A Shadow in Yucatan (9 page)

‘Involution-An
Odyssey Reconciling Science to God’ is a poetic journey through
scientific thought from pre-Socratic Greece to Now. It offers a new
and complementary alternative to evolution- instead Involution, the
encoding of experience as memory. The history of science is the
evidence of the incremental recovery of this cellular embedded
memory through the contemplative inspirations of genius. Saints and
Scientists break the same bread

It was
published by CollaborArt Books in 2013 and may be sampled on her
website
Involution-An Odyssey
/
where recordings and reviews are posted. It achieved highly
commended runner-up nomination for the Book of the Year (2013) by
the Scientific and Medical Network and has received notable
endorsements from Ervin Laszlo, Philip Franses, David Lorimer and
Andrew Harvey.

Excerpts from Reviews
of Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God.

…a book that is
a rarity: it is on a controversial, actually
hair-and-eyebrow-raising-subject. If you the reader are as brave as
the author, you are in for a fantastic ride. Getting close to
science as well as to God at the same time. That's no mean feat.
Enjoy the ride and the light! (
Dr Ervin Laszlo
)

A brilliant and
profoundly erudite epic charting the evolution of Western thinking
processes, probing the frontiers of rationality and naturalism and
opening up a deeper understanding… The author's grasp of the
principal elements of Western culture is masterly and her poetic
narrative woven together with extraordinary subtlety. This is
nothing short of a heroic intellectual tour de force and deserves
the widest readership (
David Lorimer
)

The very act of
genius…the genius of involution is not just a mechanism of science
relating to the whole but a completely different realisation of the
beautiful within living process. (
Philip Franses Editor;
Holistic Science Journal
)

"This is a
marvellous, wise, unique work written with great flair and
originality.  Read it slowly and learn from it's
truth".(
Andrew Harvey
)

The website
offers excerpts and reviews of Involution-An Odyssey as well
links to
all retailers
and books are available in both print and
EBook formats.

Philippa’s
author profile is available at
Smashwords
and she welcomes any contact or questions from readers and can be
contacted at philipparees7(at)gmail(dot)com

Alison
Jakes
(Poetry Circle)

‘I was utterly
awestruck by the writing skill and breadth of imaginative
evocation.....poetic, elegiac...almost unbearably
intense...sensuous imagery from both nature and modern urban
living...musical, both rhythmic and assonant...sustained dramatic
tension within a simple everyday story....the superficiality of the
beauty salon is a very potent metaphor....’

Katherine
Knight
(Real Writers)

The story is a
vehicle for some impressive poetry. It is highly emotional and
transforms the ordinary protagonist into an archetypal figure of
suffering motherhood.

‘Speech must
now grow from silence and the stones that cockle the black
backs
Of women in pre-history, left alone with the consequence of
men’

There is
religious dimension too. Throughout there are subtle references to
the Christian Nativity, and on another level it tells of Christ’s
birth and Mary’s suffering in modern terms. It contrasts the
cruelty of the girl’s Catholic mother, with the compassion of her
Jewish landlady.

There is
implicit criticism of the hypocrisy of society as a whole….The poem
has a social purpose.

Alan
Morrison
, (Editor The Recusant)

Philippa Rees
is as an immediately distinctive and striking poet who writes with
unfashionably – often brilliant – painterly verbal play and colour,
oozing with a sensuous love of language. Rees’s almost tangible
style dazzles with imagistic chiaroscuro; stark contrasts of light
and shade, subtext and texture:

This ripeness
of verbiage and intrinsic musicality inevitably bring comparisons
with Dylan Thomas (particularly the densely descriptive,
rumble-tumble list- passages of Under Milk Wood): But this is not
to detract from Rees’s individuality, which, throughout this book
of poetic narrative interspersed with colourful dialogue, is
palpable and often beguiling

I can’t help
hearing Richard Burton’s silvery intoning of ‘the webfoot
cocklewomen and the tidy wives’. But this is not to detract from
Rees’s individuality, which, throughout this book of poetic
narrative interspersed with colourful dialogue, is palpable and
often beguiling. She is prone to the lingering aphorism that is
imaginatively her own – ‘The cradle of compassion lies in an open
palm’; ‘Nights are cloth soup silence’; ‘…alone in triptych of
frescoed gilt…’ – and the unforgettable image – sometimes oblique,
but still workably so:

Lethargy, that
toothless crone, skims perpetual
indifference from the cream of richer care.

For my part, I
read A Shadow in Yucatán mainly for its poetry, its play with
language, image and sound, rather than strictly trying to follow
the actual narrative. Approaching this book with a sort of Negative
Capability, I experienced it in terms of descriptive impression,
verbal effect. In this respect, A Shadow in Yucatán is disarmingly
beautiful

Independent
Reviews
Self Publishing Magazine

The back blurb
calls ‘A Shadow in Yucatán’ a ‘distilled novel’ and it is –a home
brew, raw and omnipotent! Rees makes extraordinary the sorrowful
ordinary of an unwanted pregnancy and the resulting difficult
decisions. She celebrates the sense of community, despairs of
family and counts on the generosity of strangers. She explores
problems and finds solutions – hard through they are to take – in
unexpected places

Through it we
enter a world as real as we are, but as foreign to us as a bad
dream. This book is a must for any intelligent reader!

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