Review: Transgressive and surreal in all the right ways
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 26, 2013
I love the title "The Hollow Dolls." The name itself evokes a sense of transgresssive surrealism that is embodied in the prose of its author. Right from word one, M.T. Dahl gets my attention:"Naked. Nineteen. Under the London sky."Rarely do first sentences reach out and grab. These words sing like the prose of "Call me Ishmael" or "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ...." Unfortunately, the rest of the work doesn't maintain the same standard of excellence.Don't get me wrong. At times, Dahl is brilliant. The work as a whole flows, but I think it's much too long.The story itself is about the various shades of dominance and submission. Dahl borrows from many sources - even her own life - to set the tone of the work and to tell the stories of the two protagonists, Winnie and Melanie. It's a dangerous thing for an author to mine her own life for fiction because it can either lead to the best prose possible or a sloppy mess. In this case, it's both.I learned a lot about things I was only vaguely familiar with, but I'm convinced that fiction is a bad place for gaining an education.The Hollow Dolls contains a lot of sex and illicit drug use. And a lot of other things too - many of them straight from the underbelly of life. This is both a strength and a weakness. A strength because it makes the characters come alive and because without those elements The Hollow Dolls would be hollow in the worst kind of way. A weakness because I think there are times when the characters seem to have sex (taboo sex, even) for no apparent reason - in life, that happens; in fiction, it shouldn't.Overall, I liked it. The punchy parts are the best parts. And there are a lot of punchy parts.The story is full of grammatical errors, which I found slightly annoying. A professional editor could have corrected many of those before publication, but it's a common sin with self-published and indie novels, so it's forgivable. Dahl, however, does need to learn to cut parts of herself out. Even her bio got wordy. I found the appendices, however, quite helpful, especially in getting a better understanding of the characters.I think The Hollow Dolls would most be enjoyed by people who enjoy reading transgressive or surreal literature, particularly literature where LGBT people are the protagonists.