Anastasia’s Midnight Song by M. Laszlo


Anastasia’s Midnight Song by M. Laszlo
Publisher: Alkira Publishing
Genre: Fantasy, Historical Fiction
Rated: 4 stars
Review by Rose

St Petersburg, 1917

French Huguenot Anastasia believes working in one of Sinai’s mirror factories will allow her to trap the imaginary Arctic Fox which lives in her womb.

Meanwhile, Jack escapes from London and travels to Sinai to avoid being conscripted to fight in the trenches. His strange imaginings do little to alleviate his feelings of cowardice.

When they meet, Jack is seized with a fierce desire to possess her, and nothing can diminish his obsessive urge to be noticed by her, despite her obvious disgust of his crude advances.

Their journeys twist together like a fugue, filled with fantastical delays, as they both fail to accomplish what they set out to do. On a quest for moral truths and unable to escape the consequences of their false beliefs, they relentlessly approach the acute phase of their schizophrenia.

Anastasia’s Midnight Song is a revelatory, hallucinatory account of the growing insanity of two young people who happen to be in the same place at the same time.

M. Laszlo has penned an epic journey into madness doubled, and the intersection of Anastasia and Jack and their issues leads the reader to join their travel. The book is beautifully written and immerses the reader into a surreal and nearly magical world.

The world created for this book goes beyond the physical setting of early 20th century St. Petersburg and introduces the reader into a world that is dreamlike… into the worlds that Jack and Anastasia reside in as their mental problems grow more pronounced. At times, for the reader, it’s not clear what is reality and what is inside their minds. I feel this is the writer’s intent…to draw us into their own thoughts and feelings. To let us feel and see, just for a short time, what it’s like.

This is a book that, while it was sometimes hard to follow it has also proven to be hard to forget. I am looking forward to rereading it, because I think there are even more depths to discover. Thank you, Mr. Laszlo, for providing a deeply satisfying and, at the same time, a deeply unsettling book.

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Top Five Books of All Time by M. Laszlo – Guest Blog and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. M. Laszlo will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Top Five Books of All Time

Little Pictures of Japan

This book was published by the Book House for Children in Chicago, and it’s an anthology of profound and beautiful haikus from the Shogun era mixed with lovely sketches by Katharine Sturges. This book makes me happy and at peace as no other book can do. Here’s a personal favorite: ‘The end of autumn/And some crows/Perched upon a withered branch.’ By the way, that haiku was written by Basho—arguably Japan’s greatest poet.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Heinlein’s most famous novel has to be on this list. It isn’t just a great, thought-provoking science fiction work. The story quite obviously parallels the Gospel. And that was why it was so fun to read the work: the reader is constantly toggling between Heinlein and whatever the evangelist, always trying to compare and to contrast the two very different messianic tales. Perhaps my favorite scene is the one in which nothing much happens. Jubal Harshaw is at home one night and looks out at his backyard and softly-lit swimming pool. For a moment, he studies the Martian, Valentine Michael Smith, and wonders if he doesn’t resemble Michelangelo’s David—right down to the ‘puppyish’ hands. The writing is beautiful, suffice it to say.

Hesiod’s Works and Days

Read this one in English translation. Loved it. Hesiod records all the basic primordial myths regarding the creation and the rise of humankind. And he writes in the most poetic and lucid way. The story of Pandora’s Box might seem misogynistic to some, but even so, it’s a beautiful tale. And what about the story of Prometheus? Has anyone ever come up with a better idea than to write a book purporting to explain the origin of fire? And has anyone ever come up with a more interesting character than Prometheus? I don’t think so.

The Three Musketeers

Read this one in English translation, too. Normally, it offends me to read a book that makes warfare and violence seem like fun; nevertheless, The Three Musketeers will have to be the proverbial exception to prove the rule. The plot is riveting. No other book can compare. Let’s not forget that according to Aristotle nothing is more important than mythos or plot. The book reminded me of the biblical books of Samuel, too. Still, everything is reversed. In Scripture, young David is loyal to the clergy, and the statist, Saul, is the villain. In the work by Dumas, Dartagnan is loyal to the state—and Cardinal Richelieu is the evildoer.

Frankenstein

Speaking of Prometheus, how can we forget Mary Shelley’s masterpiece? Perhaps the best thing about it is that it’s a triumph of point of view. Everyone gets a say—both the Modern Prometheus and the Creature, too. It seems to me that the best horror stories tend to vary point of view. Perhaps that’s because when we are frightened we notice different, erroneous things than others do. Our imagination runs wild. Who knows. One other poignant thing: the Creature longs for a companion. In some respects then, the book is about loneliness itself.

Obsessed with learning the origins of the cosmos, the actual meaning of life, and the true purpose of civilization, a fine Scotsman named Fingal T. Smyth dedicates himself to the study of Plato’s most extraordinary ideas. Convinced of Plato’s belief that humankind possesses any and all innate knowledge deep within the collective unconscious mind, Fingal soon conducts a series of bold, pioneering occult-science experiments by which to resolve the riddle of the universe once and for all. However, Fingal forgets how violent and perilous the animal impulses that reside in the deepest recesses of the unconscious mind. And when Fingal unleashes a mysterious avatar of his innate knowledge, the entity appears as a burning man and immediately seeks to manipulate innocent and unsuspecting people everywhere into immolating themselves. Now, with little hope of returning the fiery figure into his being, Fingal must capture his nemesis before it destroys the world.

Enjoy an Excerpt

Autumn, 1907: late one morning, some kind of torrid, invisible beast seemed to wrap itself all around Fingal T. Smyth’s body. Each one of his toes twitching fiercely, he exited the castle and scanned the distant, Scottish Highlands. Go back where you came from. As the entity wrapped itself tighter all about his person, Fingal blinked back his tears. I’m melting, I am. Aye, it’s the heat of fusion.

Gradually, the beast’s heartbeat became audible—each pulsation. At the same time, too, the illusory heat of transformation emitted an odor as of oven-roasted peppercorns dissolving in a cup of burnt coffee.

Over by the gatehouse, Fräulein Wunderwaffe appeared—the little German girl wearing a plain-sewn robe and square-crown bowler. In that moment, she no longer seemed to be a sickly child of seven years: her inscrutable expression resembled that of a wise, indifferent cat.

Perhaps even some kind of lioness. Fingal cringed, and he recalled a fragment of conversation from three weeks earlier.

“She suffers from a most unnatural pathology, an anguished, maniacal obsession with cats,” Doktor Hubertus Pflug had explained. “Ever since the poor girl was a baby, she has always regarded it her fate to one day metamorphose into a glorious panther, for she believes herself to be ein Gestaltwandler. Do you know this word? It means shapeshifter and refers to someone who possesses the power to take the form of anything in nature.”

The heat radiated up and down Fingal’s spine now, and his thoughts turned back to the present. Aye, it’s a change of phase. I’m melting into a chemical compound. Despite all, he greeted the girl and willed himself to flash a grin.

About the Author

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

M. Laszlo is an aging recluse who lives in Bath, Ohio. Rumor holds that his pseudonym is a reference to Victor Laszlo, a character in the classic film Casablanca. On the Threshold is his first release with the acclaimed, Australian hybrid house AIA Publishing. Oddly, M. Laszlo insists that his latest work, On the Threshold, does in fact provide the correct answer to the riddle of the universe.

Buy the book at AIA Publishing

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On the Threshold by M. Laszlo – Interview and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. One randomly chosen winner via rafflecopter will win a $25 Amazon/BN.com gift card. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

What are your favorite TV shows?
Honestly, none. Nothing compares to watching old movies late at night.

What is your favorite meal?
Fish and chips. The best fish to batter in that way would be either haddock or rock salmon. Also, all the great British writers and artists and musicians tend to love fish and chips. Two things to remember, too, if you want your battered fish to taste just right: tartar sauce and malt vinegar.

If you were to write a series of novels, what would it be about?
The series would be worthwhile only if a certain significant theme happened to be the thing that served to bind the individual works together. For example, it would be great to write a trilogy about the various aspects of academia. This is because virtually nothing in a person’s life could ever be more fundamental than the educational process itself.

Is there a writer you idolize? If so, who?
No writer really deserves to be idolized. On the other hand, a great writer can teach us something about some aspect of the phenomenological world. Also, just about any writer could hypothetically make the reader think and discover something or come to some understanding or epiphany. For example, it could be that Nietzsche or some other famous figure like that fulfills the purpose. Or, it could be that a well-written comic book or obscure graphic novel triggers a big breakthrough. That’s why there’s no good reason to be too judgmental with regard to books or anything else in the world.

How did you come up for the title of this book?
I pinched the title from the name of an obscure, nineteenth century poem by Amy Levy. In the poem, she describes a dream in which she envisioned the death of someone near and dear to her. Similarly, my novel tells of a chap with a dreamlike relationship to a deathly projection of energy originating in his very own unconscious. Somehow Amy Levy’s title just seemed right for my work. She was a nice person, too, and a good friend to Oscar Wilde.

Obsessed with learning the origins of the cosmos, the actual meaning of life, and the true purpose of civilization, a fine Scotsman named Fingal T. Smyth dedicates himself to the study of Plato’s most extraordinary ideas. Convinced of Plato’s belief that humankind possesses any and all innate knowledge deep within the collective unconscious mind, Fingal soon conducts a series of bold, pioneering occult-science experiments by which to resolve the riddle of the universe once and for all. However, Fingal forgets how violent and perilous the animal impulses that reside in the deepest recesses of the unconscious mind. And when Fingal unleashes a mysterious avatar of his innate knowledge, the entity appears as a burning man and immediately seeks to manipulate innocent and unsuspecting people everywhere into immolating themselves. Now, with little hope of returning the fiery figure into his being, Fingal must capture his nemesis before it destroys the world.

Enjoy an Excerpt

Autumn, 1907: late one morning, some kind of torrid, invisible beast seemed to wrap itself all around Fingal T. Smyth’s body. Each one of his toes twitching fiercely, he exited the castle and scanned the distant, Scottish Highlands. Go back where you came from. As the entity wrapped itself tighter all about his person, Fingal blinked back his tears. I’m melting, I am. Aye, it’s the heat of fusion.

Gradually, the beast’s heartbeat became audible—each pulsation. At the same time, too, the illusory heat of transformation emitted an odor as of oven-roasted peppercorns dissolving in a cup of burnt coffee.

Over by the gatehouse, Fräulein Wunderwaffe appeared—the little German girl wearing a plain-sewn robe and square-crown bowler. In that moment, she no longer seemed to be a sickly child of seven years: her inscrutable expression resembled that of a wise, indifferent cat.

Perhaps even some kind of lioness. Fingal cringed, and he recalled a fragment of conversation from three weeks earlier.

“She suffers from a most unnatural pathology, an anguished, maniacal obsession with cats,” Doktor Hubertus Pflug had explained. “Ever since the poor girl was a baby, she has always regarded it her fate to one day metamorphose into a glorious panther, for she believes herself to be ein Gestaltwandler. Do you know this word? It means shapeshifter and refers to someone who possesses the power to take the form of anything in nature.”

The heat radiated up and down Fingal’s spine now, and his thoughts turned back to the present. Aye, it’s a change of phase. I’m melting into a chemical compound. Despite all, he greeted the girl and willed himself to flash a grin.

About the Author:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

M. Laszlo is an aging recluse who lives in Bath, Ohio. Rumor holds that his pseudonym is a reference to Victor Laszlo, a character in the classic film Casablanca. On the Threshold is his first release with the acclaimed, Australian hybrid house AIA Publishing. Oddly, M. Laszlo insists that his latest work, On the Threshold, does in fact provide the correct answer to the riddle of the universe.

Buy the book at the publishers.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Power of Colloquialism and Peculiar Jargon by M. Laszlo – Guest Blog and Giveaway

 

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. One randomly chosen winner via rafflecopter will win a $50 Amazon/BN.com gift card. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

The Power of Colloquialism and Peculiar Jargon
We all know that everything began with the word. According to Judeo-Christian tradition, nothing even existed before Jehovah spoke. “Let there be light,” the Deity said, if memory serves. At any rate, a slightly dissimilar kind of awesome, language-related event happened to me during my youth. In the summer of 1985, I traveled to London and discovered the most glorious words of all: the freakish brilliance that is Britspeak.

Ah, London! Ah, the summer of 1985! What a magnificent experience. As a weird kid daydreaming about being an author, London made me realize that dialogue has to be real—that characters ought to talk the way people really talk. All these years later, that’s what guided me through the authoring of my first book. Every step of the way, I endeavored to employ British colloquialism and phraseology to capture London and to bring it life. This comes down to the fact that it is the vernacular that makes characters and their stories seem genuine. In short, glorious Britspeak makes the unbelievable seem as true as Coventry blue.

At this point, it would be tempting to list out some of the really great terms that had come into fashion back in 1985. The problem is that so many of them are utterly obscene. More to the point, though, 1980s Britspeak opened up my mind to the rich history of British colloquialism—the quirky, brilliant, obsolete terms and jocular phrases that came into existence long before the summer of 1985. Looking back, there can be no question that the magnificence of Victorian-era and Edwardian-era colloquialism influenced me to set my writings in the WW-I era—a really interesting time when nineteenth-century phrases and modern-day ones were constantly coming into contact with one another. As an author, though, this is where things got really confusing. Imagine translating a London diary filled with 1980s slang and vulgarism into the kind of slang and vulgarism that young people would’ve used back in the 1910s.

Another challenge came in the form of trying to translate the language of the music scene. That process became especially challenging when trying to create a mythical explanation for the origins of London’s Goth youth culture. In the summer of 1985, London was alive with the sounds of Goth bands and really dark neo-psychedelic bands alike: the Cure, Bauhaus, Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen, Throbbing Gristle, and the Teardrop Explodes to name a few. How to reduplicate such extraordinary nomenclature? It’s easier said than done—especially if the author wishes to remain fairly accurate to history.

In the course of writing my novellas, another challenge presented itself: how to describe the Goth attire? In the 1980s, London was alive with beautiful, somber-dressed young women who had a really timeless, almost Edwardian style. For my first book, it was necessary to learn the terms that precisely denote defunct women’s fashions. Make no mistake about it: without the jargon of fashion history, it’s impossible to really give characters their proper, era-appropriate “clobber.”

Another place where it proved incredibly trying to move the 1980s into the past came with the sport of ice-skating. In the spring of 1985, the very beautiful Katarina Witt had won the world figure-skating championship—and because of my infatuation with her, my youthful diary reveals a habit of constantly comparing young ladies to the famous skater. As a consequence, there was no way to translate the diary into novellas without having at least one character dedicated to skating. Ultimately, though, my novellas had to become fairly anachronistic in some respects. This follows from the fact that my WWI-era characters had to be able to perform the elements that Katarina Witt could. In the end, I had no option but to employ literary license so as to let my WWI-era narrator know about 1980s ice-skating jargon and the various terms for futuristic, yet-to-be-developed techniques.

As it so happened, back in the summer of 1985, nobody in London seemed to care very much about Katarina Witt. The one German athlete who dominated the papers that summer was Boris Becker. He did well at Wimbledon, but it surprised me to see all the snide, snarky humor in the print media. The British journalists presented him as a kind of cartoonishly wrathful Red-Baron type figure. What a surprise, too, just to hear all the Britspeak epithets reserved for German nationals. Perhaps it would be impolite to repeat any of them here, so I’ll not do it. The salient point is that the whole Boris Becker media frenzy must have had something to do with my peculiar impulse to translate my diary into the WW-I era. In short, I picked up on the British-German rivalry and really wanted to say something about it.

All of which brings us to the novellas themselves. Why go to all this trouble to write them at all? Well, here’s the reason: the written word is far more potentially enlightening than the spoken word. It is the written word which permits us to share what we have learned and to perhaps help to ennoble someone somewhere. Yes, the notion that the spoken word created the universe is the Judeo-Christian belief. Nevertheless, the power of the written word is much more than belief. The written word provides an opportunity to form a meeting of two minds—that of the author and that of the reader. Nothing could ever be more miraculous than that. Perhaps that is why every successful religion requires one thing more than any other: a book.

In this trio of novellas, three game young ladies enter into dangerous liaisons that test each one’s limits and force them to confront the most heartrending issues facing society in the early twentieth century. The Phantom Glare of Day tells of Sophie, a young lady who has lived a sheltered life and consequently has no idea how cruel public-school bullying can be. When she meets Jarvis, a young man obsessed with avenging all those students who delight in his daily debasement, she resolves to intervene before tragedy unfolds. Mouvements Perpétuels tells of Cäcilia, a young lady shunned by her birth father. She longs for the approval of an older man, so when her ice-skating instructor attempts to take advantage of her, she cannot resist. Not a month later, she realizes that she is pregnant and must decide whether or not to get an abortion. Passion Bearer tells of Manon, a young lady who falls in love with a beautiful actress after taking a post as a script girl for a film company—and is subsequently confronted with the pettiest kinds of homophobia.

Enjoy an Excerpt

London, 29 September, 1917.

Sophie paused beside a stock-brick building, and she listened for the unnerving rumble of an airship’s engine car. How long has it been since the last bombardment? Sometime before, as she had stood in this very spot, she had heard the Zeppelin clearly enough.

At that point, a Royal-Navy carbide flare had streaked heavenward. Then, from the neighboring rooftops, fifty or more pom-pom guns had opened fire–and the night air had filled with the odor of something like petroleum coke.

Yes, I remember. Now she braced herself for a salvo of fire.

No deafening tumult rang out. Neither did any sickening, stenchful fumes envelope her person.

No, it’s just my nerves. She glanced at the sky, and she whispered a simple prayer of thanksgiving.

From around the corner, an omnibus approached.

She climbed aboard and rode the way to Mayfair Tearoom.

The establishment had never looked so inviting as it did that night. By now, the proprietress had decorated the tables with Michaelmas daisies the color of amethyst, and she had adorned the china cabinet with ornamental cabbage. Moreover, how appetizing the scent of the fresh Eccles cakes.

The tearoom had attracted quite a crowd, too, the young ladies all decked out in silken gowns.

I wonder why. Sophie removed her coat, and she suddenly felt underdressed—for she had not worn anything too fancy that evening, just a puffed blouse and a fluted skirt. At once, she sat down at one of the last available dinette tables.

An eclipse of moths fluttered through the transom, meanwhile, and even they looked better than she did. What beauty the creatures’ wings—a fine royal purple.

Don’t look at them. Alas, when she turned her attention to the doorsill, a dull ache radiated up and down her left arm.

Not a moment later, a tall, gaunt lad, his eyes a shade of whiskey brown, entered the tearoom.

For a time, he glared at the patrons—as if at any moment he might remove a musketoon from beneath his frock coat and shoot everyone.

About the Author:M. Laszlo is the pseudonym of a reclusive author living in Bath, Ohio. According to rumor, he based the pen name on the name of the Paul Henreid character in Casablanca, Victor Laszlo.
M. Laszlo has lived and worked all over the world, and he has kept exhaustive journals and idea books corresponding to each location and post.

It is said that the maniacal habit began in childhood during summer vacations—when his family began renting out Robert Lowell’s family home in Castine, Maine.

The habit continued in 1985 when, as an adolescent, he spent the summer in London, England. In recent years, he revisited that journal/idea book and based his first work, The Phantom Glare of Day, on the characters, topics, and themes contained within the youthful writings. In crafting the narrative arcs, he decided to divide the work into three interrelated novellas and to set each one in the WW-I era so as to make the work as timeless as possible.

M. Laszlo has lived and worked in New York City, East Jerusalem, and several other cities around the world. While living in the Middle East, he worked for Harvard University’s Semitic Museum. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio and an M.F.A. in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York.

His next work is forthcoming from SparkPress in 2024. There are whispers that the work purports to be a genuine attempt at positing an explanation for the riddle of the universe and is based on journals and idea books made while completing his M.F.A at Sarah Lawrence College.

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