THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL

I'm grateful to Neil Leadbeater for his review of THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL. You can see the entire review at the just-released issue of the ever-outstanding Otoliths, but here's an excerpt:

“Mooring After Loss” (2016) demonstrates the close association that can sometimes be present between the word “image” and the word “imagination”. A camera has been positioned in such a way as to photograph someone walking across a floor. In the photograph we see the floor and a left foot (the one that is in the act of striding forward). The right foot is not to be seen but an outline of it has been drawn on a blank piece of white paper and placed on the floor beside the left foot. At first, I misread the title as “Mourning After Loss” and thought that the blank outline of the right foot represented the departed one but then I reread the title and recognized how important it is in a time of loss that we still keep ourselves anchored to the ground, even if it is only with one foot, so that we can keep moving on, one foot at a time. The soul of the departed one is always close to us, closer than we think, in our daily walk through life. 

In this collection Tabios, always at the vanguard of poetic expression and invention, offers up a thoughtful fusion of text and image that is at once multilayered, satisfying and visual. Beneath the surface of her strikingly original artistry, she speaks out courageously against the horrors of injustice and makes a plea for all that is beautiful and tender in our fragile world. Fully recommended.