August 11, 2011

• Hell on Earth, and Not in Small Doses

  

  Hell the town’s called, and a hellish picture Lindensmith paints of its high school. It’s not long since this young author was himself incarcerated in one of these Halls of Learning, and grim places they must be, if they at all resemble his fictional, small-town school, where all the cruelty and confusion of youth comes together in a satanic dance that culminates in nihilistic slaughter.
  
  The outer hell of high school is mirrored by the fiery pits of anger and emptiness within each of Lindensmith’s characters. Shallow, pointless sex, often between people who loath each other, the confusion of recreational drugs and quick-fix psychiatric medication, the jealousies of possession and lust, the rigidity of pseudo-macho ideals. Sometimes love is found in this cesspit, and then as swiftly lost, to be replaced by unceasing sorrow.
  
  Incessant bullying stokes these inner fires, and is usually performed by characters who writhe with self-doubt, themselves the victims of bullying or humiliation, while a mocking, ignorant teaching establishment ignores the rising hatred and terror. Nor is this climate of grief relieved by the “Christians” also boiling in this stew; hypocrites, who drone out trite formulas lacking the force of any kind of depth, values, understanding or commitment.
  
  All the foulness that can happen populates the pages of Lindensmith’s Hell, a hideous compression of small town evil, and Lindensmith’s writing deals in no half measures. But how much does the novel reflect real life, and how realistically describe the hell that would exist if our worst desires were always made true?
  
  Exaggerated? Unlikely? So you or I might say. But the realities of such massacres as Columbine High School say otherwise, with a far louder and far clearer voice.
  
  As an avid reader and writer, I’v followed the progress of this emerging writer since his publication of Mystery Man, and was eager to read and review this new novel, which I now have. And I tell you in all seriousness, I now need to go find a peaceful, dark place, and lie down for a while.

   

  • 9:25 pm
  • 4 Comments