I’m pleased to announce that Billy Mills has reviewed my latest book, Elle – a verse novel on his impressive blog.
The review may be read here: Two Broken Sleeps – Elliptical Movements.
I thought his description of the main ‘character’ spot on: ‘And then there’s the titular Elle, or “She”, Belle without the B, who is both a character and not one, and who merges at times with Christine, the woman murdered in the Brighton story.’ The text is based on Belle du Jour and the Brighton story is of a terrible murder. I particularly hope other readers will concur with Billy’s reflection: ‘What the book achieves, in the end, is to replace the double victimhood of Christine, once at the hand of her husband and again at the hands of his judge and jury, with a sense of her power, of her being, in spite of everything, in control of her choices.’
I describe the process of writing the ‘novel’ here, with some account of the backstory that is described in more detail in the book’s ‘Afterword’: Pages: My Verse Novel ELLE is excerpted in Shuddhashar 37: Surrealist Poetry edition. I also described the book again, on its publication, here: Pages: My new book Elle: A Verse Novel is published by Broken Sleep Books.
‘It’s a tour-de-force of a book,’ Billy concludes, ‘in which Sheppard makes the verse novel his own.’
Elle may be bought here: Robert
Sheppard - Elle, a Verse Novel | Broken Sleep Books.
