Line and Pause

Fiction. Brushstrokes, clouds, tea, sex – Forrest Roth’s Line and Pause exhibits and brilliantly manipulates the signs of things Japanese. But Roth’s quarry is deeper than mere surface: the mysterious in existence itself, those things which escape our easy apprehension. How do we know the future? How the present? What leads us to love, or betrayal, or art? In his portrait of a puzzled, searching woman in the contemporary moment of a traditional society, Roth’s...
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Fiction. Brushstrokes, clouds, tea, sex – Forrest Roth’s Line and Pause exhibits and brilliantly manipulates the signs of things Japanese. But Roth’s quarry is deeper than mere surface: the mysterious in existence itself, those things which escape our easy apprehension. How do we know the future? How the present? What leads us to love, or betrayal, or art? In his portrait of a puzzled, searching woman in the contemporary moment of a traditional society, Roth’s prose is like brushpainting itself, which must be both careful and swift, studied and spontaneous, creating its austere, beautiful effects. A terrific first novella, heralding a writer we'd best keep our eyes on. —Ted Pelton