Book Review - Wesley Stace
A review of by George and a podcast interview with the author
by George
Little, Brown & Co.
For a novel narrated by both an 11-year-old and a ventriloquist dummy, Wesley Stace’s by George is surprisingly coherent. The plot chronicles four generations of the performing Fisher family, focusing on the life lessons learned by its youngest member. Good rule: Approach a story told from a dummy’s point of view with trepidation. But Wesley Stace actually uses the “boy” George (as opposed to the real boy narrator also named George) as an effective, if sometimes odd, book-long amplification of the “literary ventriloquism” concept that inspired Stace. The author, also known as singer/songwriter John Wesley Harding, has carved out his own niche as a writer of prose.
4:15 p.m. Sat., Sept. 1. Eddie’s Attic stage.