Up at 6S: "Lessons On Salt Water," and Book Review: "Pirate Talk or Mermalade" by Terese Svoboda

Lessons On Salt Water: My humorous stab at relationships of the... strained sort. If only I were as good a pugilist in real life...

I like Six Sentences, I do. Like the Prediction, it's a challenge.

After you read, you may wonder, "Darling, where did you get the strange idea to tell it like that?" And I will tell you:

"Pirate Talk or Mermalade" by Terese Svoboda, a slim novel told entirely in dialogue, sans the typical quotation marks and dialogue tags. A challenging read, despite the book's slender silhouette.

An amusing tale of two brothers who are pathetic pirates, it follows their misadventures from their life on land with their rope-obsessed mother to various ships, none of which work out well for them. Along the way, meet a (possible) mermaid half-sister and a parrot who shows up at inopportune times to squawk, "Hanged!"

Honestly, it's a bit difficult to describe this book. But the dialogue is effervescent, and Svoboda continually charmed me with turns of phrase and delightful imagery. Not a book for everyone, but a suitable book for those of the peg-legged, one-eyed persuasion, or those who feel romantic longings deep in their parts for such folk.