cover image Love by Drowning

Love by Drowning

C. E. Poverman. El Leon Literary Arts, $24.95 (396p) ISBN 978-0-9833919-6-8

A man is followed by a former flame and led down a path of deceit and danger in Poverman's latest novel. Val and Davis, brothers who live on opposite ends of the country, reconnect when Davis leaves his job as a mechanic in Miami and joins Val on a boat in North Carolina. Davis's girlfriend, a cunning hairdresser named Lee Anne, finds him after he abandons her, showing up on the scene as it's revealed that Davis is in some sort of criminal trouble. Val is drawn to his brother's girlfriend and indulges her in a kiss only for Davis to walk in and knock him unconscious. But when Davis dies the next day in a tragic boating accident, Val's life takes a nose dive for the worse, rising after a period of long grief to marriage and fatherhood as he is stalked by Lee Anne through cryptic postcards. With unconvincing dialogue and flat characters, this is a voiceless novel. Poverman's story is an attempt at a psychological thriller; it reaches out towards the genre and lands in the synthetic as stock characters emerge from piles of paragraphs. (Aug.)