Thursday, July 3, 2014

The grand language of loss: All My Sins Remembered, by Adam Stanley


I've been watching the development All My Sins Remembered for several years now since I was still in California, along with many clamoring FB followers who have experienced love and loss. It's often melancholy in tone, yet there is an appreciation of what has been had, what is lost, and how one goes on re-discovering hope---or at least, the blessings of insight--- while wrestling with one's shadow side. The character's twenty-year obsession over one true love sets off a plot mostly told in flashback.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1493723448/ref=cm_cr_rev_prod_title

There's a carefully-considered selection of metaphors all the way through, infusing the progression of passages with imagery that often stirs the richness of the emotional context. The long, thoughtful process of assembling these expressions reflects the author's erudition as a reader and the desire to reveal the epic within the quotidian.
I've often found its expressions rather sad, nearly too much so; yet, this is a book written to deal with bitter regrets and come to terms with the absolute sincerity of true love gone bad, Dante following a Beatrice with a malfunctioning GPS. It's not meant to cheer you especially, and I don't agree with all its insights, but honesty is its best achievement. One might ask if the truth is concealed by the aims of inspiration to keep faith with a certain tone, but the same could be asked of a work of inverse outlook. I feel a little brotherly concern the author will reconcile with his past in this and move on to new happiness with some new wellspring of trust exhausted in the events told within.
Life's what we make of it. As for what one man would say of love versus another, it's as much a matter as with whom your stars have crossed you, is it not?

Its particular worship of past events and people is delicately assembled and inspired. I think its occasional disdain for the present suits the outlook of disillusioned readers approaching middle-age everywhere, in language that is undeniably beautiful. Yet hope for the future peeks through the clouds, because love takes other forms, such as for one's children. It strives for an egalitarianism that suggests the same skills might tell a very different story which only time will tell one day.

Again, it's the story of many of Mr. Stanley's peers, as well, but told in grand language.

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