Review: An Uncommon Love Story . . .
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 22, 2013
Sometime around Valentine’s Day, I started seeing promos for a short titled The Axe and it made me smile. I assumed it was some kind of ironic statement by the writer about the ridiculousness of the whole love-and-romance season and the glut in the book market around that time of sappy love stories. And I also assumed that it was something I would never in a million years want to read in its entirety. Still, I like seeing what good writers do with words, and clicked on an excerpt to see what this particular writer would do because his other work, some of which is very different, was among the best I’d read in a long while . . .Books with gruesome murders, violence done by one person to another are not my cup of tea, and that’s what I thought this was, but still, from the very first sentence—“Melvin Tolliver scanned the sidewalks on both sides of Springwood Avenue as he drove the Coupe de Ville slowly up the street, looking for a hooker.”—I was pulled in. The scene was vivid and visual and so crisply described that I wasn’t just reading about Melvin, I was seeing him in his car doing a slow crawl, leaning slightly and looking out the windows. And later, as I read Melvin’s thoughts, I wanted to know more about him. He didn’t appear to me to be the kind of person who would be the subject of a story titled The Axe which to my biased mind meant that he had depth and mystery, not the kinds of characteristics you expect in what I thought would be some blood-soaked romp. And then all hell broke loose. But the hell that broke loose was of a very different kind than I expected, and all throughout it, my impression of Melvin's basic nature was confirmed - he did have depth, and was mysterious and that kept me wanting more.The Axe is equal parts noir fiction, suspense and yes, romance. But not romance in the traditional sense. This is about as close to a traditional romance as a turnip is to a doorknob, but it does tackle the issue of love’s basic irrationality, and how loving the wrong person can haunt us—if we let it—for decades to come. One particular scene—that I can’t describe without ruining the story for you—managed to be both brutal and poignant, both shocking and tender. But at the end of the day, this short was very appropriate to the Valentine season, just not at all in the way that I expected. I highly recommend it. My only complaint is that what should have been a series is a short. Like me, I guarantee, you're going to finish it hoping that you haven't seen the last of Melvin Tolliver.