A fantastically generous in-depth review from Judy Darley for An Unfamiliar Landscape!
Extract from book review by Judy Darley
An Unfamiliar Landscape
Amanda Huggins
...If you’ve read Amanda Huggins’ fiction before, you’ll be aware of the richness of her writing. Equally comfortable writing page-long tales, novels and poetry, Huggins appears to inhabit the worlds she conjures, adding details with the power to be both delicious and disconcerting.
In An Unfamiliar Landscape, Huggins’ third full-length collection, the opening short story Aleksandr offers vapour trails of backstory and future story, so that when it ended, it left me hungry and eager for more.
“I know he hates being on land, that he feels tied to the sea by an invisible thread, that it pulls him back with every ebbing tide.”
It’s easy to fall hard for Huggins’ characters, who spring from pages fully formed and eager to make your acquaintance. Their emotions are deftly, colourfully painted, with yearning a key trait. Even seen through others’ eyes, many seem wistful and searching, making me want to offer solace.
Huggins is able to weave more into a single
paragraph than many achieve in pages of text, adding texture and
significance to the worlds she creates for her characters to inhabit.
Many of these worlds are salt-scented UK coastal settings, while others
lure us further away, inviting us to explore Tokyo, Paris, Berlin and
other places....
You can read the full review here
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