Vacation To Graceland by Phillip Cornell was given to me in exchange for an honest review when it was the OnlineBookClub.org Book of the Day.
Vacation To Graceland is a short story told in narrative format by a young black man, who is one of the people on the road trip – a family outing – to Elvis’ mansion and estate in Memphis from their home in St. Louis. Most of the story is taken up with the retelling of the young man’s tribulations with and resulting embarrassment from his interactions with his mother and old, infirm grandmother.
Many of these situations in Vacation To Graceland are comical, but Cornell’s use of English is lax and conversational. Whether that is his style specifically for this novelette or not, I do not know, but the grammar is poor and there is little evidence of a serious attempt at editing. For example, there is no excuse for writing ‘our parties name’, even if it is in conversation.
However, it is also repetitive and overwritten.
Having said that, it is interesting to read how the family’s road trip panned out, and to see that the problems he had were roughly the same as mine were at that age, despite the fact that where I live is 3,000 miles from the southern states and on a different continent.
Anyway, Cornell gets us readers to Memphis, where his more distant family hold a barbecue, then he takes us around Elvis’ old mansion, Graceland, and back to St. Louis.
It took me a long time to realise that the cover is a drawing of Elvis, but I enjoyed the story in spite of the above criticism of the style. However, I would not read another one, until Cornell improves his skills or hires an editor.
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Owen Jones, Amazon Best-Selling Author from Barry, Wales, has lived in several countries and travelled in many more. While studying Russian in the USSR in the '70's, he hobnobbed with spies on a regular basis; in Suriname, he got caught up in the 1982 coup; and while a company director, he joined the crew of four as the galley slave to sail from Barry to Gibraltar a home-made concrete yacht, which was almost rammed by a Russian oil tanker and an American aircraft carrier.
“I am a Celt, and we are romantic”, he said when asked about his writing style, “and I firmly believe in reincarnation, Karma and Fate, so, sayings like 'Do unto another...', and 'What goes round comes around' are central to my life and reflected in my work. I write about what I see, or think I see, or dream... and, in the end it is all the same really”. He speaks seven languages and is learning Thai, since he lives in Thailand with his Thai wife of fifteen years.
His first novel, Daddy's Hobby is from the seven-part series 'Behind The Smile: The Story of Lek, a Bar Girl in Pattaya', but his largest collection is 'The Megan Series', twenty-three novelettes on the psychic development of a teenage girl, the subtitle of which, 'A Spirit Guide, A Ghost Tiger and One Scary Mother!' sums them up nicely. He has written fifty novels and novelettes, including: Dead Centre; Andropov's Cuckoo; Fate Twister; The Disallowed (a philosophical comedy); Tiger Lily of Bangkok; and A Night in Annwn (Annwn being the ancient Welsh word for Heaven). Many have been translated into foreign languages and narrated into audio books.
Owen Jones writes stories set in Wales, Spain and Thailand, where he now lives. He is a life-long Spiritualist, and this belief is interwoven, in a very realistic way, into many of his books and storylines. If you like a touch of the 'supernatural', try his books
He sums his life up thus: “Born in the Land of Song, Living in the Land of Smiles”.
