Robert M. Drake - Beautiful And Damned

Robert is not only poet. Beautiful and Damned shows us that he is, too, amazing story writer. I know that someone of you would love to read his long, minimalist poems, but every human want to improve themselves. Stay the same is boring, it is death.
These stories are about death, life, love, sadness.. simply, about everything what you can find in his other works. The most of stories are creepy, weird, but I love them no matter what. I know I am not the objective reviewer. Sorry, I cannot help myself...
 

To be honest, I was really surprised.. What the hell is going on here – this was my first thought when I opened the book. I was expecting stories in verses, not this. The style of writing was exactly the same as in novels – from time to time it was supplemented by poems, but that's all.

From the very beginning I was thinking about how this isn't suited for him. When I came to the end of his first story, I fell in love with it. I realized that I would read everything from him. That is true. Prose is perfect for him as well.

We arrive to change people's lives and then, no matter what we did or who we met, we knew how it was all meant for something, something bigger than ourselves. And when we left, we took everything with us, but it was all about those moments, those precious little moments.
(page 261)

Everything was beautiful – creepy, too – but there was two stories that I found interesting. The first is called Along came a spider. It seemed to me as if it was a new version of The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish. I was asking myself what did he mean by that. This is well-known tale, so what can surprise me then? Of course, I had bad point of view. I had goosebumps at the end. What the hell... I'm going to keep quiet about it.

When I recovered myself from the shock, Jacob waited for me and it was different story. If I thought that the previous tale was scary, well, then Jacob is new level. This is similar to A Christmas Carol. I know, everything seemed familiar to me, but it is not true. Just these parts, not the whole work. Jacob was freaking disturbing. I was scared, but on the other side I thought that it was very funny. I cannot explain why. You figure out when you read this.

The whole book stole my heart, but one story will be etched on my memory forever. That was really heartbreaking. I've cried over and over again. Such a way of ending almost killed me.

When I fell in love with Beautiful and Damned, it turned to a poetry. I was so happy that the writer added poems. Finally, I found my tattooed quote – in different form, but it was there. Yeah! You can see it down below.

 

My rating: 5/5