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Ariadne, I Love You
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this ebook
Jude is dragged out of Alt Country obscurity, out of the dismal loop of booze and sadness baths and the boundless, insatiable loneliness, to scrub up and fly to Australia for a last, desperate comeback tour. Hardly worth getting out of bed for—and he wouldn't, if it weren't for Coreen.But Coreen is dead. And, worse than that, she's married. Jude's swan-song tour becomes instead a terminal descent, into the sordid past, into the meaning hidden in forgotten songs, into Coreen's madness diary, there to waken something far worse than her ghost.
Read more from J. Ashley Smith
The Attic Tragedy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Measure of Sorrow: Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
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Reviews for Ariadne, I Love You
Rating: 4.138888888888889 out of 5 stars
4/5
18 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I found this story (novella, to be exact) entertaining and unusual. It was part love story and part horror, which I wasn't expecting. I do wish there had been more character development & backstory so that I was given the chance to become attached to the characters, but that's hard to pull off in a novella or short fiction. Overall, I enjoyed the story and was happy I decided to read it. It was definitely original and included a mix of genre's you don't usually come across.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jude hasn’t seen Coreen for more than ten years, not since the day she married Ben, his friend from university and former bandmate. He doesn’t let them know about his comeback tour until he lands in Sydney and sends Ben an email suggesting they should catch up. Ben’s reply tells him that Coreen’s dead but that Jude should come and visit him and his two young daughters. In a state of shock he spends two weeks maxing-out on all his credit cards before finally accepting, not just the invitation but also Ben’s offer that, until it’s time for his show, he should stay in their old train carriage in the woods, which Coreen had converted into a fairly basic holiday let.Through Jude’s first-person narrative the reader very quickly realises the depth and darkness of his grief but it is only through his flashbacks to the past, to his reflection that he fell in love with Coreen the moment he met her (when she was Ben’s girlfriend) that we begin to gain an understanding of how she became his muse for the passion he injected into his song-writing, his long-term obsession with her and, ultimately, the self-destructive effects of this unrequited love. I loved that the author laid the foundations for this on the first evening they met, when they drank, chain-smoked and discussed, amongst other things, the power of the artist’s muse (and the cost to the women who carried it), Wagner’s music, Nietzsche’s ‘The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music’, and the opposing forces of Apollo and Dionysius. Their intoxicated ramblings foretold the themes which echoed through the story and, for me, were central to my enjoyment of it. Through his present day reflections it becomes clear, as Jude spends time alone in the carriage in the woods, that the hand-written pages of instructions Coreen had left for guests have ‘brought her to life’ again for him, making him feel her presence all around him, allowing him to, once again, ‘hear’ her voice. But as he discovers (and the reader knows), happiness resulting from hallucinatory or delusional experiences isn’t likely to survive the acid test of reality. Just as Jude heard Coreen’s voice so clearly, so too did the author’s evocative prose enable me to tune into Jude’s, to get inside his head. As his grief spiralled him ever deeper into some very dark places it was an increasingly uncomfortable place to spend time in but, like him, I found myself caught up in his desperation, his grief, his doubts about his perceptions and in his fears for his own sanity. It’s usually what goes on inside our heads which can feel far more scary than ‘real’ ghosts or monsters and, just as powerfully as he did in his novel The Attic Tragedy (Meerkat Press 2020), J. Ashley-Smith has demonstrated how brilliant he is at tapping into these deeply unsettling primordial fears.I appreciated the fact that his ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling’ writing style created satisfying layers of ambiguity to parts of the story, allowing me to debate with myself as I read whether Jude’s ‘ghost’ was truly supernatural or a symptom of his gradual descent into madness. This questioning was reinforced by the occasional italicised chapters, containing what felt like poetic streams of consciousness from a disintegrating mind, one which was becoming increasingly agitated as the story moved to its conclusion. A twist in the penultimate chapter appeared to provide one fairly comfortable resolution but then, with his last chapter and a final twist – as shockingly surprising as it was masterly – the author unsettled me yet again!Although this novella is just sixty one pages long, the story it encompasses feels a perfect length because the author managed to make every word within it earn its place, not one felt superfluous. I loved how his elegant use of language evoked such powerful, creepy, atmospheric imagery and brought his characters so vividly to life – I feel that each one of them has become seared onto my retinas. Without going into any detail which would diminish the impact of first meeting her, Ben and Coreen’s daughter eight year old Margot, ‘the mirror image of her mother’, is a wonderful addition to the story!Two final reflections, I appreciated the very apt title and descriptive cover design – but you’ll need to read this brilliant story to discover why both capture something essential about this unforgettable story! With thanks to Meerkat Press for an ARC in return for an honest review.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An inescapable downward spiral of unrequited love, loss, and something otherworldly. An unusual story, grounded in the struggles of bleak reality while sliding into unknown shadows. Appearances can be deceptive and knowledge false.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As an introduction to the fiction of J. Ashley-Smith this novella Ariadne, I love You is short fiction at its best. The writing is gripping and beautiful. The story centers around Jude, a alternative country star whose flash of fame has passed. Jude is on a comeback tour that he would have otherwise rejected but has hopes of reconnecting with Corren, the wife of a friend, and old flame, who Jude learns has died. The story from there is inter-layered with the present and memories of his past. What is really wonderful about this novella is the space with which Ashley-Smith develops such a beautifully told story. Full of story and full of poetic force. Ariadne, I Love You is a novella that you will be reading more than once.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I got this book in turn for a review.I liked the book. The more you read, the creepier it gets. Not all the time. That is one of the good things. For example: I finished a chapter with a very creepy ending and immediately decided I would stop reading for that evening. When I started reading on the next day, I read a chapter in which all was? seemed? OK.The further you get, the creepier it, most of the time, gets.I certainly liked the end of the book.Why then did I give the book three stars, not four?That has all to do with me, not with the writer.I seldom read horror, so I cannot compare enough. The only two writers I can compare this book with are Daniel Koontz and Stephen King. They are semi-gods, so it is too hard to compete with them.Furthermore, I did not like the main subjects. I did not like her: she must have known what he felt for her. I did not like him: I have trouble liking people who on their very first day of university run immediately to a bar instead of going to college. Yes, I am a mum myself and I paid part of the study of my sons.But in the end, when you do not have my issues, I am sure you can give this book four stars.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Well written love story with horror intertwined. Country/alternate singer falls in love with his friend's wife. She dies an uncertain death but her husband believes her to have had a tumor. The protagonist never stopped loving her and entered into the same horror that infiltrated her while she was alive.
Book preview
Ariadne, I Love You - J. Ashley-Smith
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