The Orange Spotlight

Nobody Trusts A Black Magician by xTx (Nonpress, Oct. 2009)

What is nice is that you can digest the new collection of stories by the mysterious xTx in a number of ways. I chose to first print and read the collection before listening to her read each story via this mp3 stream. Whether good or bad, once you hear a writer read their work you never read it the same way. After listening to the surprisingly more mature sounding voice of xTx read these lines I feel that I am finally beginning to understand who she is as a writer and possibly a person.

Nobody Trust A Black Magician is a never subtle indictment of the way many women (or maybe just xTx) view relationships. Not just sexual relationships, but most other relationship too. This collection is vivid, bold, and draws on the complexities we may face when just trying to live through simple situations. What I felt come through these lines was a blatant and at times vulgar lust that was employed to mask her underlying need for love. She explores the violent lust, the physical brutality that males tend want to inflict, and the emotional courage and power that comes from reversing that fear. You get to see the inner details of the female, maybe slightly skewed or damaged, but still the sorted and intimate details. A phrase that jumped of the page in one of the stories was "I loved you right then", but it was just a fleeting sweetness that was then blurred by bravado. All of this mounts into a thick shield of uncaring, an attempt at being bold, but there is this vague undercurrent of wanting and need. A hopeful innocence being buried by a string of situations.

Before I grabbed this free collection by xTx I had read just a few of her works on-line, and I was pleasantly surprised by what I found and I firmly recommend you check out Never Trust a Black Magician today.