August 2006

By Susan DiPlacido

Aspiring writer and college student Hugh Longford had just asked his girlfriend, Stephanie, to move in with him. But instead of it being a landmark romantic moment in their relationship, it deteriorates into an ugly fight, because Stephanie refuses to leave her younger brother home with her mother, Bev. Bev has recently gone off her meds, and she's been slipping into fugue states while an even more frightening manic -- and potentially violent -- side of her seems to be emerging. Meanwhile, Stephanie's father, Martin, is on one of his extended sabbaticals from the family while he spends his free time at the racetrack and then crashing on his friend's couch.

Already stressed out from overwork at his job, with his classwork piling up, and sullen from his fight with Stephanie, when Hugh gets yet another rejection notice from the magazine he most covets publication in, Hugh decides to give a new product a try. He purchases and consults The Blockbuster plot generation software module to help him punch up his stagnating story. But it's not long before Hugh begins consulting the software regarding real life issues, starting with an annoying co-worker. Meanwhile, Bev is sticking the screws to Martin and trying to get a new business venture of her own off the ground.

Things in Randham quickly heat up in this debut novel from Matthew St. Amand, author of the short story collection "As My Sparks Fly Upward." Full of twist, turns, and plenty of action, this is a pageturner with extra character kick. St. Amand reveals his characters from the ground up, letting us get to know them and feel their skin. Vivid and real, St. Amand's style is incredibly smooth and readable, but not the least bit awkward or dumbed-down like a lot of pulp can be. It's a layered and complex novel within the suspense framework, but you'll keep speeding to see what happens next in this stunning debut.

May 2005

Matt St. Amand interviewed on Neon Fiction

January 2004

Vox Magazine article about As My Sparks Fly Upward & Other Stories

November 2003

matt,

I read your story at eyeshot. solid stuff. i went and checked out your site as well...kept me entertained for quite some time; i’m sure my employer loves that.

anywho, just wanted to let you know that i’m goona go and buy your book...

keep up the good work.

best,
peter

October 2003

dear matthew,

last month i was attending a reading, benefitting the online literary magazine small spiral notebook. jonathan ames read from his soon-to-be published novel. he is hilarious. there were many prizes being raffled, and i won an autoraphed copy of your book, as my sparks fly upward. normally, i don’t make the effort to seek out worthy books from the independent press. in fact, i find it quite distressing to know that there is so much amazing writing (similar to amazing music) that i have no idea is in existence. it’s overwhelming. but i found your book to be real, honest, vulnerable. You have a very engaging style that propells a reader through your prose. I especially enjoy your skill for dialogue. “Hadley” was touching, and “Under the Bridge” was quite compelling.

I am a 26-year-old writer, living in New York City. A journalist by education, I used to write for an actors’ trade magazine in L.A., now a managing editor for children’s books (Scholastic, the house that Harry Potter built, as I sarcastically refer to it).

thank you for sharing your writing.

August 2003

Dear Matthew,

Yesterday in Chapters book store in Windsor, Ontario I spotted a new release with cover art that looked a lot like The Ambassador Bridge. Of course, it was your book and it was indeed the Ambassador Bridge. Ironically, I wanted a book to read last night while I worked an overtime shift at The Ambassador Bridge. I am a Windsor Police officer and we’ve been posted at the bridge since the September 11th terrorism incident. I read ‘As My Sparks Fly Upward’ completely last night. I read constantly, fiction and non-fiction, ranging from Jimmy Buffett to Hemingway. Your book is absolutely excellent. As I read your stories I was amazed at the similarities between them and events in my life. Two years ago I had to talk my best-friend into marrying a woman who I thought (and still think) is a beast. In my teenaged years I was mesmerized by U2 and my life revolved around the band. I have often pondered the impact my fan worship of U2 had on the person I have become. I was flabbergasted while I read those stories because it was so much like reading memoirs of my life which I have never written. A short time ago I was nearly killed on duty. Only two weeks ago I found myself sitting at a quiet Windsor bar thinking about how close I came to death and what I should do with the rest of my life. If you still reside in the Windsor area you may be acquainted from the newspaper coverage with the incident and subsequent trial in which a Windsor taxi driver ran down a family with his taxi, killing a little boy, then ramming my police car in an attempt to kill himself and me. I’ve lived the stories in your book.

I was so impressed by your book, pleasantly surprised that its author is a fellow Windsorite, and had such a déjà-vu experience from reading it that I wanted to drop you an email.

Who knows what a Homunculus really is? Blander dictionaries will tell you that it is simply a 'miniature person' or 'man.' But the word, in its root origins, means a hell of a lot more than just that. In the Age of Alchemy, the homunculus was a Frankenstein-like creature created by an Alchemist, just another artificial little helpmate for the busy mad scientist, one that usually, in the end, turned on it's maker.

Will Matt St. Amand's collection of short stories, also aptly named Homunculus, eventually turn on him? I guess only he will ever know the answer to that. What is certain is that the book will never turn on its readers who frantically turn each page, eager to feast their eyes on each spellbinding story as it unfolds. As other reviewers have remarked, Homunculus is not strictly a book of short stories, although there are more than enough stories here to qualify as a collection. Yet there are also other miscellaneous pieces of Homunculus that are a little harder to classify--unlikely job applications, a brazen self-interview, and even a saga, yes, a SAGA of one of the strangest of all creatures to ever inhabit the internet ether: Xavier Lipschitz. Does the name say it all? No, there is more to this unlikely character than a name. I have read the entire account of Mr. Lipschitz, of his supposed adventures, the questionable pedigrees, and his unscrupulous yet hilarious methods of zooming someone who first tried to zoom him. And through it all, I'm still not too sure of his motives, of his pedigree, his methods--but whatever the hell he is, he's damn sure entertaining. The same goes for the rest of the book---questionable, difficult to classify, but hilarious, high octane quasi-fiction that kept me turning every page, eager to find out what exactly Mr. St. Amand had infected my curiosity with.

So, what is a Homunculus?

Forget the old definitions. Forget the newer, blander ones too. Just think of Homunuclus as the latest work by Matt St. Amand. A hard to classify book that you NEED to read in order to become a 'more entertained person.'

And let's just leave it at that.

"In his debut collection of poems, Forever and a Day, Matthew St. Amand leads the reader on a nine month journey through an illusory world of conflicting emotions. His muse is Dierdre, the pregnant, seventeen-year old sister of an ex-girlfriend. Dierdre is an aloof, mysterious child with ‘a moonsweet stare/long candleflame hair’. She is a young woman in need of a protector." Read more.

"Toward the end of Homunculus, there's an interesting passage where author Matt St. Amand talks about a Sam Cooke concert and how the performer successfully built up the suspense and anticipation and worked the crowd into a frenzy by building crescendo. The same thing could be said of St. Amand's ability to build to a punchline. The author knows how to craft a joke, but he also knows how to take that bit of 'funny' into higher levels until he has the reader not just smiling, not just smiling and nodding, but smiling, nodding, and outright laughing.

"He takes risks here, such as the bit where he interviews himself, but the risks inevitably pay off. The Xavier Lipshitz passages alone are worth the price of purchase, but there's plenty of other assorted skits and strangeness going on in here to keep even the most fickle of readers entertained.

"Highly recommended!"

“A sharp sense of places and people suffuses this collection of stories in which the rock n' roll animal is never far from the surface. Things happen, people change...the way it should be done. An effective mesh of lyrical realism lays the groundwork for even better things to come.”