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From: ecl@cbnewsj.ATT.COM (Evelyn C. Leeper)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers,rec.arts.books
Subject: FREEDOM BEACH by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel
Message-ID: <4768@cbnewsj.ATT.COM>
Date: 21 Apr 90 13:55:54 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 30


	     FREEDOM BEACH by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel
	       Bluejay Books, 1985, ISBN 0-312-94168-4, $8.95.
		      A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		       Copyright 1990 Evelyn C. Leeper

     FREEDOM BEACH is a strange novel.  But then, any novel that contains
the Faust legend done as a Marx Brothers movie ("Faustfeathers") would be a
strange novel.

     Shaun Reed finds himself somehow at Freedom Beach, a sort of
purgatorial Club Med at which he has apparently signed up for some sort of
therapy which involves amnesia.  Through his dreams he sometimes remembers
his past as a writer, but is just as likely to find himself the character in
some other writers' works.

     FREEDOM BEACH examines an author's psyche, and though I doubt this
author is typical, the audacity of the sections overcomes the not entirely
convincing characterizations.  Recommended if you can find it.

     [Note: Bluejay published a very high-quality line of books, but their
packaging was, well, abysmal.  Classic typos they gave us included the
rendering of ROGUE QUEEN as ROUGE QUEEN on its spine, the misspelling of
Isaac Asimov's name on the title page of SHERLOCK HOLMES THROUGH TIME AND
SPACE, and this book, which in the back blurb misspells the main character's
name five times and confuses Jane Austen with Emily Bronte!  Tom Kidd's
cover painting of the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza is also totally
inaccurate, both to the reality and to the description in the book.]

Evelyn C. Leeper   |   +1 201-957-2070   |   att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com