Lance Blomgren

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

This is just one of a whole series of incredibly good-looking books I've received in the last few years from various Canadian small presses, one of the many benefits of living in a country that spends so much government money on the arts (nearly all of these books have the Canadian Council on the Arts listed on their copyright pages as a part financier of their projects); this one, for example, written by Goodreads regular Lance Blomgren and put out by the always excellent conundrum press, is a series of "micro-stories" that are all conceptually based around a sequence of walk-up apartments and stores and their resulting interior environments, telling a nebulous tale of relationships and alienation among a group of urban ne'er-do-wells that isn't exactly traditionally linear, but unlike more experimental work can at least be narratively followed from one short bit to the next. The story itself, although not bad, is no great shakes either, the kind of thing you'd expected from a typical clever MFA student; but Walkups is getting a few extra points today simply for being designed and outputted so incredibly sharply, one of the few saving graces among trade paperbacks these days that's going to allow a select amount of them to still be financial successes. It comes recommended to those looking for something unusual and of high quality.

Out of 10: 8.4… (meer)