Without Cease the Earth Faintly Trembles

Equal parts fiction, poetry, autobiography and myth, these distilled stories follow a girl named June in search of her own beginning. They are coming of age stories, in which sexual and romantic underpinnings force June, both waking and dreaming, to struggle with her identity as a real person as well as a scripted character. While she sometimes appears to be no more than the sound of her own name, observant and deeply aware, she is grounded in the textured inner landscape that is her entire existence. Drawing on the irrational but evocative properties of sound and rhythm, rich in imagery, these writings employ a syntax of sensation o pleasure, desire, anguish o that graphs the nerves beneath the skin. In her small, fabled world, Juneis closest friends are a man who wears a monocle and a red chair that struts about and misbehaves in a way June can only dream of. There are moments in Juneis narratives, both for June and the reader, when the whole world drops away, and one realizes suddenly what it means to fall in some obediently human way. It is from these unfixable points that June considers herself, and all that happens o or waits in constant deferral o to happen.

Critical Comment

iPrecision language moving o not into the fabled edistancingi of fool-the-mind prose o but closing in more sharply, palpably upon the imaginary life of feelings as they mutate necessarily page by page. Amanda Marchand is so good at this immersion. You never know where she'll go next.i

o Bill Berkson

iA truly original and engaging collection that treads lightly between short story, poetry, and memoir.i

o Melanie Brannagan, Prairie Fire, 2003

It surprised me with its clarity and lack of pretension...precise and humorous...filled with compelling im, ages that illuminate...coming of age, anxiety, sexuality, violence, the body in innovative ways.

o NOW Magazine, December 2003

iMarchand is great at building a character interesting enough for the reader to spend so much time mulling over her intimate thoughts and interpretations.... i

o Broken Pencil, #26