretch to interpret and, if purposeful, clumsy at best. I feel like so much potential was lost here, but maybe I just didn't get it.

[Mrs M.A.Cooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather strange and hard to follow but worth persisting

[Lynne - The Book Squirrel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book, lots of great characters.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the characters, would have enjoyed another couple of chapters or even a spin-off novel or two. Like with the last book, think I'd get more out of it upon a re-read.

[Chrys · Rating 2 out of 5]

Abandoned it - it was taking to long I was not interested enough and picked it up and put it down hundreds of times.