we interrupt your scheduled viewing to bring you this community announcement



Unless you have been living under a rock, you'd know that the lovely Ghanima has embarked on her publishing career, with the impending release of her first novel The Labyrinth. Having won the literary lottery I have been lucky enough to have already read this piece of history....[you may all turn green with envy ...now] So what's it about?

From the very beginning I fell in love and felt my feet moving in time to a journey through madness and mazes. There is much to be said for a novel of such oration as The Labyrinth. A monologue of sorts that graces the eyes of a world full of the fantastical and yet never leaves the mind of the teller and the reader. A world of Carroll like charms, of falling downdowndown. A syphilitic Alice, if Alice had eaten the Mad Hatter instead of having tea with him. A world of doors that hunt, velveteen Hares and meaningful lobsters.

It is here in the Labyrinth were compass roses are ingested and names are eaten. The tale of the �Walker, The Seeker-After, The Woman of the Maze� of whom no door has ever caught. Be-jewelled angels and evangelist crocodiles, monkeys and lisping molluscs, an over grown chessboard and a book eating crone. A tale of haunting visions, �Visions yes, but no will. Will has no meaning, or has lost it��

This a tale you will devour over and over again, like a Magic Pudding. For each time I have delved into the depths of the maze and it�s chameleon wanderer, I have found something new to ponder and some other beast lurking in the shadows.

This is a Tale every bit as lyrical and complex as the language used to convey it.

If you haven�t read it, do so. It will leave you breathless.

I first read The Labyrinth several moons ago. This story took me to places I had never even dreamed about, and then I read it and it was all I dreamt about. The road goes ever onward, and I walked for miles in my sleep, running from doors, talking to monkeys and checking to see if my skin had changed hue. It is in all honesty one of the most beautifully written novels I have ever read. Well, probably the most since I haven�t really read many novels of such hard to place genre, (sticking mostly to classics and the odd fantasy, sci-fi ). Having little to do with any language aside from English, made up german and man-grunt (of which I am now highly fluent), the latin is somewhat of a challenge, but it gives me an excuse to spend more time on the net looking up meanings and there lies but more of its charm [it's educational!]. This is not a book that thinks for you, but one that makes you think. And that too is only one more reason, one more excuse to rush out and buy it for yourself.



2004-01-19 2:15 p.m.