MacLeish Sq.

MacLeish Sq. approaches mythic status in which time, character, past, present, alive, dead--just a few of the literary polarities inhabiting this writing--interact at a level no reader can accept without relinquishing his/her own sense of person and being. Interweaving Dante, Melville, Hawthorne, and Pirandello into a single narrative that seizes the essence of each, Must puts them together with such skill that the author lives on par with the masters. It will take an honest reader to admit--I have never read anything like this. --Jack Remick, author of Gabriela and the Widow MacLeish Sq. is a compelling psychological novel about personal identity, about loss, about delusion, and about the power of literature, of story, to make sense of one's life. This is a world of lost souls. In a work heavily imbued with the irreal, reminiscent at times of Poe, Must's two doppelganger protagonists, fractured and alienated, wrestle with their haunted pasts in pursuit of authentic selfhood. A masterful work of fiction. --Jack Smith, author of If Winter Comes The novel's surreal atmosphere is grounded by mundane details, as of the hot tea that John offers Eli upon his arrival, and the rabbit's foot charm dangling from the rearview mirror of a ghostly vehicle. It includes a vibrant, spectral portrait of New England, with icy winters, bowls of chowder, and visions of 'holy men' wearing 'whale-bone amulets.' Within a flow of keen recollections and displaced spirits, MacLeish Sq. is the story of a man approaching the 'final trimester' of his being. --Meg Nola, Foreword Reviews