The Free

The new updated ‘pocketbook’ edition of ‘The Free’ is Out Now!

And now available through Active Distribution here.. cheaper than Amazon!

You can download it free here to read on a tablet, laptop or cellphone…

Also it’s being reviewed in a 26 page essay by an eminent critic.

Plus the new SLIDESHARE is finally finished here

A few more commentaries on the book.

The Free is a story with a serious message, and the real joy of it is how author M.Gilliland disguises that within a very good story. Almost every other “message” book I’ve ever read has been a bit ham-handed and clunky, but The Free is, well, Free of all that.

Based on the somewhat disjointed pitch, I was expecting a fairly wacky tale, but The Free has many serious moments that could give literary fiction tales a run for their money. Dialog is spot on perfect and it’s easy to emphasize with the main character as either Linda or Maxie. In fact, in a lot of ways, Linda/Maxie and to some extent Macker are the normal ones, the straight-man role for the crazy world Gilliland has created.

It’s also interesting to note that The Free is quite a timely tale given what is happening in the world. We’re killing our climate and our economy is going down with it, making The Free an admirable anecdote to represent our somewhat lost generation.

John Breeden II     Old Number Seven

I am fascinated by the short, succint narrative passages. I am engaged by the structure of the work, the amusing characters, a plot that reminds me of Ulysses (the Joyce version). Well done and best wishes.      Mercutio

‘’This is the most detailed fictional treatment of the movement from a world recognizably like our own to an anarchist society that I have read. More importantly, it is imagined strongly enough to allow readers to believe that events could happen this way. That is to say, it gives plausible answers to the two most important questions regarding such a transformation: under what preconditions is it likely to occur, and once it starts what factors most contribute to its success?……”  Dan Jaekle

This reads like “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole and Alan Moore’s “V For Vendetta”. You have that skewed look at mass rebellion from a protagonist a little out of the mainstream idealistic vision of a revolutionary. This is at it’s core taking a non-plausible hero or unlikely band of heroes that you have made conventional. It’s the literary equivalent of taking Humpty Dumpty and making him Che Guevera.  Brillant writing executed with precise subtlety.–JL “The Devil Of Black Bayou:”

Reading this was so energising. I love the MC and her humour and her struggle to make sense of everything. Very, very good writing. Refreshingly different. It feels as though you had enormous pleasure writing it and that shines through. Nothing to criticize. Thanks for an interesting and uplifting read. Made my day!    Fontaine

Strong believable, compelling situation. “Like a bee in a jar” is lovely.
“I had the idea that my father was great. It’s true he did shout and roar and get drunk. But I was his own big girl.” This is beautiful writing, we feel how torn she is between the emotional and the rational view of her father.
Similarly in,“But I still believed by dada was the best. For me he’d always been the bee’s knees. And I didn’t dare doubt it.”
“It was groaning brutal” is magnificent!
Nothing is simple here, it is life with all its hidden complexity, I liked, “I’m still not sure sure that I didn’t vomit on her on purpose” and “They always have their hooks inside your head” The world you’ve created is dark and rich.
“My feet went crunch crunch down the gravelled drive, like a zombie late for lunch.” Brilliant and funny, as is, “I’d like to say I couldn’t care two drops of diarrhea what he done. But that would be a sinful lie.” and I loved,
“because the sun and the moon and all the stars shone out of his arsehole” it is gloriously strong and earthy.

Sharda D.  http://www.authonomy.com/books/42835/mr-unusually-s-circus-of-dreams/