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Category Archives: literary fiction
Signing at Golden Notebook in Woodstock Sat, Aug 1st 6PM
Political satirist, Victoria N Alexander has a new novel entitled, Locus Amoenus, a literary term that refers to a beautiful pastoral paradise where nothing bad can ever happen.
Set in the nearby Harlem Valley region of New York, the story involves a 9/11 widow, Gertrude, and her son, Hamlet, who move to the country to run a sustainable farm. Unfortunately, they find their neighbors prefer the starchy products of industrialized agriculture. On the 8th anniversary of Hamlet senior’s death, Gertrude marries an incompetent federal bureaucrat named Claudius, who tries to get the eighteen-year-old Hamlet to “move on.” As Hamlet is becoming more and more disgusted by the hypocrisy of the adult world he’s entering, Horatio, a conspiracy theorist, tells Hamlet that his new stepfather is a fraud and something is rotten in the United States of America. With gallows humor, Alexander looks at the tragedy that is contemporary post 9/11 politics, as it plays out in small town America where health and happiness have been traded for processed foods, cheap Walmart goods, Paxil, and endless war.
Kirkus Reviews likened Alexander’s Hamlet to Holden Caulfield (the angry hero of The Catcher in the Rye), but he is more like his namesake, plagued with doubt about the news that Horatio brings him.
In the Wild River Review, cultural critic William Irwin Thompson compares Alexander to Thomas Pynchon and calls Locus Amoenus “an important contribution to contemporary American fiction.”
Man Booker Prize finalist Josip Novakovich praises Alexander for her critique of American consumerism: “despite the tragedy, we have the consolation of her humor. I haven’t laughed this well while reading in a long time.”
Victoria N. Alexander, PhD, is the author of two other novels, Smoking Hopes (Washington Prize for Fiction), Naked Singularity (Dallas Observer‘s “Best of 2003”), and a work of philosophy, The Biologist’s Mistress: Rethinking Self-Organization in Art, Literature, and Nature. Alexander’s fiction is published by The Permanent Press, one of the finest small presses in the U.S., which has been “turning out literary gems…on a shoestring,” since 1978, according to The New York Times. Locus Amoenus is set in Amenia, New York, an upstate rural community where Alexander’s family owns a sheep farm.
http://www.goldennotebook.com/event/victoria-n-alexander-locus-amoenus
Locus Amoenus in the Woodstock Times
Alexander in a treehouse like the one that appears in her novel.
Upstate Novelist, Victoria N. Alexander, To Give Reading at the Golden Notebook
by Gary Alexander
Have you spent too much time trying to convince your girlfriend that ‘Decadent’ is not a flavor? Or are you ticked off that some nutritional idealist wants your school cafeteria to use coconut oil on something your kid might eat for lunch? (Not here! We don’t have coconut trees along the Hudson River!) The most stark divisions in America may spring not from political, ethnic or racial backgrounds but from informational sources and a currently prevailing chasm between American cultural lifestyles.
This is a theme explored in the darkly humorous novel, “Locus Amoenus” by Victoria N. Alexander, Ph.D. (my new bride-just joking; she’s no relation), who will be reading at the Golden Notebook bookstore in Woodstock at 6 PM on Saturday, August 1st. Continue reading
No Lies Radio: Locus Amoenus, a retelling of Hamlet, featuring a NIST bureaucrat as Claudius
9/11 Free Fall Radio
July 16, 2015
Interview starts at 9:55. Here’s a snippet:
AS: “What do you want people to get from this book?”
VNA: “Well, in the passage I just read where Hamlet [a conspiracy theorist] makes his big revelation. He makes some very logical points and asks some very good questions. But what’s the response to that? Evasion. Nobody really takes the point [chuckle]. Nobody really gets what he’s getting at. The whole thing is kind of ineffective, really [chuckle].
“One of the things I wanted to do for people, who have tried to talk to friends about some evidence they’ve read, is to give them a story that they can relate to. We’ve all gone through this. We all know what it’s like to bring up this conversation at dinner and have very good our friends treat us very coldly.
“And I wanted to give the conspiracy theorist a place in literature. He is a very important character, as was [Shakespeare’s] Hamlet, for really defining who the modern man is. Continue reading
Millerton News: Literary Tea to host local authors July 18
Millerton News
July 16, 2015
By Gregory Camillone
The NorthEast-Millerton Library will host a Literary Tea on Saturday, July 18, at 1PM with authors Victoria Alexander and Kristen Panzer there to discuss their novels.
Alexander got the voice of Hamlet from David Tennant, who played Hamlet in the Royal Shakespeare Production. “He is like Doctor Who,” Alexander said. “Clever, witty, a little bit crazy. He’s like an alien. Hamlet feels like an alien coming from the city and having different values from the people around him.”
“The Library Tea event is an opportunity for local writers to meet, talk and share their successes,” said Director of NorthEast-Millerton Library Rhiannon Leo-Jameson. “It’s a way for them to bond.”
Everyone is welcomed to attend. The event will be located in the library and is free. Tea will be served along with other refreshments and snacks. Continue reading
Main Street Magazine
On Saturday, July 18th I’ll be at the NorthEast-Millerton Library at 1PM. Pick up a copy of Locus Amoenus at Oblong Books to bring with you to have signed. Here’s a piece from the June issue of Main Street Magazine.
Likely Stories Book Review on KWBU “Heart of Texas Public Radio”
Victoria N. Alexander has constructed a clever and engaging novel loosely based on Shakespeare’s masterpiece, Hamlet. This dark comedy revolves around the tragedy of 9/11. Alexander has several novels to her credit, as well as a work of non-fiction, The Biologist’s Mistress: Rethinking Self-Organization in Art, Literature, & Nature. She is also working on a comedy screenplay about a high security dystopia.
Hamlet’s father has apparently died in the collapse of the twin towers, and Hamlet and his mother Gertrude move to a rural village, Amenia where the residents are suspicious of strangers. The town suffers from an epidemic of obesity, because of a local connection to big agriculture farms producing only high fructose corn syrup. When Gertrude tries to sway the school board to a healthier diet for the students, she and Hamlet are isolated from the rest of the town. Hamlet’s former science teacher shows up and convinces Hamlet his father was killed on 9/11 as a result of a conspiracy to justify the Iraq War. Claudius, who has just married Gertrude, is an engineer, who worked on part of the official report of the events of 9/11. Continue reading
Oblong Books in Millerton, NY
Pleased to see my novel in the window at Oblong Books in Millerton.
Locus Amoenus by Victoria N Alexander
In this dark comedy, 9/11 widow and her son, Hamlet, move to Amenia to run an organic farm. Unfortunately, their neighbors prefer the starchy products of industrial agriculture, and Hamlet, who is now eighteen, suspects that something is rotten in the United States of America, where health and happiness are traded for cheap Walmart goods, Paxil, standard curriculum, fossil fuel pollution, and endless war.
Victoria N. Alexander, PhD, is also the author of Smoking Hopes (Washington Prize for Fiction), Naked Singularity (Dallas Observer‘s “Best of 2003”), and The Biologist’s Mistress: Rethinking Self-Organization in Art, Literature and Nature.
Middletown’s Book Bower to host dark-comedy author before fireworks
Prior to the city’s grand fireworks show Friday night, author Victoria Alexander will visit the Book Bower nearby to sign copies of her novel, “Locus Amoenus.”
Her fifth novel, this speculative fiction brings Shakespeare into the post-9/11 world, weaving “an emotionally powerful geopolitical drama,” according to reviews online.
Leading character, Hamlet, now 18, is “beginning to suspect that something is rotten in the United States of America, when health, happiness and freedom are traded for cheap Walmart goods, Paxil, endless war, standard curriculum, and environmental degradation,” according to one book review. Continue reading
Book Signing in Middletown, CT July 3, 5PM
Main Street Market, 386 Main St.
Middletown, CT 860.704.8222 www.bookbower.com
Victoria N Alexander will be signing copies of Locus Amoenus at the Book Bower on Friday in the midst of the Middletown Fireworks Festival, which will take place 4-10PM, near the main street market. Come out to express your inner patriot and pick up copy of Alexander’s scathing satire on runaway American consumerism and political corruption.
In this dark comedy, a 9/11 widow, Gertrude, and her son, Hamlet, move from Brooklyn to the pastoral countryside to start a sustainable farm. Unfortunately, they don’t really get along all that well with the outrageously obese locals, who prefer the starchy products of industrial agriculture. Hamlet has just turned 18, and he’s beginning to suspect that something is rotten in the United States of America: health, happiness and freedom are traded for Walmart, endless war, Zoloft, and environmental degradation. He becomes very depressed when, on the 8th anniversary of his father’s death, Gertrude marries, a horrid, boring bureaucrat named Claudius, who works for NIST. Then, Hamlet learns from Horatio, a conspiracy theorist, that Claudius is a fraud. The tricks, spying, corruption, and uncertainty end, as Shakespeare’s play does, in tragedy
