Iron Canuck Reviews & More: Review Tour: Anastasia's Midnight Song by M. Laszlo with an excerpt, a giveaway, and my review

ANASTASIA'S MIDNIGHT SONG

by M. Laszlo

GENRE: Psychological drama

BLURB:

Longing to cure her deep, hysterical fears involving a diabolical dream fox living inside her womb, Anastasia T. Grace takes a post making occult mirrors in the hope that she may someday convince herself that she commands the power to banish her nemesis into one of her creations. However, when a troubled, young Englishman grows obsessed with her beauty, she is forced to confront the pressing, all-too-real, misogynistic danger of male psychopathy.

EXCERPT:

Saint Petersburg, Russia. 27 August, 1917.

At dusk, Anastasia T. Grace collected the urn containing her mother’s ashes and brought the vessel to Moskovsky Prospekt Railway Station. ‘The cremation services went well,’ Anastasia whispered, holding the urn close. ‘You’ve been purified by fire, and now I’m taking you to be blessed by water. Baptised. Yes, Mama, I’ll sprinkle your remains all about the Arkhangelsk shore.’

A memory of their first journey to the White Sea whirled Anastasia back to the past—that time her mother had described Arkhangelsk as a harbour town. And in the days of 1907, that was all it was.

So, why did we travel there? A lady from the House of Fabergé asked Mama to meet a steamship out of Reykjavík. Yes, Mama aimed to collect a consignment of volcanic glass.

The hissing and shunting of the train brought her back to the present. It’s 1917. Clutching the urn containing Mother’s ashes, she pulled herself up into the train. Then she edged along the narrow passage and slid into the sleeping car. She placed the urn beside the bed.

With a rumbling of the wheels and a piercing whistle, the train set off on the long journey to Arkhangelsk.

Late in the night, as the train approached a deserted outpost and clanked over a section of the line lacking proper railway ties, Anastasia jerked awake. Sitting up, she looked to her lap and revisited that first journey, a decade ago, that moment the engineer had jammed on the brake and she’d been shaken awake as she had just now. What happened that night?

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

M. Laszlo is the pseudonym of a reclusive author living in Bath, Ohio. According to rumor, he based the pen name on the name of the Paul Henreid character in Casablanca, Victor Laszlo.

M. Laszlo has lived and worked all over the world, and he has kept exhaustive journals and idea books corresponding to each location and post.

It is said that the maniacal habit began in childhood during summer vacations—when his family began renting out Robert Lowell’s family home in Castine, Maine.

The habit continued into the 1990s when he lived in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem and worked as a night clerk in a Palestinian youth hostel. In recent years, he revisited that very journal/idea book and based Anastasia’s Midnight Song on the characters, topics, and themes contained within the writings.

M. Laszlo has lived and worked in New York City, East Jerusalem, and several other cities around the world. While living in the Middle East, he worked for Harvard University’s Semitic Museum. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio and an M.F.A. in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York.

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GIVEAWAY

M. Laszlo will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f4995/

My Review - 4 of 5 stars -

This was an intriguing read as well as a little confusing. Both Anastasia and Jack had their own journeys, crossed paths with each other, and continued on. I found the mental back and forth for both a little crazy but saw a spiritual connection and maybe a lesson. There were moments I felt for them, though Jack was lazy while Anastasia worked hard, mostly to rid herself of her internal creatures.