Originally wenty-three, now twenty-five stories linked by the apocryphal utterances of the Rainbow Man, a strange misunderstood figure who shows the children of his town how to live in their dreams and nurture their imaginations.
The original edition published in 2002 by Bluechrome/Boho is no longer available, but the book has been reissued in a new and expanded edition published by Merilang Press in 2010.
...As children we were able to get to know the Rainbow Man a lot better than the adults, and to listen in to the complex one-sided conversations that he carried on with his ever-present invisible companions.
"Oh, youse won't be laughing tomorrow, when they crown me king," he would tell them, or "Only one of youse is coming with me when I go to Mars" or "I know youse have got my son's head in a bucket, but I don't care, what did that boy ever do for me?" and so on. The mere contingencies of reality were never allowed to impinge on the conversations between the Rainbow Man and his voices.
As we followed him around we joined in these conversations with enthusiasm, either inventing our own unseen respondents or attempting to contribute something to the Rainbow Man's dialogues. Occasionally he would acknowledge our presence also, and he was never lacking in courtesy even to the youngest of us, but usually he was too preoccupied with some more ethereal exchange of his own to pay us very much heed...
Professional Reviews
The Irish Emigrant (November, 2003 :: Issue No.100)
The eponymous Rainbow Man is the town character, the man for whom the children experience a mixture of fear and fascination, and it is his way of looking at the world that provides the basis for the stories contained in this collection. And a varied selection they are, with angels and God himself appearing in unlikely places, with the lives people live inside their minds spilling out to affect the course of their material lives and with the endless permutations of relationships between the sexes. Some have an unexpected twist; I think particularly of "Letting Go", and the author seems particularly at ease with the subject of death and the act of dying. But without exception all twenty-three of the stories, exploring life both familiar and unfamiliar, leave the reader with something to think about, and linger in the mind long after the final page is turned.
MyShelf.com
James Joyce meets Ray Bradbury in David Gardiner’s collection of tales wrapped in the imaginings of children who hear a Cassandra/Wandering Jew-type sage mutter such things as “Ye know the trouble with youse northerners, your memories is too bloody long!”
Harlan Ellison might have written “Letting Go,” inspired by this fictional Delphic aphorism, if ANGRY CANDY Ellison considered that a victim of the Holocaust might need to let go of the past. Like all of Gardiner’s tales, the denouement of “Letting Go” is bound in a taut rainbow circle love-knot that contains truth. From the secretly vengeful ex-nun propitiating a religious fraud on a smugly progressive church in “Immaculata” to the lovelorn man and woman in “Blind Date,” each thinking the other is too good for them, Gardiner’s characters face the loneliness of illusion and the loneliness of truth. As the war criminal of “Letting Go” asks, “That’s all you want of me? The truth? A small thing like that?”
As Gardiner’s returning prodigal Irish son in “The Lies of Sleeping Dogs” discovers, the pretty truth is often the only comfort we have. The young narrator of “The Oracle at the Adelphi” learns that hell and heaven often come from the same source, and the fire of the Adelphi parallels the blaze planned by the Sir Lancelot-channeling protagonist of “Knight Errant.” Fire and rain recur like yin and yang in Gardiner’s stories.
It always rains in Ireland, from the foreboding drizzle of “The Lies of Sleeping Dogs” to the cleansing downpour that enables the Galahad-esque Benny of “Hand of God” to save a young Muslim woman fleeing an arranged marriage. The rain of Heaven and the storms in Gardiner’s universe blow into our lives not only devils and voodoo priests, but angels as well, and sometimes no one can tell the difference. As Benny’s Fatima (Our Lady of Fatima?) explains, “Perhaps that’s all an angel is: an ordinary man that Allah trusts.”
Through the prism of Gardiner’s lens, angels, rain and light combine to create the Rainbow Man’s remarkable bag of wisdom that adults and children alike need to open.
Chris Williams, Tregolwyn Book Reviews
The Rainbow Man is a clever, and rather moving, device used to unify this diverse collection of stories. His is the first, simple story of a tramp wandering streets while talking to himself and children joining in his conversations and then making up their own. He then starts most of the following stories in the book with an apt quip which he might have made to a character in that story.
The stories themselves are a joy. They are very much that very thing, short stories, which now tend to be disappearing in a welter of "Art". Now I have nothing against art and I would not wish it thought that I favoured story-telling over experimental writing. I don’t, but neither do I favour experimental writing over story-telling. As with poetry, where there is room for rhyme and whatever its opposite might be, there is room in short stories for the experimental and for stories themselves. This book contains the latter.
This book contains twenty-three very good examples of the latter. Gardiner has the talent to depict character successfully in few words and work that character logically in his given setting. This setting often has something religious about it. Ireland and Catholicism are featured in a number of the stories. It is always handled well and with a light but sure touch. The Lies of Sleeping Dogs begins with a priest in Donegal performing a "muffled blessing" at a funeral. Immaculata deals with visions of Angels and virgin birth (this was the only story that didn’t work for me as it had a twist ending that I saw a mile off [I hate twist endings]). Personal Services features a man having his feet anointed by a prostitute he insists on calling "Mary Magdalene". Celia’s Shrine refers back to a certain birth in Bethlehem. The Hand of God says it all in the title.
It is a much wider collection than religion and Ireland might suggest however. Gardiner deals with, amongst other things: the Trenches, Boxing, Madness, the Holocaust, Marital Abuse, Prostitution, Drugs and First Sex. He deals with them all in a well-crafted and considered way. There are ghost stories, fantasy, urban stories, humour and retribution. There are not always happy endings but there are nearly always appropriate endings. He creates scenes and characters which work and which make you think. And the Boho Press (lovely name) do an excellent job of publishing Mr Gardiner’s collection; nary a typo in sight, now there’s a thing!
I had pleasure to read "The Rainbow Man" recently and highly recommend this collection without reservation. David Gardiner is a gifted writer with a storytellers heart! His stories will shock you, other times make you laugh, always make you think but most of all they will take you out of your head for awhile and throughly entertain you! In short the "The Rainbow Man" is a fantastic read I'm sure you will enjoy!
Reviewed by Ron Duggleby
9/14/2004
"The Rainbow Man" was given to me by the author, so I was not really expecting much. I guess I started reading it out of politeness more than anything else. I was surprised to find this book very well written. Most of the stories quickly capture the attention and, like all good short stories, have endings that usually come as a surprise. An enjoyable read that I would recommend to anyone.
London: Lashed, Lacerated, Lampooned and Lambasted satirizes 18 popular Jack London novellas with adult content and language and the work is author Jay Dubya's 37th published hardcover/paperback book.
Soldier's Gap is a non-traditional mystery with literary elements. The high school principal is brutally murdered, but Deputy Sheriff Dave Jenkins's search for meaning and love is a much more significant theme.
"Murder isn't usually this fun
This is the trade paperback edition of the mythopoeic paranormal novel recounting the attempts of one Danny Blue and his friends to come to terms with a series of unusual events in his life. A Kindle eBook edition is also available.
