It's certainly very bad, Deb. The competition for the worst writing is fierce, though. Some friends used to do dramatic readings from a particularly bad book that I think was called The Clones. The line I remember is, "He bit her neck, which screamed."

I've read much, much worse. At least it's more or less grammatical.....

ETA which is not to say it isn't as bad as you say. I'm just a bit scarred by contest judging experiences that I really can't go into any details about on a public forum, not to mention the Holocaust denier in my community college writing class a few years ago, etc....

But do you want to rec it to al your friends? So that love can return to all our lives?

Still shuddering, over here.

And I am feeling no tendency at all toward mercy. I only posted snippets of this thing, and it's beyond horrible. S/he sent it to me and asked me to recommend it to all my friends, so that looooooove can return to our lives.

It's called "Stars Over the Desert". And the first chapter is called "Shattered Joy".

Brrrrrrrrrrr.

Oh, I didn't post anything near all of what it sent me. The ratafia-making contest on the mountainside, for instance, which has jackshit to do with the story - I left that part out. And all the lecturing about how the theatre group winds up rehearsing in a little room behind Maria's and Isidro's bakery.

But of course, Izzy's rather oafish, or so we're told (not shown).

or so we're told (not shown)

But does Izzy ever actually act oafish in the snippets, or are we just supposed to take the author's word for it? Does he behave contrary to the author's description?

Does he behave contrary to the author's description?

He doesn't behave in any way at all. Everything is through the author.

It's so very bad.

edit: and in researching this, it turns out the perpetrator is a he, the translator (from Catalan) is a he, and the bio on the author reads as follows:

Day by day he fritters away his vital juices as a government bureaucrat, which brings little light to his life. For a Spaniard raised on the Mediterranean, lack of light is slow death. The author escapes this dire reality by writing fiction.

Ugh. Maybe it was better in Catalan? If so, the translator should be flogged. If not, the writer should be flogged.

Arrrrggh, Deb. I'm so sorry. Burn it, dance around its funeral pyre with a warding spell so that no other such doorstops come your way.

Oh. email. Never mind. You'd have to print it out, and that would be a waste of dead trees. Wouldn't want you to burn your computer.

Still. Some sort of burial-and-no-ressurection ceremony seems in order.

I suspect the translator is the writer's Very Best Buddy, or something.

Yuck.

Tabula rasa.(But you might forget your own stuff, too, that way.)

Omigawd, from the "official" synopsis:

The conflict comes to the boil when he discovers that her family has pledged Amina in marriage against her wishes to an aged desert sheik already four times married. Izzy vows not to allow this to happen and willfully sets about forcing circumstances his way. The rest of the novel charts the hilarious and yet deeply committed actions of the hero as he fights to free his love from her hide-bound family. By forcing the issue, Izzy inevitably leads his love to a tragic end.

An aged desert sheik with four other wives!