A review by jimmylorunning
Log of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine by Stanley Crawford

3.0

An amazing invention of a short novel, most impressive for the details that are required for the imagined world of a barge-cum-island to take root in the reader's mind. Fantastic in its Daumaul-ian logic, its Roussel-ish sense of spectacle. I would not go as far as Ben Marcus does in his afterword, in which he praises it for its examination of a marriage--this aspect of the book I found not fully satisfying, existing only in the most allegorically surface sense. We never get a feel for who these characters are except through a fog of whimsy. Certainly I would not (as Marcus does) compare this to the brilliant Bergman film Scenes from a Marriage, a film that plunges deep into the psyche. Instead, we have a book where there is no plunging, only the barest outward remnants of two people's madnesses. Still, quite enjoyable: I especially loved the many parts that strained the boundaries of real possibility, you could see it stretching like the marks from childbirth, but how far? When does reality break through into fantasy?