Temptation, indulgence, exploration and shortcuts. Love and compulsion. An ocean in Kansas, the Magic Lino, the real story behind the one told by Robert Louis Stevenson, a chef dying of ennui, gathering bluebirds, paying with candywrap. And the greatest story ever told--by Asher E. Treat, of course. The glorious chaos of singing, prancing, perfumed and stinking, the dead and the busy, tragic and achingly otherwise--life itself.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Anna Tambour's wide-ranging collection of short stories 'Monterra's Deliciosa & other Tales &'
is a book you will want to read and read again. Her torrent of ideas and images comes at you fast and furious and washes you along in the current.
is a book you will want to read and read again. Her torrent of ideas and images comes at you fast and furious and washes you along in the current.
Dealing irreverently with a mix of ethical and moral issues as well as common-or-garden domestic and cultural situations she spins her enchanted tales in a refreshingly cliché-free yet richly-composted prose style which is never contrived. Her very personal cast of odd-ball characters; animals, humans, fish, insects, plants, machines and deities, interact in unexpected and thought-provoking ways.
These intriguing parables, fables and yarns, some only one or two pages long, some preceded with verses, are constantly entertaining, sometimes baffling and demanding, often comic and playfully surreal and now and then downright mad. If you like being led down the garden path and finishing up dazed, wandering in the wild Australian bush, then Tambour is for you.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars
3 reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Lovely, if inconsistent.
30 Mar 2012
By Robert P. Beveridge
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Anna Tambour, <strong>Monterra's Deliciosa and Other Tales</strong> (Prime Books, 2003)
For reasons that would take far too long to go into here, it took me forever and a day to finish <em>Monterra's Deliciosa and Other Tales</em>, which is odd considering it's a book I quite enjoyed most of the time. It's taken me almost as long to get round to reviewing it, and I don't quite understand that, either. It's not like I have anything outrageous to say or what have you. It's a collection of good, solid-if-not-remarkable-most-of-the-time stories that vacillate between fantasy and sci-fi, usually with a dash (or more) of comedy to leaven things. I could have done without the poetry as a whole, and I could have done with a good deal more of the book reviewing ("Literary Titan, Asher E. (huh?) Treat" is my favorite piece in the collection). When Tambour is on her game, as in, for example, "Travels with Robert Louis Stevenson in the Cévennes" (a fantastical story of Stevenson's trip narrated by his pack donkey!), the prose skips off the page and sparkles in your eyes. "Crumpled Sheets and Death-Fluffies," on the other hand, is a one-trick pony, a shaggy dog joke that goes on a bit too long. And I could sit here giving you balance all day with these stories ("Klokwerk's Heart" vs. "The Refloat of D'Urbe Isle", "Monterra's Deliciosa" vs. "The Afterlife at Seahorse Drive", and to be honest after all these months I still can't tell you which side "The Magic Lino" falls on...). In short, it's a story collection, and as with the majority of story collections, the quality is variable. But Tambour is a fine writer (fine enough that I augmented my print edition of this with an ebook edition--and I should caution you there are some formatting quirks to be found here--and then went off and grabbed an ebook edition of <em>Spotted Lily</em> when I was done with this), and she brings her A game to the table enough that this is a solid recommend. ***
For reasons that would take far too long to go into here, it took me forever and a day to finish <em>Monterra's Deliciosa and Other Tales</em>, which is odd considering it's a book I quite enjoyed most of the time. It's taken me almost as long to get round to reviewing it, and I don't quite understand that, either. It's not like I have anything outrageous to say or what have you. It's a collection of good, solid-if-not-remarkable-most-of-the-time stories that vacillate between fantasy and sci-fi, usually with a dash (or more) of comedy to leaven things. I could have done without the poetry as a whole, and I could have done with a good deal more of the book reviewing ("Literary Titan, Asher E. (huh?) Treat" is my favorite piece in the collection). When Tambour is on her game, as in, for example, "Travels with Robert Louis Stevenson in the Cévennes" (a fantastical story of Stevenson's trip narrated by his pack donkey!), the prose skips off the page and sparkles in your eyes. "Crumpled Sheets and Death-Fluffies," on the other hand, is a one-trick pony, a shaggy dog joke that goes on a bit too long. And I could sit here giving you balance all day with these stories ("Klokwerk's Heart" vs. "The Refloat of D'Urbe Isle", "Monterra's Deliciosa" vs. "The Afterlife at Seahorse Drive", and to be honest after all these months I still can't tell you which side "The Magic Lino" falls on...). In short, it's a story collection, and as with the majority of story collections, the quality is variable. But Tambour is a fine writer (fine enough that I augmented my print edition of this with an ebook edition--and I should caution you there are some formatting quirks to be found here--and then went off and grabbed an ebook edition of <em>Spotted Lily</em> when I was done with this), and she brings her A game to the table enough that this is a solid recommend. ***
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Beautiful Feast
5 Feb 2012
By Paul Cardullo
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
This is an excellent collection of surreal and darkly fantastic short stories from Anna Tambour. The stories contained therein range from funny to disturbing - but they all are thought-provoking and each contains a unique beauty. Well worth a read. By the way, you will find yourself wanting to try medlars by the end.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Stories that are exactly what they are
17 Dec 2011
By Julie A. Turner
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
I'd like to compose a nice long essay here, because this book is worthy of at least that, but am tossing this off while my daughter watches tv, and I don't want her to watch too much, so here we go, just quickly:
I don't read much fiction these days, and if I do, even less than not much of it is Australian. But Anna Tambour; what a voice, what a mind. It's a thrill to get down inside it, where it's pleasantly rank, a bit caramelly; the mind of someone who's done the hard work of investigating interesting things really deeply; especially natural things; her hands healthily dirty with all her fearless digging down where the slaters and worms are.
There's a fable about seven scientists that everyone in the sciences should read; there's a story about medlars that gave me a vertiginous feeling, a feeling like, wait, is this my world, or have I been completely blind all along...
Another about cannibals, another about higher dimensional murder -- and so on - none of them science fiction, as such -- they are what they are. Tambour fiction...
Ok, switching off the tv now.
I don't read much fiction these days, and if I do, even less than not much of it is Australian. But Anna Tambour; what a voice, what a mind. It's a thrill to get down inside it, where it's pleasantly rank, a bit caramelly; the mind of someone who's done the hard work of investigating interesting things really deeply; especially natural things; her hands healthily dirty with all her fearless digging down where the slaters and worms are.
There's a fable about seven scientists that everyone in the sciences should read; there's a story about medlars that gave me a vertiginous feeling, a feeling like, wait, is this my world, or have I been completely blind all along...
Another about cannibals, another about higher dimensional murder -- and so on - none of them science fiction, as such -- they are what they are. Tambour fiction...
Ok, switching off the tv now.
›
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4.0 out of 5 stars
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