Self-Published Sunday Jacob Wren Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed

I am enjoying the feedback I am getting from bringing this part of the week here @ The Scoop. I try to bring as many authors to the forefront as I can. As I was discussing with Thomas White during our Wednesday blogtalk interview (feel free to listen to the archived show) there are many excellent authors out there waiting to find an audience. Today I would like to present two: this and later on today The Chinese Conspiracy by John Mariotti. Different, unique, humorous, I can continue on, but let’s get what is between the covers first:
“Set in a dystopian near-future, Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed is a novel – a kind of post-capitalist soap opera – about a group of people who regularly attend ‘the meetings.’ At the meetings they have agreed to talk, and only talk, about how to re-ignite the left, for fear if they were to do more, if they were to actually engage in real acts of resistance or activism, they would be arrested, imprisoned or worse. Revenge Fantasies is a book about community. It is also a book about fear.
Characters leave the meetings and we follow them out into their lives. The characters we see most frequently are the Doctor, the Writer and the Third Wheel. As the book progresses we see these characters, and others, disengage and re-engage with questions the meetings have brought into their lives. The Doctor ends up running a reality television show about political activism. The Third Wheel ends up in an unnamed Latin American country, trying to make things better but possibly making them worse. The Writer ends up in jail for writing a book that suggests it is politically emancipatory for teachers to sleep with their students. And throughout all of this the meetings continue: aimless, thoughtful, disturbing, trying to keep a feeling of hope and potential alive in what are starting to look like increasingly dark times.”
Here is a little something on the author:
“Jacob Wren is a writer and maker of eccentric performances. His books include: Unrehearsed Beauty, Families Are Formed Through Copulation and Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed. As co-artistic director of Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART he has co-created: En français comme en anglais, it's easy to criticize, Unrehearsed Beauty / Le génie des autres, La famille se crée en copulant and the ongoing HOSPITALITÉ / HOSPITALITY series. In 2007 he was invited by Sophiensaele (Berlin) to adapt and direct Wolfgang Koeppen's 1954 novel Der Tod in Rom and in 2008 he was commissioned by Campo (Ghent) to collaborate with Pieter De Buysser on An Anthology of Optimism. He frequently writes about contemporary art.”
Definitely a different novel and one that forced me to think about my views and where I stand on them, and act on them. Wren has presented a very unique narrative to get his point across and I found it to work. Sometimes different is not always good, but this worked for me. Revenge Fantasies’ kept my interest throughout and the characters grew on me page by page. I could see an element of myself in each, no matter how small, and that helped me form the connection. If you are looking for a departure from the norm, something to take you out of whatever box you may be stuck in, then this is that novel.
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