Colorful, supple writing | Miracle Myx

A Lyrical Mystery | Miracle Myx | Dave Diotalevi

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	• Miracle Myx Dave Diotalevi Kunati Inc., 2008 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The wages of syn...

For fourteen-year-old Myx Amens, a walk down a city street is a sensory experience the likes of which Ken Kesey never approached with his notorious Acid Tests. Myx, however, requires no psychoactive substances to experience synesthesia - the sensory cross-wiring that results in seeing music, smelling colors, or tasting words. All he had to do was die a couple of times.

Myx has so carefully ordered his life in the Massachusetts town of Miracle that he can literally come and go as he likes, anywhere, any time. He knows a lot more about the residents than they know themselves, in some cases. Most especially in this case - the murder and mutilation of a small-town high-school bitch queen.

In his first novel, Dave Diotalevi presents a neatly-plotted mystery, as well as the most wonderfully disorienting first-person POV since Robert Montgomery's film noir classic, Lady In The Lake.

As a life-long synesthete, I can assure readers that Diotalevi's evocative prose offers a convincing authenticity. For example, my non-synesthete husband was taken utterly by surprise by the Big Reveal at the end of the book, while Myx more or less told me precisely what it was by the middle of the story. In addition, my husband experienced none of the sensory out-of-kilterness I felt. He's a pretty literal kind of guy. He was, however, as enthusiastically engaged as I was by this tale. Diotalevi deftly inserts clues in more forms -- literary and pop cultural references, as well as archetypal and iconographic images -- than John Campbell could shake a Jungian stick at.

Hints of a richly-textured backstory and foreshadowings of Myx's future activities offer hope for follow-up novels.

I can think of only two complaints about Miracle Myx. First, I was distracted by the frequent product placements. Myx's eidetic memory could register traits other than brand and model or style of food, clothing, and electronic gear. Some segments read like the novelization of an M. Night Shyamalan film. Second, the book was too short. I want more Myx!

**a later note**: Michael disagrees with me once more. Says the flurries of product names never really attracted his active attention. He agrees with the 5 stars I awarded in his name, and states for the record that has zero complaints, can't wait to read Miracle Myx again, and wants to see more Myx.

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Colorful, supple writing

I enjoyed this novel thoroughly with its lively writing, tight plotting, and memorable characters. I'd love to read further adventures with Myx in the middle of it all. My only complaint is that Myx is a mere fourteen. I'd feel a lot more comfortable is he were 16 or even 15. 14 just feels wrong for all this boy gets into.

A Lyrical Mystery

"I learned that nothing is yours until it's yours, and that you make it yours by taking it, protecting it and hiding it," says Myx Amens, a uniquely talented 14-year-old foster kid living in Miracle, Massachusetts. In Dave Diotalevi's debut novel, Miracle Myx, we encounter 42 hours in the life of Myx as he investigates a series of murders.

There's a seminal chapter in this twisty mystery of hidden secrets where Myx is in jeopardy from several thugs at the estate of their boss - a powerful Italian business man. Myx artfully escapes from the thugs and finds himself in the company of the boss' wife, Mama. Suddenly, Myx's intuitive mix of synesthesia offers up a song, for which he quickly scribbles onto paper. In Italian, no less. Mama reads it and recognizes it as her mother's homemade gnocchi recipe - written in her mother's handwriting. This isn't the first or the last time Myx uses his talents to tease out what someone needs at the moment they need it. And to this reader's point of view, this scene tells us much of what we need to know about the heart of this unique man/boy character whose primary desire seems to be easing the way of others. Particularly, if they are female.

One will read this book as much for fast-action, 42 hours in the life of Myx as they will for the poetic turns of phrase such as "My hand sang the music of its curves as I wrote," and "Air currents made the flames and shadows move in interesting ways. To me, they felt pliable and sounded like the wind in a field."

This smart, sexy novel from Dave Diotalevi may be his debut, but it is clearly not his first try at beautiful prose, evocative language, and moving storytelling. Let's hope there's more to come from this author.

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I LOVE Myx!

I just love Myx, the sneaky, fascinatingly quirky, frightfully intelligent young man who takes on the mystery of some grisly murders in his small Massachusetts town. Somehow Dave makes us like this fellow who stops at nothing to learn all he needs to know about people.

And I not only love Myx, but I love the storytelling! Dave weaves this tale in a way that keeps us thinking, wondering, and laughing. Every page is interesting and fun!

A new voice in mystery fiction

Mr. Diotalevi has his own unique voice right out of the gate with his first novel. I've never read a book quite like it.

The protagonist, Myx Amens, a 14 year old boy, is a bit "wise beyond his years" but also at the same time, he's still a 14-year old boy, and he's not "wise beyond his years" in a way that makes him annoying or preachy, but simply because he has almost supernatural powers. He's a synesthete: he can "see" and "taste" whether people are lying or telling the truth by the color and shape and flavor of their words. He can alter his voice or handwriting to mimic others'. He has an eidetic memory. He never sleeps (this is the one thing I find totally implausible about this character, it's physically impossible).

At times, the kid is quite creepy. He doesn't appear to have normal emotions for a human being of any age (except for the standard 14-year-old boy's interest in girls, but that seems more sexual than emotional). He is a voyeur. He sneaks into people's houses and eats their food and snoops through their computers, their mail, their diaries. Basically, he's a sociopath. But one who is on the side of the angels :-) And to be honest, it's kind of cool to go along for the ride and be a voyeur-by-proxy. Perhaps if I knew I wouldn't get caught, I'd be tempted to go snooping through people's houses as well.

Also, like the small town in Maine in "Murder She Wrote," Miracle Massachusetts is a hot-bed of crime (and financial opportunity) out of all proportion to reality.

But - set aside disbelief and go with it, and you'll have a rollicking good read.

I hope this is the first in a series.

(BTW, I have a mild form of synesthesia myself - it's more common in females than in males - I see numerical digits as colors. This results in my finding some phone numbers "ugly" because their colors clash, for example.)

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Two near-death experiences have transformed Myx Amens; he hasn't slept for three years. His first near-death experience, a lightning strike, left him with a photographic memory while his second, drowning, induced synesthesia, so he smells and feels colors, sees sounds, and tastes the thoughts and feelings of others. These skill sets endow Myx to investigate local unsolved homicides and ruffle a lot of feathers. The murders are disturbing?a beautiful teen with her lower lip cut off; her boyfriend sexually mutilated?and leave Myx wondering What could the killer possibly want with these body parts? A third victim, the town's tattoo artist, could be the clue to link the other two victims, but a tattoo seems a thin motive for murder. Myx discovers a baffling puzzle box which may hold secrets dating back centuries to town founder Elbridge Sonnet, and is possibly connected to the tattoo murders. For an unblinking 42 hours, Myx's high-performance synesthetic brain probes the dirty secrets of Miracle, Massachusetts, in search of the astonishing truth. This thoroughly original, beautifully written novel introduces one of the most intriguing protagonists in recent literature.

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