Book Review #5

Title: Record Lows
By: CJ Green
Fiction
Published by Cardinal, New York
Star Rating: Five out of Five Stars

Anton Chekhov suggested that most people live the best part of their lives in secret. Now, thanks to CJ Green, we can see there are quite a few living the worst part of their lives in secret also. Green also seems to be suggesting that once secret-keeping is rooted in our daily existence, really very much like the roots of a great tree, its every branch knotted with lies, deceptions, and denials (including and especially self-denials, is there really any place for honesty anymore?

That’s what the novel seems to be asking, as Green builds a story fraught with tension, frustration, and disappointment wrapped in a dark and eerie narrative of shifting perspectives. His main character, Pauline, after experiencing a personally catastrophic event, which she tries to forget as soon as it happens, then weaves herself into yet another personally catastrophic circumstance whose aftermath is a never-ending string of denials that lead her, now, in this moment of the great Buffalo blizzard, to a comedy of horrors wrapped inside impossible scenarios.

Well, you know, what would the world be like if everyone had the presence of mind and foresight and courage and
steely fortitude to always take the high road? Without the low road, what exactly would authors write about…that would keep us turning the pages quite the way CJ Green does?

As a comment about his style, CJ Green is a much-talented writer whose characters are like so many onions with so many layers, which he peels back to reveal the heart that’s obscured by so many illusions. On his chosen topic,
I seem to want to quote Poe here. Something about darkness and red death holding illimitable dominion over all.

Congratulations CJ Green for your first novel! Already, I’m looking forward to reviewing your second.

–HR Novelton