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Saturday, January 17, 2009
 We here at Horror Drive-In are always recommending books, movies to you. And I like to think we're genuinely honest in our praise. Some of the genre books are breathtaking works of fiction. Some are less than that, but are fun and enjoyable. Once in a while a book will come along that is more than good, or excellent. It's seldom, maybe a handful of occasions in a lifetime, a novel will be more than a good book. More than an excellent piece of literature. Sometimes, rarely, a book can be a spiritual experience.
David Lozell Martin is a hell of a writer that has had his hands in many types of books. Thrillers, literary, comic and epic adventure. But one novel stands above them all and it is back in print in an affordable trade paperback. It's called, of course, Crazy Love.
If you think Crazy Love might be a romantic story, you'd be right. If you let that scare you off, you'd be a fool. It's like the snobs that won't read horror and thereby miss out on Peter Straub or John Farris. Or the people that don't like SF and miss out on Norman Spinrad or Theodore Sturgeon.
Crazy Love is the story of an unlikely romance. Two people that couldn't be less compatible, at least by outward appearances. But they discover love for each other. But it's more than just that. Crazy Love deals with the land, with the love we all should have for animals, and how fragile even the strongest relationships can be. As well as how fragile our lives are.
I can't express how beautiful and profound this book is. I can't compare it with any other. Maybe if I say that the only other book that even came close to moving me is McCammon's Boy's Life. Maybe that will convince you.
There are, thankfully, several books by the remarkable David Lozell Martin currently in print and I recommend them all. His astonishing memoirs, Losing Everything. The bawdy and hard-hitting Pelikan. The wise and passionate The Crying Heart Tattoo. The sweeping epic, Our American King. But it is Crazy Love that I give the very highest recommendation that I will ever give a book.
Buy it. Buy it and read it. Or re-read it. Read it, cherish it and then give it to a loved one.
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