Pattie Palmer-Baker is a recognized award-winning artist and
poet. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries throughout the Pacific
Northwest. Locally and nationally she has won numerous awards for
her art and poetry.
An accomplished poet, Pattie had been nominated for the
Pushcart Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in many journals including Calyx,
Voicecatcher, Military Experience the Arts, Minerva Rising and Phantom Drift.
In 2017 she earned first prize in the Write to Publish contest, and in 2019 she
won first, second, and the Bivona prize in the Ageless Poetry contest.
She has served as the poetry co-editor for VoiceCatcher: a
journal of women's voices and visions.
Del Sol Press awarded MALL first prize for the most promising
first novel in 2017.
Pattie lives in Portland, Oregon
with her beloved husband and rescued dachshund.
Her website is www.pattiepalmerbaker.com/.
You can follow her at Facebook at https://tinyurl.com/yykrz36e.
5 Things You Should Know About MALL
1. It took me twenty years to write Mall, although I stopped off and on to
concentrate on art and poetry. I focused completely on the novel for the past four
years or so.
2. I was a counselor for twenty-five years so it’s not surprising that I
made Nona, one of the main characters, a ‘Mental Health Practitioner’.
3. MALL is a world where everyone lives for pleasure so, of course, I had
to include sex, something I find very difficult to write about (blush, blush). Somehow,
I forged ahead and included many many sexual references, without writing an
explicit sex scene. (phew)
4. This is not to say the connection between the two main characters (Nona
and Sara) is sexual. It is not; however, it is the key relationship.
5. I wanted readers to confront the question, are deep relationships worth
the pain or is a carefree lifestyle filled with pleasure a better option? While
writing, another question snuck in. What price would you pay for safe pain-free
life?
About the Book:
A Novel by Pattie Palmer-Baker
Winner of the Del Sol Most Promising Novel, 2017
MALL is
a sparkling alternate world where everyone is beautiful, employed with enough
income to
But
what about the Mall Code? And what happens when Sara, a 21st century woman,
accidentally finds her way into this alien yet familiar world? Nona,
a MALL mental health practitioner treats Sara upon her arrival and goes against
the Code to help her acclimate. Sara seems to be just what she needs, an
antidote to Nona’s secret and growing boredom.
At
first Sara desperately wants to get home, and, as she seeks a way out as well
as answers about her new reality, Nona begins to see MALL in a new light. Is
abundant gratification enough?
Things
aren’t all beauty and pleasure. Sara experiences dancing in a dangerous
orgiastic dance club on a lower level. She attends a gambling session where
people bet on living more years when their “number’s up” and a “passing ceremony,”
where Mallites are supposedly resurrected into a new
life.
Junkers,
outsiders lurking on the fringes of MALL, have been fighting Mall Management’s
control by creating increasingly dangerous disturbances. For years they have
struggled to discover an exit, based on rumors of those who made it Outside and
were never heard from again. Through them Sara and Nona meet someone who
might help them escape. They both must make the choice that will change their
lives forever.
Who
will risk leaving and who will decide to stay?
MALL by Pattie Palmer-Baker was recently published by Del
Sol Press and winner of the Del Sol Press Most Promising Book, 2017.
ISBN:
978-0-9998425-5-3.
PRAISE:
What a suspenseful journey
Mall was—a real "page-turner"- imaginative with firm command of
psychological expression and dialogue! Pattie Palmer-Baker captures some of the
sexual contradictions, insecurities, and darker motivations of her female
characters, and the complex relationships between women. The "surface"
allusions to sex and violence throughout the story line work well with the
superficial world she describes. Sex all the time—and yet, really, not much
explicit writing about actual sexual encounters—the same for violence. This
tension of content and form works well for me. What gives pleasure? What gives
pain? The many hallways and mirrored rooms give the setting a creepy fun-house
effect and increase the sense of a closed world and claustrophobic doom. Her
descriptions of the Mallites' physical appearances and their individual choice
of costume in this strange place is creative—a breath of lightness in this
frank examination of our quandary about the meaning of freedom in
an existential existence. What is real? I was "on the run" with Sara
for the entire read! And what a turn at the end!
-- Cathy Cain, Portland
poet and artist
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