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PHOTOGRAPHS OF MADNESS: INSIDE OUT
There exists an apartment that omits a warm and comfortable smell. Many have lived in it. All have gone missing, met a form of madness in that wicked place. "PHOTOGRAPHS OF MADNESS: INSIDE OUT" is a poetically styled flash fiction collection composed of four parts. Each section spans years between the last, linking each of the four unique character through the horrors they experienced in their cursed lives. Observe as the larger sickness at hand unfolds, dare to unveil the secrets behind that secret, damp door that reeks of cardamon pods.
82 pages, Paperback
Published October 12, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 3, 2019
I was sent an ARC to read and review, which I greatly appreciated.
* Broken into 4 parts
* Part 1: Flask Drowning
* Part 2: Seizing
* Part 3: Ska Gardens
* Part 4: Cellar Silence
* The first part takes place in November 1924, the main character is Shelly who is an alcoholic. She smells a sweet smell coming from her closet and decides to investigate it.
* Part 2 takes place in November 1962, the main character is Linus whose brother has just died. Then he smells a sweet scent coming from his brothers closet.
* Part 3 takes place in November of 1990, the main character is Schaefer he’s in a band with his friend Kyle and their squatting in an abandoned apartment. While getting high, Kyle smells a sweet scent coming from the closet. Schaefer forces him to check it out. Later, Kyle hasn’t returned and Schaefer finds the same aroma calling to him.
* Part 4 takes place in November of 2018. The main character Lauren, is doing a school project on their town. She learns about a sickness that struck the town and about an haunted apartment building. They found a woman dead in her closet in the 20s, a man dead in the closet in the 60s, and two dead bodies in the 90s.
* The writing style is very interesting, very disconnected. Almost all over the place for the first 3 parts. Kinda poetic, almost written like a poem
* The 4 stories take place within days of each other, but in different years.
* Had no idea where the story was going until the 3rd and final part made everything come together and made sense.
* Once the story came together, I enjoyed it a lot more.
* Very short only 82 pages.
* Almost like a painting, where you have to think about it for a minute to make sense of what you’re seeing. Very artistic approach.
* I really liked the ending and the tie in to make everything connect.
* Once I got used to the writing style, I enjoyed it much more!
* I would recommend this to people who really like thoughtful stories, ones that leave you guessing and a little confused.
* Broken into 4 parts
* Part 1: Flask Drowning
* Part 2: Seizing
* Part 3: Ska Gardens
* Part 4: Cellar Silence
* The first part takes place in November 1924, the main character is Shelly who is an alcoholic. She smells a sweet smell coming from her closet and decides to investigate it.
* Part 2 takes place in November 1962, the main character is Linus whose brother has just died. Then he smells a sweet scent coming from his brothers closet.
* Part 3 takes place in November of 1990, the main character is Schaefer he’s in a band with his friend Kyle and their squatting in an abandoned apartment. While getting high, Kyle smells a sweet scent coming from the closet. Schaefer forces him to check it out. Later, Kyle hasn’t returned and Schaefer finds the same aroma calling to him.
* Part 4 takes place in November of 2018. The main character Lauren, is doing a school project on their town. She learns about a sickness that struck the town and about an haunted apartment building. They found a woman dead in her closet in the 20s, a man dead in the closet in the 60s, and two dead bodies in the 90s.
* The writing style is very interesting, very disconnected. Almost all over the place for the first 3 parts. Kinda poetic, almost written like a poem
* The 4 stories take place within days of each other, but in different years.
* Had no idea where the story was going until the 3rd and final part made everything come together and made sense.
* Once the story came together, I enjoyed it a lot more.
* Very short only 82 pages.
* Almost like a painting, where you have to think about it for a minute to make sense of what you’re seeing. Very artistic approach.
* I really liked the ending and the tie in to make everything connect.
* Once I got used to the writing style, I enjoyed it much more!
* I would recommend this to people who really like thoughtful stories, ones that leave you guessing and a little confused.
Read
January 16, 2020The line between poetry and prose becomes blurred in this quartet of stories centered around a one bedroom apartment that leads it's inhabitants into madness.
The unique narrative style could turn readers away just as easily as it could hook them, but I was definitely one that got hooked. The stream of consciousness style and the use of repetition made me feel as though I was observing the thoughts running through the mind of someone going insane, which I found equally beautiful and unnerving. Three of the stories are also color coded in a sense--red, blue, green--and it's a rather small detail, but one I found strangely compelling.
The perspectives are very similar overall, and may feel redundant to some readers, but I liked how cohesive they felt, and I actually found the repition (in a sense) effective. For me this was much less about plot (or even character) and more about being immersed in the feeling of losing your mind, and it actually reminded me quite a bit of House of Leaves (except I connected far better with Photographs of Madness).
***This next bit is a bit spoilery. Please zip down to past the next bold sentence if you want to be on the safe side!!***
There's a big shift in tone and style in the final perspective, and honestly at the time I didn't particularly care for it, although the way it ended was surprising, which I appreciated. I had just found myself so enamoured with the style of the previous perspectives that I didn't feel the same impact. However, now that I've had some time to consider it, the shift is so jarring that it made the ending even more unnerving.
***Slightly spoilery bit over!***
Reading this was a unique experience, and it was a wonderful introduction to a new (to me) author, and an exciting first book from publisher, Back Patio Press. I have a feeling they're both ones to watch!
The unique narrative style could turn readers away just as easily as it could hook them, but I was definitely one that got hooked. The stream of consciousness style and the use of repetition made me feel as though I was observing the thoughts running through the mind of someone going insane, which I found equally beautiful and unnerving. Three of the stories are also color coded in a sense--red, blue, green--and it's a rather small detail, but one I found strangely compelling.
The perspectives are very similar overall, and may feel redundant to some readers, but I liked how cohesive they felt, and I actually found the repition (in a sense) effective. For me this was much less about plot (or even character) and more about being immersed in the feeling of losing your mind, and it actually reminded me quite a bit of House of Leaves (except I connected far better with Photographs of Madness).
***This next bit is a bit spoilery. Please zip down to past the next bold sentence if you want to be on the safe side!!***
There's a big shift in tone and style in the final perspective, and honestly at the time I didn't particularly care for it, although the way it ended was surprising, which I appreciated. I had just found myself so enamoured with the style of the previous perspectives that I didn't feel the same impact. However, now that I've had some time to consider it, the shift is so jarring that it made the ending even more unnerving.
***Slightly spoilery bit over!***
Reading this was a unique experience, and it was a wonderful introduction to a new (to me) author, and an exciting first book from publisher, Back Patio Press. I have a feeling they're both ones to watch!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 21, 2020
When I was 14, I had this massive crush on my friend Ana from my art class. She was a couple of years older, and as effortlessly cool as I was effortlessly awkward. She lived this bohemian life in a hippieish Parisian flat with her mum and brother (who I also had a massive crush on.) She was also a killer artist, mastering loads of techniques including China Ink, which I never could. She was a decent writer too, innovative, fearless. Her tortured vision of life was fascinating. She introduced me to some authors and artists my much more classical (stuck up) education (parents) had not yet broadcasted to me extensively.
She taught me about Andre Breton’s Ecriture Automatique, a writing technique used by the Surrealist movement in which you try to let your subconscious guide your writing. The idea is to write quickly, without worrying about grammar or sense or morals, to try to get into some sort of hypnotic state in order to completely free oneself from the narrow fields of consciousness and achieve deeper artistic creation.
Alec Ivan Fulgate is like my friend Ana, innovative and fearless and a master of many techniques, playing with genres, forms and even fonts. He is also like Andre Breton in his exploration of Surrealism, his sporadic use of punctuation, his poetic rhythm and his exploration of the deeper consciousness and the subconscious.
“The sunny sky so wet I drink from it and plant other things like bonsais that grow instantly to be fifty eight hundred feet tall I am a green garden green forest green gardens love me they play with my hair when I sleep rocks on giant leaves to sleep and dream of the green gardens green gardens green vomit spilling over the landscape I toss up no meals only the bile from my own sickness something I cannot avoid I remember telling Kyle we are only keeping him around because the girls like him only because the girls like him.“
Photographs and madness : Inside out is a four-part novella set in the same place at different periods in time.
A delicious and irresistible, warm, spicy smell emanates from a closet in one of the bedrooms from a block of flats in Little Street, of an unknown US town.
The first story, set in the 1920s, is told by Shelly Grinswold, a grieving and guilty widow seeking oblivion in too many men and too much bourbon.
“Fucked fucked god I’m slowed walking out of here walking with men in both arms both arms and leaving them pissing on the sidewalk when the coppers come to take them away but not me not me I’m too fast too much for them I struggle toward the night crowd I bump shoulders say watch out look out say out loud I am almost home and then I am home.”
Shelly is the first one to stumble on to the “handle of pig iron bleeding all rusty red orange on a white trapdoor” and to venture through, incapable of resisting the warm spicy smell, her own curiosity and the knowledge that whatever might happens, she isn’t leaving much of a life behind.
In November 1962, Linus Dixon, grieving his brother’s preventable death, follows into Shelly’s footsteps, from the closet down into the sinister hatch.
“The silence as I crawl is something I’m sure would make a weaker person hear things, see things. The only thing I believe I could compare this place to is an acid trip, only without the fun, only an ego death and a great deal of thinking about yourself in such depth it’s frightening.”
Linus’s progress down the narrow crawl space takes him to dark places, literally and figuratively. The inability to escape what comes across as a morbid purgatory forces him to look inside himself and at his guilt, his demons.
“My eyes I need to pull them apart my eyes my eyes back from the vision of the couch the couch”
In the 1990s, pothead bandmates Kyle and Schaefer squat in the very flat, whose bedroom has been rumoured to be haunted. When the smell – “lots of spices like some Whole Foods or something” – starts emanating from the closet, Kyle, ever Scheafer’s dogsbody, investigates first for never to return. Scheafer comes to his rescue but too late, and trapped in a hatch full of visions, he is left alone to face a lifetime of remorse.
“Kyle was your friend. Kyle was your friend. Kyle was your friend. Kyle was your friend. Kyle was your friend.“
It is only a couple of decades later and in the final chapter that the actual fate of the protagonists is revealed through the paper a teenager works on for a school project.
The author unveils some information which anchors the story into reality, providing answers to decades of mystery, while always preserving the abstruseness and imagery surrounding the hatch, leaving the reader to interpret its meaning as they wish.
The powerful style, the impressive ability to characterise in very few words along with the exploration of tones, styles, smells and textures throughout, provide the reader with a complete immersive experience.
Alec Ivan Fulgate writes with his gut and edits with his head, delivering a tight, visceral and haunting read.
Photographs of madness is the very talented Cavin Bryce’s Back Patio Press first publication. Get yourself a copy, you won’t regret it.
She taught me about Andre Breton’s Ecriture Automatique, a writing technique used by the Surrealist movement in which you try to let your subconscious guide your writing. The idea is to write quickly, without worrying about grammar or sense or morals, to try to get into some sort of hypnotic state in order to completely free oneself from the narrow fields of consciousness and achieve deeper artistic creation.
Alec Ivan Fulgate is like my friend Ana, innovative and fearless and a master of many techniques, playing with genres, forms and even fonts. He is also like Andre Breton in his exploration of Surrealism, his sporadic use of punctuation, his poetic rhythm and his exploration of the deeper consciousness and the subconscious.
“The sunny sky so wet I drink from it and plant other things like bonsais that grow instantly to be fifty eight hundred feet tall I am a green garden green forest green gardens love me they play with my hair when I sleep rocks on giant leaves to sleep and dream of the green gardens green gardens green vomit spilling over the landscape I toss up no meals only the bile from my own sickness something I cannot avoid I remember telling Kyle we are only keeping him around because the girls like him only because the girls like him.“
Photographs and madness : Inside out is a four-part novella set in the same place at different periods in time.
A delicious and irresistible, warm, spicy smell emanates from a closet in one of the bedrooms from a block of flats in Little Street, of an unknown US town.
The first story, set in the 1920s, is told by Shelly Grinswold, a grieving and guilty widow seeking oblivion in too many men and too much bourbon.
“Fucked fucked god I’m slowed walking out of here walking with men in both arms both arms and leaving them pissing on the sidewalk when the coppers come to take them away but not me not me I’m too fast too much for them I struggle toward the night crowd I bump shoulders say watch out look out say out loud I am almost home and then I am home.”
Shelly is the first one to stumble on to the “handle of pig iron bleeding all rusty red orange on a white trapdoor” and to venture through, incapable of resisting the warm spicy smell, her own curiosity and the knowledge that whatever might happens, she isn’t leaving much of a life behind.
In November 1962, Linus Dixon, grieving his brother’s preventable death, follows into Shelly’s footsteps, from the closet down into the sinister hatch.
“The silence as I crawl is something I’m sure would make a weaker person hear things, see things. The only thing I believe I could compare this place to is an acid trip, only without the fun, only an ego death and a great deal of thinking about yourself in such depth it’s frightening.”
Linus’s progress down the narrow crawl space takes him to dark places, literally and figuratively. The inability to escape what comes across as a morbid purgatory forces him to look inside himself and at his guilt, his demons.
“My eyes I need to pull them apart my eyes my eyes back from the vision of the couch the couch”
In the 1990s, pothead bandmates Kyle and Schaefer squat in the very flat, whose bedroom has been rumoured to be haunted. When the smell – “lots of spices like some Whole Foods or something” – starts emanating from the closet, Kyle, ever Scheafer’s dogsbody, investigates first for never to return. Scheafer comes to his rescue but too late, and trapped in a hatch full of visions, he is left alone to face a lifetime of remorse.
“Kyle was your friend. Kyle was your friend. Kyle was your friend. Kyle was your friend. Kyle was your friend.“
It is only a couple of decades later and in the final chapter that the actual fate of the protagonists is revealed through the paper a teenager works on for a school project.
The author unveils some information which anchors the story into reality, providing answers to decades of mystery, while always preserving the abstruseness and imagery surrounding the hatch, leaving the reader to interpret its meaning as they wish.
The powerful style, the impressive ability to characterise in very few words along with the exploration of tones, styles, smells and textures throughout, provide the reader with a complete immersive experience.
Alec Ivan Fulgate writes with his gut and edits with his head, delivering a tight, visceral and haunting read.
Photographs of madness is the very talented Cavin Bryce’s Back Patio Press first publication. Get yourself a copy, you won’t regret it.
August 13, 2024
An interesting concept for a horror story and I really enjoyed
September 19, 2019
This story, built with four separate and seemingly disparent chapters flows well. The gold here is in the writing style. It is unlike any I have read, nouveau, poetry, artistry. It is fresh like an Andy Worhol as seen in the early 60's. It is raw, intelligent, suggestive, and sublime reading.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews