Venus Sings The Blues by Buck Storm is a hard book to categorize and even harder to review. It’s part fable/fairy tale and part gritty general fiction. It’s magical realism at its best. From Wikipedia: “. . . magical realism is a style of literary fiction and art. It paints a realistic view of the world while also adding magical elements, often blurring the lines between fantasy and reality.” The story takes place in a very ordinary motel on the edge of the Arizona dessert. Main character, Calico Foster, is struggling to keep her business afloat while very reluctantly taking care of a 15 year old outcast named Bones. She is joined by a cast of characters seeking something more – more of life or love or fortune. To say this is an odd assortment of people is a big understatement. Then Jimmy La Roux rides his motorcycle into the parking lot of the Venus and the world as they know it shifts on its axis. Jimmy emphasizes that life needs less. Is Jimmy a con man or a miracle worker? The reader must make that determination. All I can say is that the miraculous shows up, and people learn about what life looks like after getting rid of the unwanted or unneeded elements. Venus Sings The Blues kept me off balance. I spent a lot of time thinking while reading this book — that’s a good thing. Twists and surprises accompany the magic in ways I never anticipated.
See, I told you this book was hard to describe. But I really, really liked it and encourage you to give it a try.
Recommended.
Audience: Adults.
(Thanks to the publisher for a complimentary copy. All opinions expressed are mine alone.)
What if you could change your life and write your own story? What if you could make your dreams come true?
To say Bones isn’t thrilled with his dead-end job at the Venus Motel would be an understatement. But when you’re fifteen with no family, expecting any prospects for your future feels pretty pointless. You just have to roll with the whims of the powers that be. And the motel owner, Calico Foster, can’t keep herself afloat, much less rescue a lost kid. A job is all she can offer.
Why Jimmy La Roux chooses the Venus to land at when he rolls out of the desert and into the parking lot is more than anyone knows. But with a rattle of Harley pipes and a cloud of dissipating dust, he roars in, fresh from blasting through the cosmos, ready to change all of their lives. Complete with jeans, boots, hair and muttonchops swept back from cosmic winds, and muscles like ropes, he looks like he could take on any sorrow and wrestle it into submission. And he’s wielding a magic box that makes anything that goes into it disappear forever…
Welcome to the Venus Motel, where a million stars dance above the neon and things are almost never what they seem.
With a cast of characters including a blues-playing magician biker, a broken singer running away from her past, a couple of down-and-out crooks, a lovelorn cowboy, and a famous author drowning his demons in a bottle of rum, Venus Sings the Blues is vivid, quirky ride into the desert Southwest. Like all of Buck Storm’s stories, it’s full of humor and depth, and takes a lyrical look at God’s love and his pursuit of man in a style reminiscent of an engaging blend of Jimmy Buffet and Gabriel García Márquez.
Buck Storm is a critically acclaimed, award winning author, songwriter, and recording artist. His stories and songs have made friends around the world.
Visit WWW.BUCKSTORM.COM and get Buck’s award nominated novel THE MIRACLE MAN free!
Tags: Buck Storm, contemporary fiction, general fiction, magical realism
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