So what
should I write about first, the author or the story? I can sum both up in
one word:
Brilliant.
As the
person behind the writing, Diana’s worn a coat of many colors, is the white
and dark meat of a Thanksgiving feast of creativity, talent, and
imagination. By no means has she gone as far as she’d like in the field of
literature, but she’s on her way like a rocketship from a sling shot at the
speed of light towards that destination, having already made a name for
herself and climbing that horror literature ladder. Her background has all
the makings of a stellar author in the field, her life experience fertile
ground for creating the same sort of story-weaving magic and energy as she’d
put into, say, clothing design, for which she’d once owned an exclusive
boutique and factory, or her magnificent art and illustrations. Her efforts
have made her a personality and a voice worthy of paying strict attention
to.
So
let’s get on with the business at hand, Phantom Feast.
“It’s a
jungle out there” is a cliché often attached to large cities, or when one is
about to sojourn into one, but in the small town of Hester in the state of
New York, on one particular darkly psychedelic day, all one had to do was
step out of his house, and it literally was a jungle, like a wormhole into
darkest Africa, and he could get swallowed by an awaiting python. In this
book, likely, he will.
The
jungle reality is unleashed through a dark magic of sorts surrounding a
woman whose weight increases at a rapid rate who killed her parents and
inherited their house that shares its property with a haunted circus wagon
in the backyard that’s turned into somewhat of a guest house. It’s really a
house haunted by the spirits of turn-of-the-century poorly-treated circus
animals who died in a long-ago fire, and they come to life again through
their framed paintings exhibited on the walls inside the house.
The
more the animals in the paintings come to life, the more capable they become
of bringing their painted environments out into the world of the living with
them, until the entire town becomes a very deadly surreal jungle. As it
turns out, it’s not merely the animals ghosts which are to blame for their
escapades, but the dark will of Erin, the girl who killed her parents who’s
gained so much weight she can’t move, who dreams herself a lioness and
becomes so much at one with the animal spirits she joins them in spirit as a
lioness and becomes capable of prowling about with a pride from one of the
paintings and killing people throughout the town when the paintings come to
life.
What’s
more, Diana involves the characters of three dwarves, who separately come
together to reside under Erin’s wing, who take care of her and live nice and
comfy lives as roommates in her home. Mickey and Isolde become a touching
romantic sub-plot, and they as well as the cavalcade of minor characters
shine vividly and blend well with the driving story which, as you could
hopefully tell in this review, is refreshingly original and reads like the
work of a writer who expertly crafts us stories that don’t sound like a
reinvention of something else, for a change.
