Review: `Men just aren't in touch with their emotions, or if they are at times, they are too blunt about them.'
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 18, 2014
Jason Akley. We know too little about him. He is the son of a colonel in the United States Air Force, and has traveled extensively across America and Europe following his father's military assignments. He currently resides in Illinois, enjoying the presence of his two daughters. He started writing stories at the age of eight, and has had his poetry published in two books. He is the author of children's books (`Sweet Pea and the Bumble Bee' and `The Candlestick') the hefty tome `Lazarus', the experimental book `Rick's Place', and `The Psalmist'. Akley has a BS degree from Tulane University in physics and mathematical economics. But to discover what the man is truly about it is necessary to read his books. This reviewer has now read his entire output and his ability to connect with the reader is similar to the gift that imbues Bukowski's writings, the poetic balance of such poets as John Berryman, Allen Ginsberg, and Hart Crane, and the imagination and flights of fantasy that circle reality like few others writing today.SALTED WITH SALT: Writer Solomon Cross doesn't quite fit in - strange shoes to fit strange feet. Odd relationships with people that cross his life path - and in trying to find some significance to it all he piles his necessities into his car hand heads across country to meet up with college friends. The story is his Sol's journey - and as the author has summarized, `it is a universal voyage into the tragedy and comedy of human nature; a sentimental journey that celebrates life in all its nuances for everyone to enjoy. It is an examination of Sol's imperfections--sometimes ugly, but at the same time beautiful, adding spice to life and sculpting his humanity.' On his journey he explores the creative process, aware of his flaws and fallibility, writing sic stories that reference to the Seven Deadly Sins only to discover that what he has written are mirror reflections of his own flaws. It is the conversational style Sol has with people he visits interspersed with his stories that makes reading this little novella such a pleasure.THE ALTAR OF SILENCE concerns John, Jim and Ray, three friends since college rooming days whose tales share how life can inadvertently pass us by on our quest for adulthood.  Jim is a surfer and perennial teenager who goes from job to job and woman to woman; John is the solid but boring married man with a wife, kids, and a mortgage; Ray has the terrible past that threatens to ruin the man he could become. a story of lost youth and lessons that have yet to be learned - John, Jim and Ray are three friends know each other as rooming together in college. Jim is the surfer-the perennial teenager who goes from job to job and woman to woman; John (the narrator) is the solid married man with a wife, kids, and a mortgage; then there's Ray, rather on the outside because of his association with the shooting of his brother, a fact that threatens to ruin the man he could become. Lost youth and the lesson of living as a purposeful adult that must be learned.In these brief novellas Jason Akley is often at his best, as though confined space rations his attention to deal with simply gut level emotions without extraneously wanderings. Pungent, reader friendly, these stories aim right for the gut and score. Grady Harp, May 14