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The Ghost Of Understanding (Arsenal Pulp Press, 1998)
As lead singer of the two-person band Mecca Normal, Jean Smith is regarded as one of the forerunners of the Riot Grrrl movement-unapologetic, in-your-face music by women rockers who are front and center, no strings attached. Her long-awaited second novel attempts to find the razor's edge between order and chaos in a complicated, male-dominated world. Impressionistic sound-bytes combine with colorful, hyper-aware riffs in which Claudine, the narrator, invites the reader to participate in her subjective world of memory, vision, and flashback. 1551520508
"Mecca Normal band member Smith has proven to be as good a writer as she is a musician - one of several non-conflicting juxtapositions in her life and work."; -- VANCOUVER MAGAZINE
"The elegance and power of Smith's writing is shockingly gorgeous. She is no art girl pretender, but a fine and unusual novelist who could easily quit her day job for this sideline."; -- THE LOOP (Vancouver)
"A poetic document swirling with ideas and images. By jettisoning the linearity of realism, Smith gives herself opportunity to explore dream-like existence outside the usual order. The meaning of the dream may be ambiguous, Smith knows, but that makes it worth thinking about further."; -- GLOBE AND MAIL (Canada)
"...if you're a Mecca Normal fan, this book offers insight into the mind behind the voice...you'll appreciate this original experiment at the boundaries of anarchist drive, political debate, and pseudo-scientific poetry."; -- GEORGIA STRAIGHT (Vancouver)
"Jean Smith is a woman who deals in innovation - she hurled convention out the window decades ago."; -- Jill Dixon, SEE MAGAZINE (Edmonton)
"Excerpts within this fragmented novel reveal aspects of the cutting edge musician's life deftly. Much of this book is a sort of dream quest by a character named Claudine that is sometimes profound, and sometimes too stream-of-consciousness to be easily understandable. Some thoughts seem to be poems hiding amid prose. The disparate pieces in this non-linear jigsaw include everything from an explicit film scene that is meant to portray a feminist attitude to sex (but which only succeeds in showing male-dominated porn), to some truly insightful meditations on life as intelligent artist and woman. Smith's stylistic variety leads both to brilliant lines like "Men have a way of trying to get what they want by correcting women," and to the indecipherable mystery in another section: "The case before us involves the ultra drowning of the spiritualist's immortal body of tricks." Feminist perception is represented well in some sections, but elements like Claudine's relationship with a hard-drinking man in love with another woman suggests someone not liberated from negative patterns with men. If you can get through the extremely esoteric passages, the revelatory nuggets make this fractured mirror of a book worth a read. One senses Smith is on the edge of something unusual -- you want her to complete the journey and tell us about it in a way we can relate to our own lives." -- Independent Publisher (Traverse City, MI)
"Mecca Normal band member Smith has proven to be as good a writer as she is a musician - one of several non-conflicting juxtapositions in her life and work."; -- VANCOUVER MAGAZINE
"The elegance and power of Smith's writing is shockingly gorgeous. She is no art girl pretender, but a fine and unusual novelist who could easily quit her day job for this sideline."; -- THE LOOP (Vancouver)
"A poetic document swirling with ideas and images. By jettisoning the linearity of realism, Smith gives herself opportunity to explore dream-like existence outside the usual order. The meaning of the dream may be ambiguous, Smith knows, but that makes it worth thinking about further."; -- GLOBE AND MAIL (Canada)
"...if you're a Mecca Normal fan, this book offers insight into the mind behind the voice...you'll appreciate this original experiment at the boundaries of anarchist drive, political debate, and pseudo-scientific poetry."; -- GEORGIA STRAIGHT (Vancouver)
"Jean Smith is a woman who deals in innovation - she hurled convention out the window decades ago."; -- Jill Dixon, SEE MAGAZINE (Edmonton)
"Excerpts within this fragmented novel reveal aspects of the cutting edge musician's life deftly. Much of this book is a sort of dream quest by a character named Claudine that is sometimes profound, and sometimes too stream-of-consciousness to be easily understandable. Some thoughts seem to be poems hiding amid prose. The disparate pieces in this non-linear jigsaw include everything from an explicit film scene that is meant to portray a feminist attitude to sex (but which only succeeds in showing male-dominated porn), to some truly insightful meditations on life as intelligent artist and woman. Smith's stylistic variety leads both to brilliant lines like "Men have a way of trying to get what they want by correcting women," and to the indecipherable mystery in another section: "The case before us involves the ultra drowning of the spiritualist's immortal body of tricks." Feminist perception is represented well in some sections, but elements like Claudine's relationship with a hard-drinking man in love with another woman suggests someone not liberated from negative patterns with men. If you can get through the extremely esoteric passages, the revelatory nuggets make this fractured mirror of a book worth a read. One senses Smith is on the edge of something unusual -- you want her to complete the journey and tell us about it in a way we can relate to our own lives." -- Independent Publisher (Traverse City, MI)
Submitted on August 13, 2010 in By David.
