"This Story is like a Kaleidoscope"

If you have read any of his books, you know that given his wacky sense of humor it's hard to stop laughing. Oleg Medvedkov is the author of How to Successfully Remove Any Negative Feedback on eBay!, Attila the Hun, CIA Hamster, Time Machine, Samurai's Confessions and more. Humorous Stories, Funny Tales and Amusing Anecdotes, and Take a Break & Have a Laugh Series. Passionate Mind-Control Worms, Cool Cats of Fortune, The Art of Getting a Sandwich and more. But he has a serious side as well: he is a Top 1000 Amazon Reviewer (not an easy achievement by any measure.) Just this morning he posted this review for A Favorite Son:

5.0 out of 5 stars Much more than just a retelling January 4, 2013

By Oleg Medvedkov TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

"A favorite son" is a retelling of a well-known Biblical tale of Jacob and Esau, their mother Rebecca, and Isaac, son of Abraham.

Esav and Yankle, in this version, are twins who are born after their mother, Becky, has prayed to God for twenty years to have children. Esav is the first-born by just a "split second" and Yankle, no matter how close he feels to his brother, is always envious of his brother. Yankle tricks his brother into selling his birthright for a pot a stew; Becky tricks her blind and bedridden husband, Isaac, into giving his blessings to Yankle with a "goatskin coat"; deception is discovered and Esav tries to kill Yankle. The storyline is as close to the Bible text as can be but this is not what makes THIS book shine.

This story is like a kaleidoscope - with every turn of the page the focus changes and we shift our concentration on a different aspect of the tale. A few of the pictures stand out and make us question the original story - not that it did not have enough ambiguity on its own, mind you - the last talk of disguised Yankle and his dying father, for example. When you read it, you get a feeling that Isaac, while old and blind, might not have been fooled by the goatskin as much as we are led to believe.

The tale is told from Yankle's point of view, as he tells it to his own "favorite" son. The author, by a masterful use of shifting tenses and a couple of unobtrusive references, creates an illusion that the story has happened both long time ago and in the present at the same time; which gives this story a new definition of "Timeless." Good read.