A secret club of storytellers tell tales about hidden possibilities. These exceptional beings gather inside the imagination of a traveler, where they’ve been trying to speak to him for his entire life. Sparks fly as the traveler learns to listen to them, for when his dreamworld and reality touch, the solid world of things reveals to him an upper sphere of existence forged in wonder and awe.
A.T. French’s Commendable Delusions provides a breadcrumb trail of ten magical realist stories, each nestled in some unique nook of dream-tinted reality far from the bustle of cities and quotidian life. Some resemble parables, others fairytales, and yet others more modern narratives. But through them all is a golden thread of meaning and humor that brings the disparate landscapes together into a unique collection that can capture a curious mind, tantalizing with glimpses of hidden pastures and worlds secreted behind the veil of shared reality. -Independent Book Review
The Chocolate Oligarch… The Corn Show… The Diorama Maker… Gangways of the Mind… From A.T. French comes a mesmerizing debut collection of short fiction: ten fantastically imaginative, exhilarating, heartfelt stories. Light but profound, these are tales that set the mind aflame.
Delusion? No. A great truth is unearthed when a curious traveler reaches his internal pantheon of storytellers. Deep within him, for his entire life, the emissaries of his imagination have been gathering once a week to tell each other tales. The tales they tell reflect his innermost thoughts and vacant ponderings, his dreams of day and the renderings of his subconscious. They are The Mad Ones of Aux Folies - the traveler’s multitudes within.
How does the traveler find them? He follows the roman candles…
‘Those sparks that fly when nature’s secrets are exposed. Those flashes across the eye when a mind ignites with something beautiful.’
Commendable Delusions gives form and substance to nameless and unseen things. It’s time to extend the boundaries of the known.
