A Forest Petrifies – Diamond Feedback – Felicia Atkinson
A Forest Petrifies: Diamond Feedback by Félicia Atkinson, translated into English by Rachel Valinsky. It is a tiny paperback from Shelter Press in France (56 pages, 4-3/8 by 7 inches).
The book is hard to describe so here is what the publisher says:
A forest petrifies: Diamond Feedback is the first part of a larger novel in several episodes.
Inspired by the Petrified Forest in Arizona and its ability to change over time from an organic to a mineral state, the story was conceived by the musician and artist Félicia Atkinson over the past five years, while its on-going writing has been the starting point of many of Atkinson’s music lyrics and recent records and exhibitions.
A part of the book takes place in the middle of the desert in an indistinct future. Two men are having a discussion by a fire in a modernist house. The music they are listening to is not emitted by a device but by themselves, it’s a new kind of technology. They look at the embers of the fire and it reminds them of a painting by Bosch. They suddenly wonder if those embers could be a republic of some kind.
A Forest Petrifies is a novel about the perception of time and how some places mark people’s minds.
I’m calling this “Book Club volume 1” but have no plan for volume 2. But each installment will highlight a pair of strange and under-the-radar works of fiction.
