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“I got here as fast as I could.”
“Oh Dylan!” said Bronwen, rushing toward her husband. “I don’t know how this happened. What did I do to him? How did our son come to this?”
Dylan dropped his coat in the closet without hanging it up.
“Don’t blame yourself,” he said. “Maybe it’s not our fault. Who knows how these things get started? When you told me on the phone…I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t. You found a whole stack of magazines?”
“At least a stack! They were sitting on his nightstand,” she sobbed. “I only saw the cover of the one he was reading before I ran out of the room.”
Sighing, holding his wife in his arms, Dylan took off his yarn hat. When the hat came off, out poured Dylan’s dreadlocks, and they moved from side to side as his head shook. “Well, I guess I . . . → Read More: Forex
 TLDR: A retelling of The Miller’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer, set in 2009 at Stanford University. An aging researcher, Dr. Reeve, attempts to create a software program named Allison that can write stories. But his attempt to invent a machine that can create art stalls. He cannot marry logic and creativity as he hopes…until he hires a younger man to write the code.
FULL STORY:
Dr. Reeve, a mathematics professor at Stanford University, came into wealth late in his career from his wife’s life insurance, and as a widower he attempted to fulfill his lifelong dream of marrying logic with creativity. He funded his project with his own money, as the science foundations did not appreciate the magnitude of . . . → Read More: The Miller’s Tale, 2K9
With a bigger hole in the ice, Jacob imagined that the fish would be easier to catch. That way, he could drop the five-gallon pail directly into the water, put the dog kibbles in the bottom, and then sit back and wait for the fish to swim inside.
Before picking up the ice-drill again, he looked at his ten year old brother, Ethan, who sat on the other side of the pond staring down at his conventional sized hole. Satisfied that Ethan would not ruin the experiment by acting like a parent, Jacob laid the ice-drill flat on the surface and used it like an architect’s compass, spinning it around and outlining a circular perimeter of depressed snow. He lifted the drill up to his chest, dropped the point on the ice, and started turning the handcrank. At a rate of one per minute he twisted holes through the ice . . . → Read More: Excerpt from “A Town Called Immaculate”: Chapter 1
Hank Murphy spoke into the CB radio to the other drivers, “What’s pink and wet and you have to eat a lot of it to get your fill? Over.”
Blanks responded, “That’s easy.”
“Wrong, over.”
“How can I be wrong? I haven’t even guessed yet.”
“The answer is watermelon, over.”
“That’s what I was going to say, over.”
“Yeah, you bet.”
“Roger that.”
Ben Masterson said into his CB, “Sick, sick minds. It’s coming down heavy now on my side of town. Over.”
Blanks answered, “We are definitely underway. Highway 12 is starting to pile up. Blowing more by the minute, too. I was thinking, this summer we should plant some trees on that sharp turn by Broan’s farm. It piles up really fast. Over.”
“You do that, Johnny Appleseed,” said Hank. “In fact, write up a memo about your plan and have it on my desk in the morning. . . . → Read More: Excerpt from “A Town Called Immaculate”: Chapter 13
See the online review here.
The Observer, Sunday November 30 2008
A Town Called Immaculate by Peter Anthony Pan Books, £7.99
The titular town, a tiny Minnesota farming community, struggles to live up to its name. Beneath its Catholic values lurk such problems as abusive parents and husbands, alcoholism and gnawing discontent. It’s Christmas Eve and while the inhabitants batten down the hatches against a blizzard, they should probably brace themselves for a storm of secrets also waiting to rage. The hero, Ray Marak, has plenty of clandestine troubles, not least impending bankruptcy, Vietnam War demons and an eccentric son. But his wife Renee has awkward secrets of her own. Along with some clunky passages and a few shadows of The Shining, Anthony evokes the claustrophobic small town and stifling family obligations, both apparently inescapable.
Read full review.
A Town called Immaculate
3:01pm Friday 28th November 2008
By Jo Milne
A Town called Immaculate by Peter Anthony (Pan MacMillan £7.99).
IMMACULATE is a small, rural, town in America. It is home to Ray, his beautiful wife and their two sons and it’s the last Christmas they’ll be spending on their farm since being declared bankrupt.
After having done his time in Vietnam Ray is doing his best to put his past behind him until a deadly snowstorm hits the town.
Ray saves the life of his friend and neighbour, Josh, but his own son goes missing. Josh is the first to offer help to find Jacob but it soon becomes evident that Josh’s interest goes further then just ‘being neighbourly’.
I found this novel a very gripping debut with the odd comedy moment that anyone from a small town . . . → Read More: Review from the South Wales Argus
Read full review.
Admittedly, the title is a little worn, but for me that just provides me with the blanket of safety in recognition. There is more to this debut novel than its title however.
I like Anthony’s style, with its contradiction of warmth and coolness, the savoir-faire of a man delivering a carefully constructed story intermingled with the softness of a man who has perhaps experienced familial pain (don’t we all?). Immaculate is a thoughtful and provocative take on fidelity, but more so, an insight into the dysfunction of family life. It certainly made my upbringing of being abandoned in my cocoon to survive or no, seem quite pallid by comparison. At least I know who I am – and certainly, being dangled from a hook over open water is terrifying, but so is being in the middle of a pointless and unwanted war . . . → Read More: Doodled Books Review
A Town Called Immaculate
By Peter Anthony
Reviewed by Denise M. Clark
Immaculate is one of the best novels this reader/reviewer has had the pleasure to review in a long time.
Immaculate is the name of a small and isolated town in Minnesota that is preparing for a severe weather front on Christmas Eve, 1981. The plot revolves around Ray and Renee Marak and their two children, Jacob and Ethan. Ray, a Vietnam veteran, is a struggling farmer in debt, though his reputation in town is solid and filled with awe. Renee, his wife, has long grown resigned to living her life as a farmer’s wife and mother, though she yearns for more.
Hours before the building storm strikes Immaculate, both Mother Nature and social interactions with townspeople threaten Ray and Renee’s marriage, family and relationships with friends. The oncoming storm serves as the focal point of the story, and . . . → Read More: Review from Denise’s Pieces
See full review.
A Town Called Immaculate is the latest in the Macmillan New Writing series (actual publication date 7 December). This series has usually featured a remarkably high degree of professionalism in what are, by definition, first (published) novels, and this one is no exception.
The book is set in small-town, rural America, where a Vietnam-traumatised and bankrupt farmer, Ray Marak, is beginning to become unhinged. And it’s Christmas Eve.
This book is, I think, harder to categorise than many MNW books, and it belongs, I suppose, in that old-fashioned mainstream novel slot which seems to be out of favour with most publishers. The author himself says that he likes to think of the book as literary fiction, but perhaps it could fall under the family saga or the thriller category as well.
Another from the Macmillan New Writers series and this one eased itself into the moment with precision. Waddling around in my bombazine gown I felt in need of a good snowstorm, preferably descending on an un-nineteenth century Christmas Eve, bit of intrigue, some small town America and a page turner.
Not a big ask really and a good thing that I had A Town Called Immaculate by Peter Anthony standing by…
Read more…
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