The Island Of Poe by Tony Parkin

When a person writes someone else's life story, it's called a biography.

When a person writes their own life story, it's called an autobiography.

When two people in different centuries team-up to tell the former's life story, it's called The Island Of Poe.

Drawing heavily upon the prose of the man himself, Tony Parkin does indeed tell the life story of Edgar Allan Poe, by putting excerpts from his writings into context, and blurring the lines between where one man's work finishes, and the other's begins.

The result is a book that is both dreamy and absorbing. The excerpts are long enough to seize the attention, but short enough to leave me wanting more. After reading the clip from his infamous Raven poem, it was difficult to continue without falling back into the same rhythm.

And Tony surely knows who he's writing about, having been performing his one-man show along similar lines for decades now.

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