Local “Bright Light” Dazzles with The Tricking of FreyaCelia DuBosebyline‚ Oct. 08‚ 2009This was her first novel, and knowing how little publicity she would get from her publisher and how undone I had been by the sheer beauty of the book’s jacket and website, I promised to write this review. My new friend Christina Sunley was proving to be a sweet and good person (spending her days as a full-time nonprofit fundraiser). What were the chances that she could also be as good a novelist as I would need her to be to avoid pretzel syndrome, in which I become a contortionist in order to transform my true opinion into something approaching praise? Dread made the blank space between “Chapter 1” and its first line seem vast and mocking. I was breathing heavily. Everything depended on these first words! Oh, thank God. The six words tossed me into a crisp landscape where something important was broken. Hoping for a healing, I finished the first chapter just in time to make it over to Diesel Books in Oakland for Christina’s first reading. I looked her in the eyes and smiled without any pretzel fears. |