“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth”-
Albert Camus.
Could you sacrifice the greatest gift of all, the very spark of fire the Gods gave you, to save someone
you love, just to show them how easy it is to die? Cloud Pictures describes beautifully the existence beyond, of experience, only love would gamble upon. Faith.
“I see what you are. I see a soul.”
What grabbed me about this novel, you could say, in a personal way, were the questions the author asks the reader. As a book reviewer, I thought Cloud Pictures, was a story well told. Three dimensional characters with a good history, it’s an original story of an age old itch on the back of the soul, one that nobody has managed to scratch. Maybe until now. I loved the colloquial style, you felt as though you were sat opposite the author, hearing him read the story aloud.
“If I wanted a body,” said Veronica, “I’d have one of those. Warm and vital and beautiful. Not smashed up and cooling on a hospital bed.” The girl and the boy reached the middle of the stand of trees, and started kissing. Veronica stared intently at them. “Feeling your blood move,” she said very quietly “…All those emotions, buried in flesh…That’s what I want,” she murmured. “Skin, and the nerves inside it. I want to feel.” You can almost hear the desire and envy, the breathlessness in her words.
But…
From a personal point of view, I found it difficult to show an objective perspective of this story. I suffered a brain haemorrhage back in 2015 from which I survived a three-day coma. I often asked myself what had happened to my soul during those induced 72 hours of sleep while I fought for my life.
“Consciousness is something miraculous. It’s something we still don’t really understand. What’s
really going on inside coma patients…”
The author writes from a different perspective, of which, I have not encountered before. I do not feel at liberty to divulge in case it spoils the adventure you are about to embark upon. I enjoyed Cloud Pictures by Martha Mud, and award it 5 stars.
