EDWARD GAUVIN

Thanks to Ian Baran, librarian and blogger at the New York Public Library, my 2013 translation of Jean Ferry’s Surrealist-tinged tales is back in the news, part of a handful of titles profiled in two articles on Wakefield Press, that valiant publisher of Euro-obscurities based in Boston. In this “exceptional pocket book of 24 or so stories,” Baran says, “Jean Ferry has won over the everyday with extraordinary grace.”

On a side note: to date, Jean Ferry’s collection The Conductor and Other Tales is the only book where I’ve received royalties–not just contractually promised, mind you, but actually paid. For that I have my editor and publisher Marc Lowenthal to thank.

I’ll be reading from and discussing Serge Brussolo’s The Deep Sea Diver’s Syndrome tonight in downtown Mountain View at Bookbuyers, one of the largest used bookstores in the SF Bay Area.

WHEN: 7:30 PM

WHERE: 317 Castro St, Mountain View, CA 94041

Come one and all!

At his site The Complete Review, always a trove of helpful links and context, Michael Orthofer gives The Deep Sea Diver’s Syndrome an A-, saying that it offers “a remarkably full story, creating two fascinating worlds [and] a beautful conclusion […]a very impressive flight of fantasy.” At his blog The Literary Saloon, he concludes that it is

“a very good book. I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten more attention — not even pre-publication Publishers Weekly or (full) Kirkus Reviews reviews — but it’s strong enough that word-of-mouth and internet attention should help it find its appreciative readership. (Yes, it is kind of science fiction — but hardly just.)

Really — give it a try.”

(Incidentally, this is the 3rd translation of mine Orthofer has reviewed, and the first to break me out of my B+ streak.)

Meanwhile, despite misspelling the author’s name so as to make him more Russian, Matt Staggs at Suvudu is unapologetic about Brussolo’s SFnal qualities, and calls DSDS

“an unbelievably gorgeous little novel that lies somewhere between Inception and Blade Runner: a work of acid-laced science-fiction noir that grabbed me from page one and pulled me deep into the darkest waters of the imagination. It left me gasping for air. I’ve never read anything like it. It’s as high concept as anything Philip K. Dick wrote, and reads like a masterful work of magic realism. It borders on surreal. I love it like a beautiful and strange freak of nature that’s almost too good for this world: Hold it tight and keep it close, because You may never see another one like it again.”