Magnolias in Paradise

 Leonard Seet brings his intelligence and wit and gifts as a writer to a broader audience in "Magnolias in Paradise" in a gritty, realistic novel... narrative style... reminiscent of the narrative technique of "As I Lay Dying" and "Charming Billy." Mainstream audiences will appreciate the intelligence of the narrative of this book in this genre, which is so often short-changed by lesser lights just out to make a buck. Seet has reinvented himself as a writer in his evolution from his deeply rich, engaging and inspirational books about spirituality to the rough ride on the mean streets of "Magnolias in Paradise." ...you'll definitely be engaged by this novel.
                  -David Lentz, author Bloomsday: the Bostoniad

"This book is immensely readable and is packed with fast paced actions and cliff hanging chapter endings."
-Ashok Shenolikar, Author of What Did You Say Your Name Was?

In Paradise, No One is Innocent

Ernst arrives at the Paradise train station with fifty-thousand dollars to ransom his sweetheart, and while looking among the crowd for the young man with a magnolia, a beggar seizes his bag of cash and escapes through the revolving door. Chasing after the rascal, he slams into his contact--his girlfriend's lover in town. Now, he must beat his love-rival to the money and rescue her before the deadline.

Magnolias in Paradise, which writer David Lentz compared to William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, is a crime novel and the first in a potential series. As in Larry Brown’s Father and Son, good confronts evil in a southern town. And as in Joe R. Lansdale’s Cold in July, an ordinary man gets sucked into a conspiracy, with psychopaths terrorizing a small town and FBI agents going after a corrupt sheriff. In the end, the man must take the law into his hands. But in this case, ending in tragedy. Here, he combined Will Christopher Baer’s surreal settings and mentally unstable villains, with Brian Evenson’s literary minimalism and heroes cursing their knowledge.

Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin

Iris Chase in her old age wants to let her alienated granddaughter know that the latter’s grandmother was actually Iris’s sister Laura. She tells the story of her unhappy marriage to Richard Griffen and his affair with Laura, who submitted to the man only to save Alex Thomas, a communist running from the authorities.

Iris publishes the novel The Blind Assassin, the affair between her and Alex, in Laura’s name, perhaps to compensate for Laura killing herself after learning of the affair. When we learn of Laura’s death in the beginning of the novel, we know it wasn’t an accident and suspect suicide. Midway through the novel, we may have suspected she killed herself because Richard had raped her, but the real reason was more powerful. Laura realized Iris and Alex had betrayed her.

The Blind Assassin is about the plight of women in an age when they were considered men’s possessions and their only goal was to satisfy them. There are plenty of novels and movies that tell of the suffering and dehumanization, but such a theme is worth telling and retelling.

When I read of how Iris married Richard Griffen hoping the businessman would save her father’s business and how she continued to submit to him even after she found out he had cheated her father and caused him to commit suicide, I wished she had the courage and strength to free herself from his grasp. I wished she Laura rebelling against the forces that repressed her. But she is Iris and not Laura. And she rebelled in the only way she knew, by having a secret affair with Alex Thomas and living a double life.

Margaret Atwood (Source: Vanwaffle at Wikimedia)

The Blind Assassin is a tragic tale and the greatest tragedy is Laura committing suicide after learning of the affair between Iris and Alex.

The tale-within-a-tale that Iris wrote and attributed to Laura misleads the readers to believe that Laura had the affair with Alex. What strikes me is the quality of writing between the main narrative and Iris’s novel, the former demonstrating Atwood’s skills and the latter Iris’s lack of. Perhaps Margaret Atwood wants to show Iris’s hollow life through the writing. The lovers in Iris’s novel come across as aloof and flat and they seemed out of the reader’s reach.

Though both Iris and Laura suffered and sacrificed, I like the latter more perhaps because she fought harder against overwhelming odds.

MEDITATION ON SPACE-TIME Quote

“I am an imperfect man living in an imperfect world, trying to weave through the chaotic interactions of semi-causal events with linear logic, contradictory emotions, dialectic wisdom, and mortal integrity.”

Meditation on Space-Time, Leonard Seet

Meditation on Space-Time Chapter 1

“Meditation on Space-Time is a strong pick for those seeking a metaphysical twist…” -Midwest Book Review

WHEN THE STRANGER STEPPED INTO THE CONFESSIONAL to narrate his crimes, which my vow had forbidden me from disclosing, I was meditating on space-time to recuperate from the ten-hour drive to Gilead, Tennessee.
   Dark night the boundary between reality and dream somewhere at a memory’s frontier fading near a singularity’s ledge surfing upon a probability wave across the space-time fabric through a neutrino sea skirting the edges of black holes searching for dark matter searching for the Higgs Boson. Photon gluon graviton clusters crisscrossing tangling and weaving a unified fabric symmetric space-time hydrogen atoms merging and emerging a helium atom along with neutrinos and photons annihilation and creation interaction and transformation the brightest night the loudest silence the fullest void the darkest knowledge…
    “Father, I sinned.”
    The confessor’s rasp stirred me from my meditation, my dream, and I yawned and inhaled the stale air in the confessional. A strip of light slid through the door crack and cut across my left hand as I turned my head and my hair dusted the screen separating me from the stranger. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and shifted to a more comfortable position on the hardwood seat. I stretched my left leg and kicked the confessional’s wall. The newspaper flew from my knee and rattled toward the floor as the article about genocide in Rwanda flickered between light and shade.
    “Father, I sinned.”
    The sound of sandpaper against steel sounded again beyond the screen. I twisted my body and my elbow knocked against the wall. I squinted but only saw a shadow distorted under the slanting light beyond the partition. Probably an insomniac who couldn’t afford to go to the bar.
    Two days ago, I was chopping wood in the forest beside the monastery, and had looked forward to enjoying The Four Seasons in Boston’s Symphony Hall with my friends Camellia and Ichiro. I didn’t plan on visiting St. Barnabas Church in Gilead but this stranger, from some hallucination, had foreseen my arrival and booked me for therapy.
    The penitent knocked twice on the other side of the partition. “Hey, dude, wake up from your wet dream, you’re supposed to say ‘when was your last confession’ or some crap like that. You hear me?” His breath was contaminating the air.
    Perhaps I should grunt a mantra. But I was only a monk contemplating the meaning of death, the mystery of alternative universes and other such nonsense. What could I know about confessions? When a man in a Mission Hill soup kitchen confessed to using heroin and stealing his mother’s funeral dollars to keep the habit, I listened like a Buddha, not because my wisdom had transcended words and even sounds but because all replies, no matter how concise, how insightful, how articulate, appeared as frivolous as a gilded coffin. In the end, my friend Ichiro bailed me out by impersonating a priest.
    Now, this insomniac beyond the partition, from some itch or pang, insisted on harassing a confession-phobic monk, who had evaded the parish, a.k.a. purgatory, by pretending to suffer from attention-deficit disorder. Had I wanted to hear about adultery, thievery, murder, or insider trading, I would’ve become a bartender or, unable to concoct spirituous potions, a pseudo-Freudian psychotherapist. Even now, twenty-three years later, after having one too many drinks, I would still dream of my former high school classmate Daphne, as she sobbed out her pain in a March evening. Her blue eyes, her blond hair, her smiles fleeing into the mist. In those dreams, unlike this reality, I actually pulled her out of the abyss.
    “You should talk to Father Jones.” I offered my wisdom to the penitent. “He’d be glad to hear your confession. Why don’t I ask him to come over? I’m sure he’s not yet asleep. And even if he is, he’d delay his dreams and hear your confession in his pajamas.” Father Jones, the tongue-flapping priest who had begun substituting for this church’s parish priest five days ago, would savor this soul’s secrets as a thief would Queen Victoria’s crown. After delivering this stranger’s message but before allowing me to read it, the priest had already complained about not having heard any confessions in a week. He probably envied me for hearing one the first night here. Amid babbles about apple pie recipes, all-meat diets, school shootings and movie-star divorces, his eyes betrayed the lust for confessions—pyramid schemes, clandestine liaisons, corporate double-dealings or plain old government conspiracies. I wouldn’t be surprised if at this moment his ear was kissing the other side of confessional’s door and itching for some tale, some yarn, some anecdote of unadulterated sin. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a reformed con man who had sold aphrodisiacs or perpetual motion machines. Or a repentant banker who had bundled junk bonds, sub-prime mortgages and high-risk insurance policies into kosher derivatives. But he better not be taping with a recorder.
    “You know, buddy, never confessed before so you can imagine I got lots to say, but of course ain’t got much time. So here we go if you don’t mind. Well, of course, even if you do, what can you do about it? To start with something simple, I’ve embezzled money. Oh, not from a bank or a high-tech company, no sir. That’d be dull and cliched as heck, not worth your time. Nope, I stole from a church and a nice one at that too. Well, ain’t nothing new, but the amount is something, you know?”
    “You should return the money.”
    “Hey, what’s this bullshit? You’re supposed to say ‘I absolve you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit’ or some crap like that. If I wanted to return the money, what the hell am I doing here confessing? Right? What kind of a priest are you anyway? Don’t you know your only job’s to listen and to absolve sins? What else are you good for? Anyway, why’d I return the money? Ha, ha, we’re not talking about chicken feed, if you know what I mean. You have any stinking idea how much I took? Take a stupid guess. Oh forget it, with your petty allowances, you’d never seen that much money in your life. What’d priests know about money anyway? Hell, man, I bought a mansion with a marble hall, a wine cellar, an outdoor pool and complete automation, you know, with the latest hi-tech gizmos. I also bought a Lamborghini Gallardo even though I ain’t into racing. But hey, makes me look macho. Well, you know, helps to pick up chicks, I mean nice ones. Hell, I enjoyed every penny of it, as I’m sure you’d if you got the money. Not that you’ll ever see so much money, you poor pitiful man. But you probably understand indulgence, right?”
    “If you’re trying to make me jealous, you’ve failed. Come, face me and we’ll talk, man to man. I want to know why you chose me for your hide-and-seek.” I peeked through the screen but the shadow doubled over with laughter and began choking before calming down.
    “Father, I sinned. I got two mistresses and enjoy every minute with them. I made love to a minor—”
I opened the confessional’s half-hinged door and slipped out of the seat. I stepped on an insect and tiptoed into the hallway, where the statuettes of Peter, Paul and John guarded the Creation fresco in which a chip on the wall removed the serpent’s head. I wanted to open the confessional’s other door, mark out the fangs and two-prong tongue and squeeze the serpent-neck.
    A door slammed, then footsteps echoed throughout the sanctuary. I scared away a rat and dashed down the hallway, past frescos of the Passover, the Passion, the Resurrection, and the Pentecost. I stepped into the sanctuary, where on the left wall a crucified-Jesus statuette stared down at the altar. I bypassed the altar and skipped down the marble steps. I sprinted down the aisle between cherry-wooded pews, while beyond the benches, under candlelight, the mosaic windows flaunted Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension scenes. Claw-like shadows darkened the multicolored windowpanes to overlay a second scene and cast phantoms onto the aisle and pews.
    A draft wafted through the aisle. A screech, a thump and several clangs echoed through the sanctuary.
“Damn it,” Father Jones said. “Someone poked your eyes out, you clumsy fool? Get a new pair of eyes, man. Don’t you know it’s against the law to walk without eyes? Ouch, oh my poor and innocent back.”
When I reached the entrance, Father Jones was moaning on the floor beside a golden chalice while, near the door, holy water dripped from the baptized donation box. The priest rubbed his back and took out a flask of whiskey. He gulped down a mouthful and winked as if a mosquito had stung his eyelid. “Didn’t like your advice, did he? Well, don’t worry, the important thing is you heard his story. Oh, by the way, just between you and me, one priest to another, was it interesting? Visiting a prostitute? Cheating the IRS? Stealing intellectual property? Oh, come on, you can tell me.”
    I helped Father Jones get up and sidestepped his whiskey breath. I ran through the candlelit foyer past the Madonna’s icons and exited the main entrance. The humid night air slammed into my face while a fly landed on the back of my hand. I flung it away, stepped out of the archway, and skipped down the steps into the graveyard. No footsteps, no shadows, only a raven cawing on a headstone.
    I took out the flashlight and highlighted several headstones. The raven shrieked and flew into the fog. I stepped onto the earth searching for life among the dead, but only found the stench of rotten eggs mingling with the epitaphs.
    The most generous person… Worked the hardest in the office… An inspiration for others… A pious man… Beloved son… Born April 1, 1979… September 2, 2007…
    I felt I had awakened into the wrong city, the wrong year, the wrong dream. If I hadn’t heard the confession, I would’ve been more peaceful, ignorant of theft, fraud and statutory rape. Blessed be the ignorant.
    Past the headstones, a fence stood at the ledge. Beyond the fence, below the hill, Gilead’s houses slumbered in the evening, while the town hall’s Tower of Babel pierced heavenward through the fog.
I came to Gilead only wishing to find Camellia, to know that she was safe, that she was well. I wanted her to break free from her nameless lover’s pull but preferred that she orbit around the married man than enter the black hole of her father Donald Larsen, that fugitive on the run from one Ponzi scheme to another. Under her father, Camellia had tasted enough pain and shouldn’t have to help him escape to Mexico or some Caribbean island, where on his beachfront mansion’s porch he would enjoy coladas and massages while his victims must dine in soup kitchens.
    In the distance, above Memphis, neon lights against the fog hinted at the bankruptcies, the foreclosures, the layoffs, and the Pyramid schemes powering the land. But in front of me, a piece of paper taped to a cracked headstone was fluttering in the wind as if thumbing its nose at the heavenly shimmer. I stepped over a decomposing squirrel and scattered the flies. I grabbed the piece of paper, on which a smiley face was drawn above Camellia’s name.
    While I glanced beyond the graveyard and pondered on the connection between the penitent and Camilla, Father Jones called from the entrance, “Don’t forget about this memory thingy. Seems like it might reveal something about Pastor Whitfield’s disappearance.”

Buy Meditation on Space-Time at Amazon

Quote from Meditation on Space-Time

“I would enter the desert alone, to leave in the sand endless footprints only to be obliterated by the wind, to walk the same path each day expecting the same path tomorrow, and perhaps to cease wondering at the bloom and wither of lilies only to linger for death. But no, even in the desert, I would seek a new sanctuary, to contemplate a grain of sand in a sea of dryness...”

Meditation on Space-Time, Leonard Seet

David Lentz's Praise for Leonard Seet's Meditation on Space-Time

"Father Lawrence is a complex protagonist: an intellectual man of the cloth with an unwavering faith in God along with a daunting grasp of physics, logic and philosophy. In graceful exposition here is how the modest monk views himself: "I am an imperfect man living in an imperfect world, trying to weave through the chaotic interactions of semi-causal events with linear logic, contradictory emotions, dialectic wisdom, and mortal integrity. On a dark night, I would search Polaris to guide me, but on life’s journey only the internal North Star could lead to that instant when eternity freezes time." The priest's professional work draws him into a complex series of crimes committed by a preacher named Jim Whitfield who is the antagonist representing penultimate evil -- a devil who cannot be killed as he brings waves of misery through the epic deceit upon which he immensely profits. The battle beyond good and evil between the priest and the preacher reminded me of the battle between Crucifer and the teacher in Alexander Theroux's brilliant novel, "Darconville's Cat." In becoming invested in his drive to overcome this satanic force, Father Lawrence understands that his own inherent goodness and worth may become diminished and in the process he risks becoming more like the evil that he seeks to overcome.

The priest yearns through a shift in the logic of space and time to discover an oasis in a grain of sand and so he finds himself dealing with life's grand existential questions on the shore of Thoreau's Walden Pond in Concord: “I had gone to meditate at Walden Pond. That morning, under the rising sun, the water sang and danced to the rhythm of the morning breeze, and the ripples crisscrossed to weave a lattice of light. The clouds drifted in the stream of air. No one else to taint the birches or to corrupt the morning or to smear the lark’s melody. I chanted Veni Creator Spiritus. Peace. Yet, a squall-laden peace. I wanted to search for peace, for kindness, for love in hypocrisy’s rubbles but the desert had opened its arms. I would enter, not hesitating, and choke on the dry air and collapse under the sandstorm. And yet, among the sand dunes rippling into the horizon would sprout an oasis if I could endure and embrace the desert as it had me. These hands and feet of flesh and bone, this heart of fear and hunger, under the sun and in the sand, to seize the fleeting peace at Walden Pond.”

Leonard Seet’s novel is about polar opposites and the dynamics of their conflicts and how these dynamics drive the laws of physics of a compelling, indeed riveting, story line. Leonard Seet has left no literary devices on the table to narrate his tale: people simply aren't who they appear to be, nothing is as it seems, what's done isn't always really done. As much as I enjoyed this story line of Leonard Seet, I was enthralled by the pure beauty of the writing among all the plot points. The scintillating writing is elegant, pure, grownup, originally cast, heartfelt, intelligent: there are dozens of examples of this beauty and here a just a few of the dozen passages that I read and re-read because they were so artfully crafted. Check out this poetic rhapsody from the priest: “Woe and joy to mortals who have tasted heaven, who have seen the dark night, who have encountered THOU. No eyes could gaze the midday sun; no ears could listen to the Siren’s songs; no hands could touch the stove flame. But the brilliance, the sweetness, the warmth.” And this brilliant bit of poetic science: “Bright night surfing upon the crest of a probability wave by a Fourier transform reached Hilbert space the wilderness beyond existence the phantom space of mathematics the mirror world where a kick there would cause a jerk here through sinusoidal ripples in the uncertainty between yes and no space-time emerged from nothing to exist for a million years before returning to the void for another eternity. In the horizon of the next galaxy a positron and an electron mated and gave birth in annihilation to twin photons streaking at the speed of light toward opposite infinities to re-encounter at the other pole of the space-time hydrosphere birth life decay death the cosmic cycle beyond space-time beyond matter-energy beyond I-thou beyond Alpha and Omega.”

The writing is simply breathtaking: Seet gives you credit for being a thinking person, a serious reader, a person of substance and high intelligence. As a Bostonian I reveled in the finely wrought stagecraft of the settings there. This literary novel is layered so that it can be enjoyed by those who simply want a good story and yet it satisfies those who want a book written poetically with substance and a style that is grown-up and intellectually complex enough to open new intellectual avenues. If you prefer intelligently crafted novels, then do yourself a favor and by all means read this unforgettable novel by Leonard Seet: the writing is to die for."

-David Lentz, author, Bloomsday, the Bostoniad

The review is on Amazon under the name Wordsworth and on Goodreads.