- ASIN: B097Q3WR2X
- Publisher: Moonshine Cove Publishing, LLC (21 Jun. 2021)
- Language: English
- Print length: 148 pages
- Genre: Literary Fiction
The BookViral Review:
A compelling novel that perfectly captures the unscripted events and coincidences of real life, where you can do your utmost best, and the unimaginable still happens. A novel in which we quickly come to grips with who the characters are and what their lives are like with Marcello writing with such directness and a fine ear for everyday dialogue that his characters seem real and plausible in just a few brief words.
Cenotaphs is not a novel about love per se and not about sex, but about an idea and the age difference between Ben and Samantha aside Marcello elevates to a spiritual level the common fantasy in which two complete strangers are irresistibly drawn to each other.
All of the scenes between Ben and Samantha find the right notes and shadings. The framing mechanism for their backstories is simply superb with Marcello having an uncanny ability to draw us in and make us care about them. And more importantly the choices they have made without resorting to trite clichés.
A story such as Cenotaphs could so easily be vulgarized and be reduced to the obvious elements of seduction, sex and melodramatic parting. But through Ben and Samantha Marcello weaves a magical spell based on that particular knowledge of love and self that only comes with life’s most challenging events.
Here he explores the accidental nature of life and the way in which whole decades of our lives can be shaped by singular traumatic events we struggle to make sense of. With the emotional peaks not constructed from grand gestures but out of countless subtle little moments of growing love through which they come to treasure the presence of the joy, they have found in each other.
If Cenotaphs had ended “happily” in a conventional sense it would have lost its power and one of the sources of its poignancy is that the burgeoning love between Ben and Samantha follows a less conformist path whilst being the stronger for it.
Cenotaphs proves a superb release for Marcello and a must-read for discerning readers of top-notch literary fiction. It is recommended without reservation.