Magenta Opium edition by Sharon Baillie Literature Fiction eBooks
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The Dempsey family takes dysfunctional seriously. The mother has been AWOL for 8 years, 4 months and 18 days, but who’s counting? The father gets up to something of a highly secret nature, details of which are a bit sketchy at present but possibly a bit kinky, which is detrimental to his hygiene but good for his overall happiness. The prodigal brother had been very naughty indeed. In fact, beyond naughty. Downright bad.
Meanwhile the daughter VERONICA is perhaps a genius. She’s definitely a scientist and arguably insane. Like many scientists, what Veronica likes best is routine. She lives for her schedule and shuns change. But when the police call unexpectedly at her house late one evening their arrival sets in motion a series of events that threaten to destroy her safe environment and sweep her away in a world of drugs, a dead body, kidnapping, piracy, extreme tattooing and legends. Not to mention the Devil himself. And all because of a secret ladder and what the police find in her loft …
In the process of being a genius Veronica discovers a way to make opium better than opium. Her wonder drug has the potential to change the world, literally and metaphorically. With corrupt government agencies and industrial saboteurs bent on stopping her, not forgetting that pesky dead body to deal with (she couldn’t just put it in the bin, could she?), will Veronica Dempsey succeed in bringing magenta opium to the masses?
Magenta Opium edition by Sharon Baillie Literature Fiction eBooks
A good book inspires one to write, so as a result of reading Magenta Opium, I'm compelled to put my thoughts on paper. This novella is a zany, black comedy, lightly peppered with sex, chemistry, and sex chemistry. The characters are very well-written and you want to know what happens to them all, even if, as in my case, I didn't like a single one of them. (Except the loft.) I don't normally read books and think, "This book would make a great film", but when I read this, I thought, "This book would make a great film". (O Coen brothers, are you looking for a new project?) That said, my favourite thing about this book is not the story but the writing style. It's a must-read for anyone who enjoys Samuel Beckett style word-play. (Think early Beckett: Murphy, Watt.) Don't be misled by the pink book cover. Like the well-known chocolate bar, this book's not for girls.It truly punches above its weight.
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Magenta Opium edition by Sharon Baillie Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
Veronica Dempsey's mother disappeared eight years ago. Her brother - Proctor Dempsey reappears in her life and her father seems to have found another interest. Veronica is a graduate student and stumbles across in the course of her experiments a version of opium which is more powerful than the real stuff. Can she get it out into the world when everyone is trying to stop her or trying to take the credit for themselves?
At first I thought I was going to enjoy this story but it gradually became so off the wall and surreal that it completely lost my attention. If you like the surreal in fiction then you will love this book. A touch of the surreal can lift a book out of the ordinary but to me there was too much and it just took over the story and became an end in itself. A few lists of things beginning with certain letters can go a long way.
I didn't find Veronica a particularly likeable character and in fact I found her mother much more sympathetic. I could understand why she chose to disappear with a family like hers. I did find there were some amusing incidents but overall it wasn't really a book for me. Other readers may find it is just what they wanted. I received a free copy of this book.
Unusual novella length tale with a hint of noir. One that you have to be fully alert for whilst reading it or you might miss a quip or two.
Some of the references might be a little UK for readers who aren't acquainted with our local supermarkets, food or Brit oddities.
The story is written like a running commentary with footnotes and comments in brackets. It also lacks paragraphs. The writing style is quite unique and it might be best to look at it with an open mind.
I think the author was trying to, and has done so, create scenarios with the impression of a constant narrator, who is commenting, explaining and joking around while the story unfolds.
I would liken it to watching a box fight, but instead of two athletes punching you have words, sarcastic quips and witty repertoires being whipped from one end of the ring to the other.
The reader also has to stay on their toes when it comes to the info being thrown at them left, right and centre. What with the missing mother, the father with a strange preference and the main characters world of chemistry and plans for world domination.
I received a free copy of this book for my review.
Title Magenta Opium
Author Sharon Baillie
Publisher New Libri Press
ISBN 978-1-61469-032-0
When Chapter One is presented as Chapter, the First and Chapter Fourteen as Chapter, the Somethingth, the reader is clearly cautioned that this story of a contemporary London-based family is not going to be presented in conventional terms. And indeed, the Dempseys are an odd lot, and their story is oddly told in Sharon Baillie's Magenta Opium.
Father Dempsey gets off by playing with non-sex toys with a prostitute whom he suckles rather than screws. Son Dempsey, a bouncer with a criminal past, compensates for his dad's infantilism by falling for and eventually marrying his father's surrogate mum. Oedipus, anyone?
The real mother Dempsey sacrifices all for a callipygian internet date whose character doesn't live up to his commendable butt. Crushed with this discovery, she retreats to the family home's loft where she produces and sells pirated DVDs (like Madonna, who purportedly doesn't want to live off-camera, mother Dempsey doesn't want to live offline) until she's arrested and sent to jail much to the displeasure of absolutely no one.
Daughter Dempsey, an overly sublimated chemist, gets into all kinds of trouble as a consequence of inventing and developing an improved form of morphine with seemingly limitless potential for altering the human condition. However, dosage is key, and when a private investigator dies from greedy consumption of the stuff, it's up to daughter and son Dempsey to dispose of the body, which they do in truly Gorey style.
There is a prevailing sense of author euphoria within the pages of Magenta Opium. (I don't for a moment believe the sincerity of the author's observation that "The best of the best of the miserable will probably become writers and revel in it anyway"). Baillie is bright as a penny, and she clearly relishes romping through her fertile fields of vocabulary with abandon. And for the most part, the reader is happy to go along for the ride being equally tickled with the contradictions and iconoclasms that occur at virtually every turn. Among the author's inventions are turning noun-verb combinations into adjectives, e.g., "the wife found man," and summarizing major plot elements between a character's given and surnames, e.g., "Veronica Is She A Genius? Dempsey." However, in this reviewer's opinion, these literary virtues eventually morph into vices through dogged repetition. I may have felt differently if I'd had a bit of pink powder at my side during the reading process.
If the reader makes an effort, it's possible to extract some serious themes from this predominantly quirky work. For example, is Veronica Is She a Genius? Dempsey a soul mate of Dr. Jekyll, who must be punished for her hubris? Is she, the creator of a product so innovative as to threaten the continued commercial viability of lesser substances, the victim of the establishment as in The Man in the White Suit? Is the son's eventual marriage of his father's dalliance an extension of the son's trauma in Death of a Salesman?
Dr. Baillie is possessed of impressive descriptive powers. Her account of the father's second childhood experiences with the prostitute and the detailing of the daughter's means of dealing with an inconvenient corpse are truly harrowing.
At one point, the author gives the reader permission to skip a chapter "at will." Actually, I found that chapter quite good, but in retrospect there were a couple of other, more drug-infused ones, that I could have lived a full life without. These chapters could have been composed not only on a Blackberry (as the author acknowledges in her acknowledgments) but on a Blackberry under water.
Taking the omniscient point of view approach to the extreme, the novel footnotes references to films with the author's mini-reviews of them. They are occasionally unreliable as when the skirt-furling sequence in The Seven Year Itch is described as going up to her neck and Monroe's ecstatic expression as "pouting."
In a work generally characterized by obsessive freshness, it is dispiriting to find a tired and tasteless word play based on the surname of a pair of recent U.S. presidents, and the following unattributed lift from Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, well breaches the barrier between homage and theft "One death in the loft might be considered misfortune, but two is downright carelessness!"
These reservations aside, readers in the mood for a bit of Dada, spiced with a dash or two of Wilde and an interest in the capacity of English to be twisted and turned sometimes beyond the breaking point will find pleasure in Magenta Opium with or without using the stuff. If the book is ever turned into a film, the Coen Brothers would do it best justice. Who else could handle with a relatively straight face a sister giving her brother as a wedding present a snakeskin trumpet?
I would have loved to see Dr. Phil take this family on. Most likely, he would have been the one ending up in the loony bin.
Sharon Baillie's academic background certainly shines through in her work, with odd and funny little notes and scientific themes popping up in the text. Like what the hell is a Picosecond? Turns out - it's pretty fast. Virtually every page is bristling with humor, amusing made-up words, and novel wording. Extra credit for all the references to the internet, social media and pop culture.
Looking forward to the further writings of Dr. Baillie.
A good book inspires one to write, so as a result of reading Magenta Opium, I'm compelled to put my thoughts on paper. This novella is a zany, black comedy, lightly peppered with sex, chemistry, and sex chemistry. The characters are very well-written and you want to know what happens to them all, even if, as in my case, I didn't like a single one of them. (Except the loft.) I don't normally read books and think, "This book would make a great film", but when I read this, I thought, "This book would make a great film". (O Coen brothers, are you looking for a new project?) That said, my favourite thing about this book is not the story but the writing style. It's a must-read for anyone who enjoys Samuel Beckett style word-play. (Think early Beckett Murphy, Watt.) Don't be misled by the pink book cover. Like the well-known chocolate bar, this book's not for girls.
It truly punches above its weight.
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