Title: Riddled With Senses
Author: Petra Jacob
Date Added: January 28, 2017
Date Started: March 19, 2017
Date Finished: May 14, 2017
Reading Duration: 56 days
Genre: Young Adult (YA), Magical Realism, LGBT

Pages: 248
Publication Date: January 22, 2017
Publisher: Dr. Cicero Books
Media: Paperback

Shares Paradigms With: The Slow Regard of Silent Things

A tale of love, drugs, cynicism and magic set in the late nineties. It is told from the perspective of two seventeen-year-old girls, Jitty and Hazel; in the style of magic realism, where the grime of real life can be morphed by the characters’ imaginations.

Jitty is a recluse who has created a world of magic to keep herself company. She secretly interferes in the life of the townspeople, including Hazel’s friend, Vurt. Hazel is a wild cynic on a course of self-destruction.

One stormy night their paths cross as the lightning flashes. Their brief relationship is intense, swinging from beautiful to ugly, as Hazel’s cynicism and Jitty’s innocence prove a terrible match.

From then on, Jitty, Hazel and Vurt each pursue their own route to madness; as drugs, magic and a dance with the Devil take control. This ends on one final night, after which their lives are changed forever.

Every now and again I find a story that contains a sliver of the mess that is me, what I couldn’t explain if I had all the words of a thousand tongues.  I cling to those narratives like a desperate climber to the skin of a stony peak recalling the piece that fit against my more jagged edges.  But then sometimes a story comes along that lays bare the thoughts in my inner sanctum, forces me to face them, and wonder how much of a facade I’ve been keeping up for all these years.  Thoughts yet coalesced made visible and presented in a world that could either be magical realism or drug induced haze.

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