Praise for Soda Lake
“John C. Hampsey’s Soda Lake begins like a mystery—a man vanishes into a desert salt flat—but quickly becomes a dreamlike voyage into the nature of identity that offers readers an original and haunting exploration of the self.”
-Edward Sung for IndieReader
“In his new novel--Soda Lake, from its Hitchcockian opening scene to its hallucinatory conclusion, John Hampsey—author of Paranoia and Contentment and Kaufman’s Hill—continues to do what he does best: narrating through a series of “evolving epiphanies,” those existential moments that unmask our false selves only to reveal a new way of being that just keeps unfolding into radically new manifestations-- taking the narrative, the protagonist, the reader, and yes, even the author, into startlingly unexpected worlds of shifting perceptions, and brilliant emanations.”
-Robert Inchausti, author of Subversive Orthodoxy: Thomas Merton’s American Prophecy and other works.
“I think many writers can remember a moment that, if it had not happened, their life may have gone in a different direction.”
-Featured Interview With John Hampsey at Book Reader Magazine.
“At once a metaphysical, Lynchian pursuit and a meditation on being and nothingness, Soda Lake is an eerie, baroque dream. John C Hampsey has fashioned a strange and tantalizing novel.”
- Stewart O’Nan, author of The Speed Queen and City of Secrets.
“…for readers willing to surrender to its strange currents, Soda Lake offers a challenging and genuinely original voyage through the nature of consciousness and identity—with all its weird detours and dead ends.”