Milk of Amnesia

Donna Lethal is a personal friend, actress in a couple of my films and accomplice in several other things so I wouldn’t write a review of her book unless I liked it and luckily.. I do.

Her book is fiction but taken from stories and events inspired from real life which is, considering some of the characters in this book, a very daring thing. She’s had all sorts of nasty emails as a result. This shows just how stupid some people can be. If you recognize yourself in a story in an unflattering way, but the names etc have been changed, why on earth would you tell everyone who will listen that it really is you? Wouldn’t common sense advise you to keep it to yourself? Besides... what if it really isn’t you in the end? You’ve just told the world you think you are an asshole, non?

The book is a really quick read... I read it all in almost one sitting, going from each short chapter to another, Donna’s prose dragging me along to the next one until I was done. The most disturbing elements are told with wit and humor. You may find yourself chuckling about some things we all know we really shouldn’t be chuckling about. Donna doesn't go into graphic details of things, preferring instead to keep it moving along and letting the reader to make up their own minds on what think about what’s going on. There is no psyche-babble or “deep examinations of her very soul” here, only matter of fact little vignettes of life that add up to something meaningful without having to take you by the hand to give “meaning” to it all. I like being treated as an intelligent adult and this book does just that.

My only beef with is the book itself. As a designer, it was pretty obvious what happened... someone other than Amber Sexton, designer of the excellent cover, took over the rest of the book. (It’s happened to me also.) The font is all wrong... the typography takes you away from the experience, not into it as it should. The spine (in my copy anyway) is off. The ads in the back for other New Texture books look like a high school fanzine. Chapters end visually in a very awkward fashion with a couple orphaned lines on an otherwise blank page. Only Lethal’s compelling storytelling keeps you reading because you know it’s worth it.

Buy it here. Now.