Ben Bell has written a fresh and fascinating novel called ‘Separation.’ I read the first page months ago and resolved to buy it as soon as I could afford to because I was overwhelmed by the immediacy and intensity of the voice of the narrator, along with its colloquial and down-to earth tone. However a month ago, when the book finally arrived, it was not how I expected it to be. The snappy and sharp vernacular sentences are juxtaposed with a far more flowing and philosophical style as Dan thinks about the life and world in general. It’s a story about trying to move on, about death, the beauty that exists in the suburban landscape, and the scuzzy, slightly paranoid and underlying(ly) sexual life of students.

There is a beauty about the idea of crossroads and continuity in the story. The very juxtaposition of the two styles of writing reflects the junction at which Dan finds himself in his life, yet at the same time there is a beautiful roundedness to the novel. Without wanting to reveal too much, the novel has a wonderful circular continuity. I wanted the novel to go on, like with any good read, but nevertheless, whilst it perhaps it is disappointingly short at 114 pages, the ending is too perfect for the novel to continue.

For me, it has a raw vitality to it, which mixes with the poignancy of the situation...imagine collaboration between Mike Skinner and Bob Dylan, musing over their mother’s death and the casual happenings of a pissed night in a club.

Highly recommended.

Matthew Kerry (author of Footsteps in the Darkness)

This review is by Shannon Yarbrough, whose site http://lulubookreview.wordpress.com is well worth checking out for all you budding authors out there.

"When I first began reading Separation by Ben Bell, I thought it was going to be another collection of short stories. My reasoning was because of the stream of consciousness-type inner dialog that the reader is presented with on page one. Dan Crake, the main character, is waking up and getting ready to go out with a friend.

Right away, I like Dan. He’s a fun guy. His British dialect and humor comes across immediately. The author has done a superb job of setting up the reader in place and time, and his protagonist is someone he knows well - coming alive on the page and warming up to the reader making Dan someone we’d like to know too. Like the book description on Lulu says, Dan definitely has an eccentric edge.

We soon settle into a more serious side of Dan when we learn that his mother has passed away. The author provides a nice balance, and extreme opposite, to the two sides of Dan’s life which we are treated to. When he’s out with his friends the book is very upbeat and almost poetic. It is fast paced with lots of dialog. But as Dan grieves for his mother, and even isolates himself inside his mind from the outside world due to an upcoming meeting with his distant father, he becomes a much more complex character than we probably imagined him to be in the beginning.

When I read a book like this with a first person narrative, and I get to know the main character in his mind and in his real world, I always wonder if he’s lying to us. I don’t always want to trust him. I guess that’s just the writer in me questioning whether or not Dan is telling me all that I really need to know. After all, in one chapter we’re seeing him deal with recent family matters, and in the next he’s out with his buds in a club. To me, Ben Bell has created a genius complex character in Dan which I haven’t seen the likes of since Brian Pera’s Troublemaker.

The divide in Dan’s own life is indeed evident to the reader, but it doesn’t keep you from wanting to know just what the outcome will be. How will Dan cope as he takes a girl, Jo, home from the bar for a night of passion, then spirals into a trip down memory lane recalling a trip to the beach with his Mom?

The book culminates with a much calmer Dan than we met at the beginning. He is spending time with his father and they are going to go to a museum together. Dan’s thoughts are on another girl named Anna, and he recalls the first time he went back to his mother’s grave. There is a quote at the end which I believe sums up the story quite nicely:

Feel a bit disorientated with everyone’s swift moving, but in a good way. We enter the bright white light of the station’s arena. I look way up to the glass roofing, criss-crossed with a million bars and beams, sun shining through, blinding. People everywhere, like insects on this huge shiny floor, spilled out from life’s daily jar.

Separation is a story about the things that happen to us when we wish we could either fast forward through life or rewind it and prevent the bad things from happening to us which smack us hard in the face to remind us what life is all about in the first place. Kudos to Ben Bell for giving such a life lesson a new twist, and reinventing it on the page with an enjoyable character like Dan. No matter where you are on your own journey, this is a book you should definitely read somewhere along the way."