Review of Omaha Beach by Erica Olson Jeffrey
Oct 03 '08 (Updated Oct 07 '08)
The Bottom Line A very good collection of stories about people who learn to survive what life throws at them. Recommended.
Omaha Beach is a short story collection by Erica Olson Jeffrey, many of them set in or around the fictional location of Omaha, Nebraska. I came across the author because we both occasional write reviews for CurledUp.com, and we both use the same website to self-publish our books - lulu.com. It's one of those rare finds that come to you via an unlikely series of events, and will become something you cherish forever.
The stories are not the sort that I would generally have gone for until quite recently - very character-driven without exciting plots. These are stories of survival and reflection, told from a vast array of viewpoints - both genders (one love story that wasn't to be is told from both sides in different stories) and a wide range of age groups, most told in the third-person, one or two in the first-person, and one in the present tense. The latter was, to me, the weakest story - partly because I have a particular hatred of present-tense writing, but also because it was one of only two stories that didn't really seem to tell the tale it set out to. For the most part, however, I very much enjoyed the stories, and some were truly excellent.
The writing style is very descriptive (but not overly so), often deeply emotional, and quite frequently the prose is rather beautiful. The stories that I found to be particularly moving were those about two young brothers on a camping expedition, trying to understand their parents and discover themselves, and another about an aged woman attempting to come to terms with the fact of, and her own reaction to, the effects of her husband's stroke. The latter I found to be very accurate (I work with Stroke Physicians among others) and quite upsetting, but in a good way. Like most of the stories, you come to feel very involved with the characters; indeed many of the tales read more like personal anecdotes from real life than works of fiction. Both genders are well-written and there was no stereotyping; the people in this book could well have been real people. The lack of any real action as such wasn't a problem because the characters were complex, interesting and believable.
The publication and presentation are competent (a couple of small errors have crept in grammatically, but they're unimportant typos). Don't let the fact that it's self-published put you off - Lulu's publishers always put together a very nice-looking book, and this is no exception (with the glossy front cover being a moody photo of Omaha Beach in Normandy).
Overall, if you like stories about people and how they cope with what life throws at them, you'll love Omaha Beach. Even if that's not normally your sort of book... give it a try, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
One more thing - this is Erica's debut book, and certainly shows great promise for what's to come. (And no, I'm not just praising the book because I know her!)
For more information on this book and (hopefully!) to buy it, visit http://www.lulu.com/content/2292308
My own Lulu storefront can be found at www.lulu.com/darscom
If you are thinking about self-publishing yourself, you might want to check out my review of lulu.com
NB - the reason I've posted it here is that, although Omaha Beach is listed on Amazon and other online publishers, Epinions won't add self-published books to the database.
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