Review: An interesting hybrid novel
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 2, 2014
It’s hard to categorize Akley’s book, Crossroads from Damascus: Mississippi Headlights. It opens with an introductory note indicating some of the “novel” is fictionalized from real events, and then the story begins… but, it’s not a novel with a single story, or even a single literary form, in fact I’m not sure it’s a novel at all; it’s a hybrid text, and one a lot of people will get into intensely! Through stories, creative non-fiction narratives, and poems, Akley delivers a meditation on the varied lives of pot smokers. Ranging from a trippy pot run road trip, to a true life murder investigation, to emotional ruminations in poetry, Crossroads from Damascus is always interesting and often surprising. One thing I really liked about it was that it can be read sequentially or picked up and read in parts, and I’ll keep it around on my kindle for just that reason. Even after finishing it, I’ve revisited parts, especially the poems, and drawn new things from them.