in the vivid and memorable opening scene of this novel, owen arthur bradshaw rescues a little girl from a potentially dangerous and decidedly undignifin the vivid and memorable opening scene of this novel, owen arthur bradshaw rescues a little girl from a potentially dangerous and decidedly undignified situation.
but don't start organizing a parade for him just yet, because he is certainly no hero to little girls, especially when it comes to his daughter eeona, and his behavior towards her has looong term consequences.
this is a multigenerational historical/magical epic taking place in the virgin islands spanning from 1916 through to the 1970s. it follows the bradshaw family through their loves and losses, and the consequences of their family curse. it's all restraint, passion, family, fate, history, secrets, betrayal, and war, as these sprawling books tend to be. it is also a parallel history of the virgin islands, beginning with their transfer from danish to american rule, and the difficulties for those occupying this liminal space: to be a citizen of an owned territory so far removed from the controlling country, this ostensible, nominal belonging while not being truly equal, nor "seen" for what they are; an independent culture with independent values. a trinket in on the mantlepiece of america; a place to roll up on for the novelty of its beaches and local color, disrupting the serenity, putting up fences, and reducing the local people to an insulting backdrop (dear god, that film...)
the story is told through the two bradshaw daughters, eeona and anette, and their half-brother jacob.
eeona is a fascinating character. she is the devastating island beauty whose hubris is in believing too much in her own mythology and hype, denying herself romantic relationships, protecting others from her dangerous beauty, and scorning all the men who don't live up to her deceased daddy, becoming a cold woman. and, man, there is nothing more dramatic than how spectacularly a woman like this who has held herself back from love and indignity will eventually fall.
eeona's got all kinds of secrets, both of her family's past and of the more... corporeal sort, and the keeping of these secrets while denying herself a fully-realized life is a lonely strain.
She was seeing herself running alongside the beach that flanked them now on the left. Seeing herself like a beautiful animal with hair flying behind her. She was galloping. She was something to be feared. She loved herself most like that. She also hated herself most like that. But no matter, because she missed herself most like that.
that passage broke my heart a little - a woman yearning for her childhood freedom and innocence, despite having had a childhood that is pretty horrifying to an outsider.
her sister anette is the complete opposite. she is the embodiment of pure, unrestrained freedom, embracing the romantic possibilities, and ending up with three children by three different men.
Eeona never forget that she a lady from a genteel family. Me? I forget all the time. I laugh with my mouth open wide-wide.
oh yeah, and she speaks in dialect instead of the self-consciously "proper" speech of her sister.
anette is a propulsive character - a force made up of impulse and energy, unapologetic, which is such a contrast to the her almost-ascetic sister.
jacob's contribution to the narrative is primarily his perspective of the american experience - he leaves the islands to join the army and experiences all the racism and resentment of the american south in the 1940s.
he contributes other things, but - spoilers.
overall, it's a strong debut. while the overall "story" is a little disjoined and meandering, the characters alone are strong enough to hold the reader's attention, and the magical elements are nicely employed. read it for the descriptions and the characters - it is terrifically lovely.
fulfilling my 2020 goal to read (at least) one book each month that was given to me as a present that i haven't yet gotten around to reading because ifulfilling my 2020 goal to read (at least) one book each month that was given to me as a present that i haven't yet gotten around to reading because i am an ungrateful dick.
this book had so many opportunities to earn a third star, but it staunchly refused to even try. it could have been really good, but it was written by someone who has never met a human being, and it was impossible to get past the bloviated way the characters spoke.
the first part unfolds by way of an omniscient narrator, focusing on three female postdoc columbia students: anna, ruth, and lucy, who like to drink alcohol and chat about game theory.
anna is from denmark, and described like so:
Anna was dark-haired, ringleted, slim, her spoken English precise and so little accented that only its hyper-correctness spoke to her foreign origin.
she does, indeed, speak in a very formal way. in defining the phenomenon from which the novel takes its name:
"It could be a sacred grove or just the space in which a game is played...Even an ordinary childhood game like sardines turns a house into a magic circle. The circle might be a boxing ring or a sports arena. It's just a way of talking about an amoeba-shaped space of play, one that's distinctly demarcated from the ordinary world outside. Whatever happens within the magic circle is fundamentally discontinuous with the external world.
so, sure. maybe that's how the english language sounds when it is filtered through a danish academic.
but it ain't just anna.
here's ruth talking to lucy at this casual girls night out at the bar:
"I'm sick of the way you always try to stave off confrontation."
and here's lucy:
"You two are never going to be able to make a decisive determination of the respective merits of fact and fantasy," Lucy said.
ruth again:
"I guess it's hard for me to give up the degree of control that would be entailed in allowing other people to play live parts in the game," said Ruth. "The devices are entirely within my domain. I can determine each player's experience within certain clearly defined boundaries, and players can enjoy the game on their own time and at any hour of day or night. Introducing actors risks things getting much sillier, and of course harder to coordinate."
not the most natural dialogue, but i'm willing to entertain the possibility that douchey postdocs talk like this on their downtime, but why does this also extend to the incorporeal narrator??
Anna was flagging down the waitress. Ruth hadn't yet finished her first drink, so Anna ordered a second vodka for herself and another pint of pale ale for Lucy, who was trying to keep an eye on her alcohol intake and had regretfully deemed beer's caloric overload preferable to the moral hazard of excessive whiskey consumption.
no. unacceptable. to borrow a quote from david foster wallace's Quack This Way, people, unless they're paying attention, tend to confuse fanciness with intelligence or authority.
and it never ends, this turgid word salad that believes words are good, MORE words better, MOST words best:
Though Lucy adhered to the polite fiction whereby one does not officially possess information gleaned from overhearing one side of someone else's telephone conversation, she gathered that Ruth was agreeing to meet Mark in twenty minutes for a burger at the Heights.
puh and leez. to quote dfw again, some people get the idea that maximum numbers of words, maximum amount of complication, equals intelligence and erudition. i resent having to wade through this kind of chewy-ass prose for such a basic piece of information.
in the second part, there's a shift, and ruth begins to take over the role of narrator. while the perspective is certainly different, as she is (ostensibly) a human involved in the story's events, the mode of transmission is indistinguishable from the om narr, except now we get innumerable parenthetical asides:
I might complain, but something in my hard little soul (it was Lucy who had bestowed this unflattering moniker on my immaterial substance) had melted towards Anna's game.
ruth is completely self-unaware. she observes:
"I would be honored to accompany you," said Anna, her language as always quite formal and impeccably grammatical.
this 'formal and impeccably grammatical' from someone who has just mused, on the previous page:
I had been off and on either suspicious or envious of her for months now, and the Places of Power game had in certain key respects only heightened that negative affective orientation.
'negative affective orientation?' gack.
"I will leave the two of you to have some time alone with each other," I said after the initial introductions had been performed.
BEEP BOOP BEEP BOOP I AM ROBOT
i do not understand this switch to first person in the second part, riddled as it is with unnecessary interjections. it's not constructed as a diary or any other written document—presumably this is ruth's inner monologue as she is going about the living of her life, so then why does she feel the need to include, as its own sentence: (I am only 5'3"). why is that sentence in parentheses? and to whom is she relaying this information? the reader, duh, but without ruth being given a context where she has an expectation of an audience to her private thoughts, it's just laughably clunky storytelling.
the novel's third act is structured as an account written by lucy for a third party, but in this second part, there's no indication that ruth is addressing this towards anything or -one, so why so many qualifying details tucked into parentheses bloating up these sentences?
Over dinner later that evening with Mark (I had defrosted some of the pesto I'd made that summer from the basil we grew on his balcony in pots, serving it with linguine alongside a simple green salad), he and I fell into heated argument.
where's my red pen?
Nothing like that is going to happen tonight," I said in my most soothing voice (I am a good girlfriend, really).
to whom is she appealing?
even worse is when these meaningless asides are punctuated with exclamation marks:
I just prayed (that's an idiom, not a literal use of the verb!) that the police wouldn't arrive and ask us what we were doing.
these two passages are on the same page, which i guess makes it A VERY EXCITING page!!!!!!!!!!!!!
one:
The link to my site was broken, and I dithered about whether or not it would be appropriate to leave a comment. Finally I decided that it would (it wasn't like I was criticizing what they said about me—I was just making sure that others could find the site!).
and two:
Mark still hadn't called, and gradually the life of the Trapped publicity dissipated. Finally, he texted me around eleven thirty (a call would have been more appropriate!) to suggest that we meet for dinner at Max Soha at seven.
are these !!!!! attempts to sound more human? more casual? it doesn't make any sense.
People who meet me at parties often seem surprised that a person who studies games should appear so self-contained and humorless. I usually counter this observation by saying that games are a serious business. Most players of games are very much in earnest, not so much frisking and frolicking as furthering their interests like rational actors in any other field. Games represent a field apart, that is all, not a field distinctly different in its priorities from any other. I say all of this in a relatively dry manner that leaves the person I am talking to quite unclear whether I mean to be funny or not.
(I am in fact a person with a sense of humor.)
i remain unconvinced.
what is most maddening are instances like this—a lovely ethereal paragraph of blessed clarity followed by horribly clunky dialogue.
The wine was as sweet and intense as winter itself, the winter of sugarplums and the concentrated essence of north. It brought warmth to my cheeks, and the feeling of Anna's gaze upon me also made me burn.
"You have found it difficult interacting with your mother over the years, haven't you?" she said.
"I have," I confessed. "I always seem to fall short of her exacting standards, but I am stymied as to how to change that."
one of these three characters is a poet, and i'm telling you, i would hate to read her poetry. incidentally, this author also writes YA, and i'm curious about what that reads like, but not curious enough to investigate it...yet.
part three is voiced by lucy, written as an account of events, whose dialogue is shaped as a play, complete with footnotes (hello to dfw again):
ANDERS: Old hat. Your standard role-playing game already relies on a grotesquely denatured sub-Shakespearean idiom.⁷
⁷ Anders actually talked like this.
that's some pot-kettle quality scoffing, considering this is how lucy "talks:"
We slowed down only to tip more wine down our throats; I had decanted mine into a plastic sports drink bottle, so that a sympathetic officer might countenance the fiction of legality.
i think that's enough to explain why i didn't like this book.
take all of these complaints out of it, and there's nothing much to discuss. there's no drama, the 'twist' is utterly transparent because of the heavy-handed foreshadowing, and there's just no story. it's impossible to feel anything for characters that are so wooden and robotic. as much as i love megan abbott, i have no idea what she saw in this book that made her wanna blurb it:
"The Magic Circle is elegant, brutally smart, and utterly absorbing—The Secret History as directed by Whit Stillman."
end of rant. i am grateful for the prezzie, jerri, and it WAS on my buy-for-me shelf, so it's no one's fault but my own, but this was a big old dud of a book.
i was honestly pretty let down by this. it was one of the "it" books from 2013, so i was expecting to love it, but it really fell short of my expectati was honestly pretty let down by this. it was one of the "it" books from 2013, so i was expecting to love it, but it really fell short of my expectations.
this book is narrated at a remove, from the perspective of an adult character looking back over her life and the decisions she made when she was a teenager, but it is told in the immediate first-person tense, with these occasional and jarring interjections from thea-now that kind of ruin the flow, and it is a sort of flabby read, with scenes that neither progress the narrative nor show any real insight into character or period or purpose.
there is just something bloodless about this book. it's not that there's no story here, there is: it's about thea, a young girl who has lived for fifteen years in entitled luxury on an isolated estate in florida, secure in the love of her doting parents, beloved twin brother and her older cousin georgie, riding her pony and wanting for nothing, who becomes involved in a scandal and is sent away to riding camp as punishment, as the wider country begins to feel the strain of the great depression. it is about the long-term aftereffects of the civil war on the southern leisure class, and the expectations of young, well-bred ladies and how easily a reputation can be tarnished. it is about the dawning realization that wealth and status are relative and not indefensible. it is about that fragile state of sexual awakening, of knowing and not-knowing, getting carried away into insalubrious situations that snowball and digging the pit of shame ever deeper, not caring about the consequences.
which sounds like it should be excellent, yeah? but the problem is with the character. thea seems to oscillate between naive and calculating, kind and cold, self-assured and insecure on every other page. it doesn't read like thea coming into her own and changing so much as an author who doesn't know what kind of response she wants the reader to have to her character. is thea a wronged ingenue or a femme fatale? she is both, and it just doesn't wash. it's as though there are two characters competing for the same story-space.
the story weaves between thea's life at camp and her time at home before being sent away, which will (eventually) relate the events that led to her getting sent away (which is telegraphed pretty early, so not really a shocker). the only thing unifying the two storylines is the presence of horses. horses, horses, horses. there is a lot of detail about horses and riding, the ways in which the rider develops a relationship with its mount through a combination of understanding the limitations of a horse's mental capacity and the rider's cruelty, and the power that is felt once the rider overcomes the horse's reluctance and is established as the dominant of the two. which, you would think, would have been very easy to then apply as a narrative motif to the relationships thea makes with other people, but nope. not really.
and the ending?? just a mess, for me, with no reason for the decisions she makes once she leaves yonahlossee. and the biggest letdown of an epilogue ever. not printed as such, so i guess the biggest letdown of a closure ever. really flat and bleak without purpose.
there are parts i really liked, so it's not a two-star or anything, but after the first third or so, once i started seeing its weaknesses, i disengaged a little, and perked up for the nice bits, but then kind of submerged into reading for plot.
i like reading books where i think to myself "this would have been a great x-files episode…" and this one certainly qualifies.
this is a sweet little pi like reading books where i think to myself "this would have been a great x-files episode…" and this one certainly qualifies.
this is a sweet little piece of southern gothic/horror which splits itself between the 1930s and the present day, using visions and psychic/empathic powers to bind the two.
it takes place in rural-rural appalachia, and is the story of the gibson family: they of muddy melungeon ethnicity, magical gifts, and some backwoods madness. the now-elderly sadie is telling her story to her grandson michael who is a solitary and displaced man returned home to care for the ailing sadie after his own failed suicide attempt. as she tells her story, her gift (and his own) makes the distance between the past and present collapse, and the events become almost real to michael; he lives inside of them and is depleted whenever sadie pauses in her tale. but the story must be told to the end, because there is a danger coming, and it is beginning to stir in a buried iron crate under a thickening snare of kudzu.
it's got all the things you need to get membership in the southern gothic club: ghosts, snake-handlers, gruesome murders, incest, inscrutable old-timers who hold all the secrets, moonshine, poverty and prejudice, religious fervor, all of that. but it also has a good story under all that window-dressing, a tale of long-awaited justice and a family legacy of hatred and fear building up generation after generation until a final explosive sequence may or may not put everything right.
oh, and did i mention snake handlers??
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this has some of the best snake-scenes i have ever read. oh, pentacostals, i do not understand your ways… however, if there is ever a religious group that offers red panda-handling, drop me a line, okay?? i'm not even fussy about the rest of the belief system - tell me who to hate and i'll do it, make me marry 40 people, tell me i have to give up zippers cuz they're too flashy, just let me hoist red pandas above my head for a couple hours and we're good.
Was it terror, or was it love? It would be a long time before Ann LeSage could decide. For most of her life, the two feelings were so similar as to beWas it terror, or was it love? It would be a long time before Ann LeSage could decide. For most of her life, the two feelings were so similar as to be indistinguishable. It was easy to mix them up.
now that is how you open a book. those are the kind of lines my beloved jonathan carroll tends to open with, and while the opening chapter reminded me of carroll, with its date night whimsically impinged-upon by the supernatural, at some point this changes and becomes a much darker tale than he would write, full of psychosexual violence, control, and intimidation.
ann's ideas of love and terror are all awry because of her experiences as a young girl, when a poltergeist she named "the insect" was seemingly attached to her, and was responsible for horrific acts of violence affecting her family. she eventually learned to develop the mental strength to contain it in a prison of her own imagining, but now, as she is about to marry a man she thinks she loves, the insect is starting to reassert its presence, and terror-love is about to erupt into her life once more.
the story is told through events in ann's present-day situation interspersed with her childhood memories of the insect and her family life: a carefully-teetering collage of betrayal, misperception, vulnerability, and greed.
i don't know how much to say about this book, which always seems like a cop-out when i say it in a review, but i really mean it. i will say it involves a shadowy group of men with sexual desires well beyond the norm looking for the ultimate transgressive sexual high, and the ends they will go to to satisfy their dark erotic urges.
it's kind of like monsterporn all grown up. BUT WAIT! before you dismiss it on those grounds - i just mean it shows what literary monsterporn would look like if it weren't about detailing the act itself, but exploring the impulse behind it. and if it were horrible and terrifying instead of silly.
that's all.
it's really very good - it is a slow building tale with many small reveals along the way which culminates into a final scene of "yes.":
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you'll never look at dungeons and dragons the same way again, i can tell you that much.
this is one of those books that people are going to have opinions about.and i look forward to people getting all angry and hysterical at me fohoo boy.
this is one of those books that people are going to have opinions about.and i look forward to people getting all angry and hysterical at me for liking it. for liking it a lot. because the subject matter is pretty ick, right? who is going to be all out and proud saying they liked a book about pedophilia if it doesn't come from the pen of nabokov? (hebephilia, sure, but still...) but it's a pretty accomplished book.
i mean, what does it set out to do? it sets out to get you in the head of a sexual predator. well, guess what? success!! you are in there but good.and it is decidedly uncomfortable.this is about "know thy enemy." and she does. i thought a.m. homes nailed the subject matter with The End of Alice, but this one just takes it one sticky foot further.
and i mean, shit, how many monsterotica books have i read now? it's not like icky sex is something i shy away from. and i read my monsterporn clinically, because i think they are funny, and the sex just sorta slides off my eyes. and that's what this is, only it's more horrifying than funny. i know it's completely different but it feels like the same level of transgression - people putting their genitals where they have no business being. i mean, really, why would you ever want to have sex with a teenage boy?? they are not sexy,and don't you have a better use for your three minutes??
so that's out of the way.
next point: is this just a lay-dee writing a backwards-Lolita? well, yes and no. that is definitely part of the novelty of this ...erm, novel, but it is more than that.
someone asked me what this book was about, and i said "pedophilia. it's about a female teacher who seduces her fourteen-year-old suitor."
and they said, "oh, that doesn't count."
i was intrigued, so i pressed it.
"what do you mean??"
"when you say 'a pedophile walks into a room,' and it turns out to be a woman, it's like 'what is this, the wnba??"
which cracked me up, but in a way, it kind of illuminates the way we deal with teenage sexuality.we still couch things in those antiquated terms of the slut and the player.little girls are cautioned that they are losing something or giving something up but with boys it is still dealt with in terms of conquest, of rite of passage, of coming of age. and what teenage boy wouldn't want to sleep with his ultra-hot teacher, given the opportunity? it's still criminal, but somehow less victim-y.
and, no, i do not have children nor do i deal with them in my day-to-day, but i watch svu, so i know what's what.
our popular literature is growing darker:The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,The Dinner,Gone Girl, and even Fifty Shades of Grey.this is the shit the world is made of, and our literature reflects it. the reality is that there are beautiful people with sick minds who might not get caught.literature, like life, never promised you justice.
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and all
is she a sympathetic character? no way. is she redeemed, is she symbolic, is she punished? nope.but it is a quaint and infantile stance for readers to need to like their protagonists. it's a little adorable, but it ignores the loooong tradition of the antihero in fiction, and i get really frustrated when i hear people whining that they didn't like a book because the protagonist was a jerk or a sociopath, or a pedophile. not every book is going to be written by nicholas sparks.
but back to lolita.this is completely different from lolita, in its treatment. lolita was a one-sided love story. this one is about need and obsession. it is eroticism without attachment. she is pure predator consuming what she needs. i'm not sure if that makes this more or less problematic. probably more. i think we are more forgiving with star-crossed, impossible lovers than we are with someone who has an itch to scratch and doesn't care who gets hurt in the scratching. and it is more realistic this way; more troubling.
she has her compulsions, and she is dangerously able to justify her needs, while allowing that they are "wrong" to the world at large:
Sex struck me as a seafood with the shortest imaginable half-life, needing to be peeled and eaten the moment the urge ripened. Even by sixteen, seventeen, it seemed that people became too comfortable with their desires to have any objectivity over their vulgar movements. They closed their eyes to avoid awkward orgasm faces, slipped lingerie made for models and mannequins onto wholly imperfect bodies. Who was that queen who tried to keep her youth by bathing in the blood of virgins? She should've had sex with them instead, or at least had sex with them before killing them. Many might label this a contradiction, but I felt it to be a simple irony: in my view, having sex with teenagers was the only way to keep the act wholesome. They're observant; they catalogue every detail to obsess upon. They're obsessive by nature. Should there be any other way to experience sex?I remember taking my shirt off for a friend's younger brother in college. The way his eyes lit up like he was seeing snow for the first time.
(and i am totally posting text from the ARC, which is a reviewer no-no, but for a book that deals with taboo in such a fearless way, i feel it is apt)
that passage definitely reminds me of that staggeringly good 2-3 pages in Beautiful Losers, where i came dangerously close to understanding the attraction to very young girls. which is just cohen's power as a writer, and nothing to do with any latent criminality in me.
this a selfish situation because it is not about the act, but about the transgression itself; the taboo. it's about taking and teaching and uneven power systems.
"I won't tell," he said, his arms holding my waist with amateur stiffness. I smiled, thinking about the lover he'd become and all the things he'd try with me for the very first time. I'd be the sexual yardstick for his whole life: Jack would spend the rest of his days trying but failing to relive the experience of being given everything at a time when he knew nothing. Like a tollbooth in his memory, every partner he'd have afterwards would have to pass through the gate of my comparison, and it would be a losing equation. The numbers could never be as favorable as they were right now, when his naivety would be subtracted from my experience to produce the largest sum of astonishment possible.
right there, she inadvertently acknowledges jack's future difficulties, in his vie sexuelle, but she just does not care.
i understand, intellectually, the desire of taking someone before they have learned anything and imprinting them with what you like, but whooo, those are deep and dark waters.
her lucidity is what is most disturbing, for me. she is so preoccupied with aging, which is par for the course when it comes to beautiful women, but her particular bent will become more difficult as she ages, and she revolts against the betrayal of the body in the aging process:
There was no way for women, for anyone, to gracefully age.After a certain point, any detail like the woman's cheerleader hairstyle that implied youth simply looked ridiculous. Despite her athletic prowess, the jogger's cratered thighs seemed more like something that would die one day than something that would not. I didn't know how long I had before this window slammed down on my fingers as well - with diligence, and avoiding children, perhaps a decade. The older i became, the harder it would be to get what I wanted, but that was probably true of everyone with everything.
and:
I knew I'd find it hard to cut the girls in my classes any slack at all, knowing the great generosity life had already gifted them. They were at the very beginning of their sexual lives with no need to hurry - whenever they were ready, a great range of attractions would be waiting for them, easy and disposable. Their urges would grow up right alongside them like a shadow. They'd never feel their libido a deformed thing to be kept chained up in the attic of their mind and to only be fed in secret after dark.
but there is, occasionally, small moments where there is a glimmer of something potentially salvageable in her:
At times, I wished that my genitals were prosthetic, something I could slip out of.
i do think this is a controversial novel, but it is brilliantly written. and you can get all emotional and "think of teh children," on it, but that's not really useful.this is something that happens, and i would rather not live in a cave, wearing blinders, reading nicholas sparks. i wanna be informed.
this book's first story brought back a childhood experience long since forgotten. it was of coming across my older brother's mad magazines when i was this book's first story brought back a childhood experience long since forgotten. it was of coming across my older brother's mad magazines when i was five or so. until then, you know, i had lived in a little girl world of soft-rounded wuzzles and my little ponies and rainbow brite.
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so to unexpectedly encounter a style of art that was more violent and seedy, and greasy-looking - it felt dangerous, like i was looking at something i shouldn't have been.
since then i have certainly come a long way and been exposed to so many different forms of artistic expression (SO much monster porn), and i no longer live in that child-safe world, but this was a reminder of that first time, this opening story which is all cutesy until it all goes horribly wrong in a violent way.
and i read other reviews of this book, because i was trying to see what other people were getting out of it that i wasn't. but most of the reviewers are, frankly, horrified by the amount of violence, particularly sexual violence. and it's true, there is a ton of it. the sexual violence doesn't really bother me - i am able to separate real-world sexual violence from this brand of sexual violence, where a male elf slices the soft underbelly of a wizard's jaw and rapes him, coming out the wizard's mouth. i mean, the wizard was planning on killing him, so fair play, i say. but it is so ludicrous and part of a cartoon-only scenario, that it doesn't make me feel uncomfortable. (please do not send me news stories proving me wrong in my beliefs.)
so it wasn't this element that made me low-rate this collection of graphic novel horror stories.
my objection is that after a while, it is just boring. same kind of gags, different tale: incest, magic jizz, fecal matter, masturbation, cat-boiling....overall, the story is sacrificed for the shock - they only exist to showcase the violence. and, yawn. i'm not really shocked by it, so there really isn't much for me as a reader. and whisper whisper, there are several i don't even understand. but violence isn't compelling enough on its own to entertain me, is the problem.
i have to admit, i did laugh at the wizard-rape, because i have a fairly diseased sense of humor, and nothing is funnier than raping a wizard in his wizard-throat. but apart from that, there isn't really a need for any of these stories.
it is mostly just splatter horror with cartoons and a shock value edge. it's okay, but pretty same-y after a while, although the style of the art does change dramatically, showing me he could really have something, if he broadened his subject matter a bit.
i read this because i trusted some dude who said, "oh my god, that book is so fucking sick, you have to read it"
but he meant it in a positive way.
so i gave it a try, because i am the resident "bad influence" on goodreads.
and it is sick, but it is just sick. it isn't awesome-sick.
i think i prefer something like kochalka's Fancy Froglin's Sexy Forest, where the artwork is cutesy pie, but with serious adult content. that juxtaposition makes me giggle, and i really like the way he draws frogs. and most other things.
i don't think this is the most successful piece of writing i have ever read, but i think it is worth checking out because 1) it is very short, so it wi don't think this is the most successful piece of writing i have ever read, but i think it is worth checking out because 1) it is very short, so it won't take up too much of your life, and 2) it puts an interesting spin on the horror genre, specifically the revenge-porn genre where you find things like i spit on your grave, straw dogs, and last house on the left.
in the afterword, mcmahon claims that it is more like funny games, and in a way, that's true, but only in its violence and in that one scene in the movie where the fourth wall is breached, and there is that little wink of complicity.and this story turns from a straightahead horror story to a sort of exercise in metafiction.
and i think that's where it stayed for me: a fun writing exercise, but something that still needed a little polish.
the story starts out really fun, or "fun": an english family, in order to escape a trauma they endured in the city, moves to a house in the country, "away from it all." however, they had already scheduled a family vacation, so after moving in all their stuff, they go away together, and upon their return, they find that another family has moved in in their absence. a very baaaad family. and they seem to have the police and real estate law on their side. violence ensues.
it is all very horrifying. but slowly, slyly, other elements start creeping in, the center cannot hold. what is real, what is construct? what is story, what are characters? what is really at work here? it becomes something other than a typical horror story.
from the afterword:
...as I sat down to write, something peculiar happened. The story refused to bend to my will. It began to twist and turn in my grasp, taking on a new shape, becoming something entirely different from what I'd originally envisaged. So now, rather than a tough, noirish thriller with sociopolitical overtones, I was dealing with something much more ambitious and problematic.
and i totally agree - what it turns into is much more interesting than its origins, but it does get a little muzzy there at the end. i see what he was working towards, but i don't think it quite got there.
That was when I decided to hand everything over to my muse and just go with it, and it led to the strangest writing experience of my life. The story basically told itself, with no apparent gap between thought and page, no room to react to what was forming in my brain before I saw it on the laptop screen. It was (as) if I were simply transcribing the words being whispered in my ear by a particularly giddy psychopath...
and this is what i was thinking about specifically, when i sat own to write this review, and i have been racking my brain (and google's brain) for that quote, the one i thought was from one of those transcendentalists about creativity being a violent outpouring of emotion, tempered by time. and had i actually been able to find that quote, which i swear i am not making up, i would point out that the most important part of it (if it does in fact exist) is the phrase "tempered by time," because letting the muse take over is all well and good, but sometimes even the muse needs an editor to clean up some of the ambiguities or tighten some of the scenes; a moment to step back and understand what the material is aching to become. THANK GOODNESS FOR MADELINE who reminded me that i was, in fact, thinking of wordsworth, who claimed that poetry was "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings...recollected in tranquility."
because i am too dumb to remember things.
i will say that most of it is great - i loved the tension, and the way it just built and built and the reader was completely caught up in the events. the only problems i had were with 1) the believablility of the characters, and 2) once the story made its "turn," i think it got really exciting and promising, but then just cut off too quickly, before the idea had really ripened fully.
but, since 2) negates 1), because of the nature of the turn, i guess i just have a little disappointment with the end. metafiction is tough to pull off, and i applaud the idea of it here, i just wish he had stuck the landing a little better.
but read it, it is a clever idea, if you are someone who can handle a lot of blood on the walls and stuff.
i mean, sorta. the amishness of this porn is not as ramped-up as i would have liked...
i think the author missed a few opportunities[image]
amish porn!!
i mean, sorta. the amishness of this porn is not as ramped-up as i would have liked...
i think the author missed a few opportunities here, just in terms of the giggles we could have gotten over amish clothing-fasteners. no zippers! too proud!! no buttons! too showy!! spend a little time on the undress, give me some hot hook-and-eye action.
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mmmmm yeah, like that...
because once the bonnet and breeches come off, there isn't a whole lot that is amish about it, sadly. in the nude, we are all amish. right? i mean, there is a little amishness, in the character names, and in the shame of the intercourse, but that's true any time you fornicate with your brother. GROSS!! don't worry,o squeamish masses, it is just her adopted brother. PHEW!! yeah, in reality, he is just her cousin. GROSS!!
you see the roller-coaster of emotions this book will take you on?
it's just a short little story of a girl (18) who watches her (adopted)brother(cousin) masturbate in the barn, as one does, and learns how to masturbate herself until things take their natural course, and she is discovered (oh noes) and then there is wide-eyed earth-shattering intercourse.
it's almost sweet.
but no jokes about "rump"springa?? shame on you...so many amish puns, all wasted...
but that's okay, because i found plenty to giggle at!
Still, I didn't stop watching. I couldn't. I felt compelled, even though i knew it was a sin, I knew the devil was in me, and I had to rub him out. I tried.
i mean, i know you're amish and all, but you've already broken that vessel, so here's what you do... you get yourself a tape-recorder and record yourself for a whole day.. you'd be surprised at the amount of poorly chosen words...
"Something that feels so good can't be a sin," I insisted, half sitting now, back on my elbows. "It can't possibly. I just...I understand now. Why you keep doing it, how the whole world opens up for a moment and you feel like you're dying, or flying. I felt like I could touch God himself."
this has to be blasphemy, right?? are you trying to hit all your deadly sins in one day? the amish certainly are a hardworking lot!
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did you know there were so many amish porn jokeses on the internet?? there are. but do keep your safe search on, because there is also a lot of actual porn with people half-wearing amish clothing, and it is just too too sexy. beards and bonnets. phoar.
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thank you, sweet e-book publishing industry. you supply me with so much....more
hmm. i should have realized this was the third part of a trilogy before i read this. i have read reviews of this on here before that explicitly statedhmm. i should have realized this was the third part of a trilogy before i read this. i have read reviews of this on here before that explicitly stated this, but for some reason, i just blanked that out when i was choosing my books for "october is spooky." this is a perfectly fine self-contained story, but i think i might have felt more connection to it had i read the first two and been better able to connect with the characters from their previous storylines.
so, a cannibal woman happily living on her own terms all half-nekkid in nature, hunting and gathering and eating ummm meat, is captured by a perfect-family-on-the-surface whackjob creep, restrained, then imprisoned, tortured, and raped. all - you know, to civilize her.
it is graphic and brutal and as though that weren't enough (it is), there's all sorts of other horrific stuff going on out in the barn with the dogs and in the bedroom with the teenage daughter. if it is making you uncomfortable to read this review, just think what the book is like. you know, like the joke goes:
(view spoiler)[a little boy and a pedophile are walking in the deep, dark, woods. the little boy says,
"mister, i'm scared! these woods are really creepy."
the pedophile replies, "how do you think i feel? i have to walk back all by myself." (hide spoiler)]
this isn't really a book i would feel comfortable recommending to anyone. there are definitely scenes in this that are vile and appalling. but there is also comeuppance. you have to wade through a river of blood and torture in order to get to the comeuppance, sure, but take stock of your personal violence-limits, and if you feel you are up to it, give this a read. i am curious about the first two books, myself, but i will probably wait until next year's "spooky month" to satisfy my curiosity about "how did these people come to this??
She has become ravenous, the way hydrochloric acid depletes your face.
hmmm, experimental horror novels...i'm kind of a giant shrug on this review. theShe has become ravenous, the way hydrochloric acid depletes your face.
hmmm, experimental horror novels...i'm kind of a giant shrug on this review. there are authors who do this style, and do it well, but i have never really been into them, so i feel a little out of my depth. people who are into matthew stokoe or burroughs will probably like this book, and the back cover calls it A Bataille sitcom full of meat and mommies. which could be accurate or could just be a pithy soundbite. (patrick bateman's name is dropped in the same blurb, and i believe this character is the exact opposite of patrick bateman, so i don't know how much trust to put in this comparison to bataille. i've only read story of the eye, so.)
but the book is tricky. it is enamored with offbeat wordplay (see above), and it employs stream-of-consciousness and stilted non sequitur-conversations and unreliable narrators to do all the storytelling. so, after all that layering, i'm not sure how much of the action is "real" and how much are delusions, and how much is metaphor.
"What am i doing here?" she asks. "Solace, perhaps? Kinship? I don't know much about that." "I've got Armageddon in my grips." She holds the dinosaur up to her chest. Her eyes are tired, pretty much super nova to the extreme. "His name is my being," I say. "Did Mom call?" "No, honey." I'm fond of Sylvia's eyebrows because they're a bit mangled. There's something rabbit about her. For a moment, we just lock eyes and there is equilibrium in the world. You see, Sylvia, it happened like this: my life. There it is all for you to see and my heart races. There's urgency in clarity, sort of like scolding a retarded child with a stick simply for being alive. Here for you to see, my daughter, is your father. I am. "Honey," is all i can manage. "For the life of me, I can't think of the right thing to say." She forgives me. I can see this in her complete disregard of my confession. She rolls over, grabs a cig, and lights it. I don't bother to tell her to put it out. "Can I have one?" I ask. She gives me one. I smoke. Incandescence is the beauty of cancer. We share this like we share nothing else. We lie in bed like that, smoking it off, enjoying the release.
so, to me, as someone who is relatively neutral to poetry, this is just a lot of sound and fury. i'm not sure what "super nova" (sic) eyes would be, or what clarity has to do with child-beating, or how cancer is incandescent.
but i also don't understand what i am the walrus is about either, and, to be honest, i don't even like the beatles, which i know leaves me in the minority, so this could resonate with people who are really into more surreal literature. it isn't about what words mean, but how they flow and how they appear typed alongside each other...nah, who am i kidding? i hate that argument, which i have heard before. words mean what they mean. sounding pretty means nothing. there are so many words. find one that work to say what you mean.you can do the surreal and the evocative and still make sense, like beckett.
the father-and-daughter in bed together, "smoking it off, enjoying the release" is no twss accident. there are plenty of incestuous themes running through here. also cannibalism, vampirism, conjoined twins in the role of mystic-sage(s), erotic violence, a fascination with serial killers, autism, both spiritual and literal rebirth, and lots of menstrual blood.
it is strange to me to feel so indifferent to a book that is obviously trying to push all the shock buttons, but there it is. i think someone with a stronger bent towards the surreal grotesque would dig this, but for me, it was taking too many liberties with language, and ultimately undermining its own story with clever stylization.
this is a story about two 18-year-old girls who go to summer camp. what are 18-year olds doing going to summer camp when they are at the age dirrrrrty!
this is a story about two 18-year-old girls who go to summer camp. what are 18-year olds doing going to summer camp when they are at the age when they have, you know, other options?
"Ready for camp, bitch?" Mira asked Miranda.
"Thrilled" Miranda responded with sarcasm.
"Why do you like camp so much?"
"The outdoors makes me wet." Mira said rubbing her finger over her crotch and then licking it.
oh, it's like that. well, then, by all means, go to camp. and so they do. did i mention that these girls are twins?? and that they don't need to stray too far from the womb for sexual gratification? because - yeah, it's more twincest.
Margret moved her fingers faster and faster and Mira was riding her hand. Mira screamed with ecstasy as she came to her climax. Margret licked her fingers clean and Mira gave her the biggest kiss squeezing her breast saying,
"Damn i got the best sister ever"
any sisters out there want to contest that title? i didn't think so. that is, truly, the best sister.
so they go to camp, and they have sexual congress with all the boys. and each other. a lot.
meanwhile, their friend, a relative "good girl" decides to shed that image and become more like her friends. however, she lacks a twin. what's a girl to do?
fortunately, her salvation cums in the form of a campfire horror story.
"Ten years ago the tale was discovered by a camp counselor trekking through the woods. He found a diary with a very hard shell buried in the dirt near an old oak tree. It told the tale of an Alpha Wolf who looked for girls in the form of a virgin. The Alpha would then kidnap the virgin and take her deep into the woods and fuck the shit out of them. The dairy that was found belonged to Raffi Garvin. The boy kept a daily entry in the hunt for his sister. The first entry was about how they came to a clearing in the woods were there was a stump that was shaped like a diamond that lied in slanted position. His sister was sitting on this rock and he was near by. He says he turned his back for a second and then saw a large Alpha Wolf running deeper into the woods with his sister cradled under his arm. Since then five girls have disappeared from these camp grounds. One of those five made it back alive but was devastated that she was raped by an Alpha Wolf."
i mean, if being raped by a wolf doesn't turn you on, you are destined to be one shriveled old virgin. so our heroine dresses up like little red riding hood and takes her virgin ass to the diamond-shaped rock. and lo!! the alpha wolf appeareth! and they have sexual congress!
a lot!
so the moral of this story is, if you are an 18-year-old virgin at a coed summer camp, please be responsible and wait around for an alpha wolf, because at least you won't get pregnant. ...more
so this is why i hate reviewing advanced readers' copies. after the thrill of "yayyyyy, i have something that youuuu don't have" wears off, i am stuckso this is why i hate reviewing advanced readers' copies. after the thrill of "yayyyyy, i have something that youuuu don't have" wears off, i am stuck here with a book that was good, but didn't blow my mind. and now i have to be all critical about it, and it can't even defend itself yet. and it is probably one of those books that is going to be wildly successful and then i will be the lone voice in the wilderness on record as not loving it and all the internet will laugh at me.
not that i lack the courage of my convictions.
it's just hard being me, sometimes.
this is another post-apoc story that wants us to reexamine what it means to be human. okay, i can do that. if only it weren't so frustrating to be asked to do it so often, and so shallowly, all the time.i'm not saying the book is shallow - it has some great moments in it, and a lot of the writing is taut and appealing. but i get so fed up with characters in situations like these who keep trying to hold on to moral structures that no longer apply to their circumstances. seriously, cast of walking dead - recognize that you just cannot rebuild the world that was on top of the embers of the world that is. time to start over. new game plan. stop with the talking and the nicey-nice and man up. and this, too. it is great to have the impulse to save the young blind girl from the creepy advances of the male members of her family, but the reality of the two of you making your way through the blighted landscape with limited resources and "people" who want to kill and eat you? that right there is a burden you have accepted. and if you choose to take on that burden, sometimes you gotta take a life. no? you refuse? interesting choice. hope that doesn't come back to - oh, look out!
it's nice to want to give food to strangers passing by. it is nice to retain the vestiges of humanity. and i am not saying you have to become a blood-smeared warrior with a string of ears on your belt, but at some point this pollyanna attitude become unrealistic. but i suppose it is the impulse of a person who carries around a sealed and unread letter for most of the book. a person without curiosity, who is fine as a literary-person standing in for an idea(l), but i like to read these books for tips i can actually use. no role model for me, here.
the structure is a good call - shifting in between "now" and "then" - bringing the two stories ever closer together. she has a good sense of timing and drama, and it is a book i found myself flying through, wanting to know its secrets. so, a good page-turner. but there are times when you just want to pat her on the head and say, "there, there, dearie, not everything needs to be a metaphor." because it sometimes gets away from her.
he jerks me backwards and pulls me against him until his gut it a stuffed IHOP pancake bulging against my back.
she doesn't know that i'm making it up as i go along. pulling it out of my ass like my butt is a magician's hat.
etcetera.
the less i say about the romantic plot, the better. there is no level on which it makes sense to me.
ditto on the "bad guy." pure horror-movie indefatigable meta-evil that is too cartoonish to be threatening.
but not bad overall, despite my growling. i am probably just being overpicky. i thought it started out wonderfully, but somewhere along the way, it lost itself, and kind of muddled on to an ending that made me shrug and say, "whatever, you win, i give up."
and those of you that have this on your YA shelves?? get it off immediately. go on, do it. this is most definitely not for a YA audience. rape and incest and massive human and animal deaths, cannibalism, mutants, that i can see, but (view spoiler)[corkscrew-abortion??? (hide spoiler)] that goes one step too far. and i doubt a YA audience would believe the love story, either.
you have to admire someone who has gone through the romance aisle of their bookstore with a checklist: "regency, regency, regency, navy seals, nascar,you have to admire someone who has gone through the romance aisle of their bookstore with a checklist: "regency, regency, regency, navy seals, nascar, vampire, sheikh, billionaire, scot, tycoon, firefighter, cowboy, cop (all the village people amply represented)
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doctor, boss, shapeshifter, art historian...
what is missing?
and the answer is "bigfoot," naturally.
[image]
hot stuff.
so i kind of have to three-star the sheer audacity of it - to write a serious, non-campy bigfoot porn. that's what's so amazing - this is not funny. its treatment is purely serious, with the humor only manifesting itself in the pre-bigfoot moments of innocent camping* and lighthearted girl-to-girl sextalk. three girls, three guys, and a stepfather chaperone. there are some nervous sexual tension and underaged jack daniels-fueled giggles. after that - the abduction of the three girls by an old woman and her "son" leonard the bigfoot is treated like hostel; where the porn world meets the horror world. and it's not at all bad. i mean, it is, obviously, but it is not unenjoyable even if, like me, you tend to sorta skim the genital-scenes. i don't need to close-read pre-orgasm pillow talk for deeper literary meaning, and that stuff is always more likely to make me laugh than to make me... anything else.
there were many difficulties and obstacles standing in the way of me reading this book - the store-loaner nook has a tendency to delete downloaded books at will** (THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN WITH THE REGULAR NON-STORE-ACCOUNT NOOKS - THE NOOK IS A FINE PRODUCT) and it deleted this one three times before i was ready to actually sit down with it. the second time, connor downloaded cum for bigfoot 2, 3, and 4, suggesting that i get all of them because if i got to the end of the first part, and there was a cliffhanger, i would be anxious to not know what happened next. i assured him i would be all right, and when nook ate them again, i only downloaded the first one. and guess what?
fucking cliffhanger.
so i don't know what is going to be-cum of these girls and the monsters that have abducted them, but i bet that it is going to be sexy...
thank you to lizzie for tipping me off to this book's existence. if there are more interesting-sounding hookups out there (but what are the odds,right?)let me know. unicorn porn (uniporn??),hippogriff porn,wombat porn, whatever - i will be your guinea pig (guinea pig porn??)
this book is like boiling milk. at first, everything is nice and serene - a calm pool of pure silken whiteness. and then it starts to shimmer a littlethis book is like boiling milk. at first, everything is nice and serene - a calm pool of pure silken whiteness. and then it starts to shimmer a little bit and you know things are happening, and you start to notice little bloopy bits of activity, but you don't want to stir it just yet. steam starts to rise from it, and it is almost magical, like tiny milk-ghosts. and then - bubbles! one or two at first, and then so many, too many to even play milk whack-a-mole with. and then - rolling boil! look at me - there is no going back from here, kiddies! and by the time you reach for the whisk, hypnotized by the spectacle, everything is burnt and smelly and ruined.
but you have learned something, even though it was an unpleasant lesson.
this is jacob's story - a civil war vet living in wisconsin and acting as his town's constable/pastor/undertaker. if you are interested in his philosophy about how all three professions are connected, he will surely tell you. he is married with a new baby, and a reputation for being a little...skewed. do you like jacob as a character? it doesn't really matter, because this is told in second-person, so to not like him is to not like yourself, in a manner of reading.
but even if you don't like him, you will like the story. because it is haunting as shit.
jen fisher, light of my life, pressed this book into my hands when she unexpectedly turned up in my neck of the woods a month or so back. this present was nearly as good as her visit itself. it is such a nice edition - an undersized hardcover that just feels so perfect in the hand, able to be held open with one hand while clutching the disease-ridden subway pole with t'other.
because this book is about horrible, contagious disease.
diptheria, to be precise.
and it ravages the town, spreading from person to person without sympathy or malice, just doing what a disease does, and causing jacob (you) no end of spiritual unease.
this book is about faith. it is about love. it is about sacrifice. it is about trying to always make the right decision in desperate times. it is about frequently making the wrong decision. it is about a man (you) trying not to lose the part of him that trusts in the the mysterious ways of god.
in the middle of the outbreak, just to add more awful to the awful-pile, a fire begins to creep closer and closer to town, thwarting old-timey "firefighters." the town is in quarantine - no one in or out, but that fire doesn't care if you are sick or healthy, and the unsick members of the town start to get a little antsy...what are you, the spiritual adviser and the law combined, going to do about it?
oh, dear.
for such a short book, the pacing in this is marvelous. i marvel at it. as more and more "normalcy" collapses, more background is exposed. things that used to be done with a certain amount of care and reverence are, by necessity, done more quickly, sometimes with horrifying consequences. but always in this beautiful prose that makes my heart clench. i have never before read a passage about a horse being put down with more ache in me.
o'nan does everything with a delicate touch of writerly panache.
the whole idea of deathbed conversion strikes you as false, a sop for the dying. it's when you are happiest, sure of your own strength, that you need to bow down and talk with god. you wonder if that's lax or fanatic. you know marta worries when you make too much of your faith, so you've taken to praying in your office when the cell's empty, the stone cold and hard on your knees. there's nothing desperate about it, just a comfort you rely on time to time, but you've given up trying to explain it. you can't, really. it's a feeling of almost knowing something, of being close to some grand yet utterly simple answer. but what the answer is, you don't know. it's easier to hide it, keep it private, which makes you ashamed. you don't trust people with secrets.
ahh, jacob, but you have secrets, too, dontcha?
this is a dark, dark book. and a perfect antidote to that harry turtledove book, which contained some of the worst writing i have ever read. this is brilliant. this book wants me to read it again, i can tell.
oh, jacob. oh, me. our lives are now intertwined. and it is scary in there...
shit, man, i don't know what just happened here...
i thought i would read a book by matthew f jones, to counteract my recent 0 for 2 book streak becausshit, man, i don't know what just happened here...
i thought i would read a book by matthew f jones, to counteract my recent 0 for 2 book streak because i thought at least i knew what i was getting into with him, having just finished and loved A Single Shot last week.
this one was... different from that one.
i am still trying to decide whether it is genius or a mess. i am leaning towards genius, but i think this is a book i am going to have to read again. in a way, it seems perfect, but when i start to think about it and break down the individual scenes, it ends up falling apart a little into some sort of lynchian cutting-room floor situation .it's not super-surreal or anything, but there is a very specific and familiar tension throughout, and discomfort. and some character-doubling and unreliable memories.
i was anticipating a straightforward novel with a moral gray area, but a plot pretty much grounded in strict realism. i got my moral gray area, but i got a little more dark surrealism than i had been banking on. the scenes seem unmoored, but in a way that makes my brain happy and puzzled and wondering if it really is the metaphor i am hoping it is.
a single shot was way jim thompson-y, in a respectful way, not as me calling it derivative. this one reminded me more of Nick Antosca than Jim Thompson, although it is less likely jones has read him. this is a dark little set piece that i imagine is on the glass table in hell's waiting room. read it and get one last opportunity to regret some shit before you burn for all eternity kind of thing.
this character is deeply wounded, plagued by memories and trying to fulfill an obligation towards a man who has been at once a spiritual figure and an abuser, unsure what is real and what might hopefully be a dream. it involves killing and a bag full of money. and a dame.
this book always strives for the grotesque:
behind the register a door marked "employees toilet" opened; a bleached blonde with bad teeth, pimply skin, and a six-inch stump for a right arm came out of the room trailing a bad stink
...five or six trash bags partially hidden amid drink containers, hamburger cartons, styrofoam coffee cups, a cat cadaver, its black and white head, streaming with maggots, grotesquely misaligned, facing the air immediately over its spine
cats, dogs, foxes, fish, a goat - animals do not fare well in this book. so much for me thinking europa was all classy books for gloved women and monocled men.this book has some serious gross in it.
this is a europa i expect elizabeth will avoid.
but now i am intrigued. jones has two books in print, and now i have read both of them and am desperately (i'm looking at you, bill thompson) awaiting some of his others because so far, i have loved them both, but they have left me unsettled, and i still don't have a clear sense of who this guy is as an author.
but i want to know. badly.
this review is kind of a mess, but let's call it an homage, shall we?
but the people that froth over The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo will likely find something to appreciate here. this has all the same over-thesorry, no.
but the people that froth over The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo will likely find something to appreciate here. this has all the same over-the-top violence and sexual abuse coupled with characters i can't seem to give a damn about with many branching storylines that eventually converge in a way that seems overplotted.
so, very reminiscent of that book, to which i gave three stars, but which the more i think about, the less i actually feel it deserves. violence doesn't bother me - i am one of the people who likedAmerican Psycho. in fact, i borrowed this from work because the cover flap started thusly:
One. Two. Three. That’s all it takes to drive the nail into her head, to leave her hanging on the wall. She deserved to die. Now all he needs is absolution for his sins, and he knows just the people who can help.
and i was all "woohoo!!" because i am sick. and i thought that would be funny to read. but all of it is written very earnestly, without any sense of humor, so what's the point? it isn't entertaining. it isn't even boring in a way that makes you uncomfortable, like funny games. it is just an unthrilling thriller with a lot of violence and characters who seem to have difficulty adapting to their situation, and making all the wrong moves.
especially frauke - because seriously - how did you expect that was going to end any other way?? oops, girl.
these characters do the darndest things, and it is frustrating to read this book, as a human being. if this were a movie, you would all be shuussssshing me because i would be yelling "what are you doing that for?? are you daft?? why would you think that was a good idea??" over and over.
or maybe you wouldn't, because you would probably also hate the movie. and you would share your raisinets with me in solidarity.
this makes two two-star books in a row, and that makes me grumpy.
some books should remain out of print,left to molder and rot without curious readers tracking them down and disturbing the wisdom of nature. even onessome books should remain out of print,left to molder and rot without curious readers tracking them down and disturbing the wisdom of nature. even ones that have saucy insets like this:
if you had told me that this book was written by an alien from the planet glorp with no familiarity with human behavior, i would have no trouble believing it.
if you told me this was a nanowrimo book, written in one month, without proofreading or author-sleep, i would understand.
if this were the work of a child or a dog who thinks he's people, i could forgive a lot of it.
but. it's not.
it's just not very good, and occasionally, it is terrible. this is a very distorted depiction of how humans behave and interact, and it is so unintentionally funny in places, i almost feel bad for it.and i am also confused - there is a big reveal at the end of the book that i had taken as a given from the beginning. and then about halfway through, i was like - "oh, wait, are we not supposed to have guessed this yet?" because it was so obvious, that i was sure it was one of those things where the reader is made aware of something that the characters have yet to figure out. but, no. it was supposed to be this big surprise, and when she did reveal it, i felt quite embarrassed, like when ricky martin came out and everyone was like, "duh."
i don't actually feel too bad trashing this, because it is out of print, and the novelist has a successful career writing historical fiction that is well received, so i can just gently rib this book as a youthful indiscretion, like me that one time at that club i got snowed in at in providence.
so many meyerisms, too - why is everyone panting all the time?? it is disconcerting. is the air that thin in new hampshire?? i am concerned because my dad will be moving there, and i want to make sure he will be able to breathe without panting all the time. that was the real mystery: where has all the air gone?
oh, god, and this:
"she lay there naked in the snow?"
"yes." frankie shrugged. "i know it sounds weird. but she was a philosophy major. there are men in tibet who pierce their bodes or eat swords or walk on hot coals and don't get hurt. she had this gift. she successfully steeled her body against the cold."
DID YOU KNOW THAT BEING A PHILOSOPHY MAJOR GAVE YOU MAGICAL POWERS???
young'uns - take note.
there are so many hilarious conversations, confrontations, inexplicable decisions, almost NOTHING in this book makes sense. it is a hoot, but it's not painful to read or anything, it is just sometimes, you will come to a passage and want to smack your forehead a little in groaning glee.
i suppose it is my own damn fault, this book was safely out of print until a readers' advisory assignment for readalikes for secret history led me to stumble upon it, and after learning that the nypl had but one copy of this book in a large print format, which had gone missing, i should have taken no to mean no.
but i can't do that.
and after reading elizabeth's review of another book by the same author which you can see right here, i somehow was made an offer to get this book sent to me by jen - who has already sent me a crappy movie in the course of our friendship, so it was time to be sent a crappy book. our relationship is crap-based.
and i love jen for getting it to me. and i loved reading it, if mostly for the wrong reasons.
because, really, it's not THAT bad. but it kind of is.
three stars is indicative of my personal enjoyment of the book, but that does not change the fact that this author has done something extraordinary, athree stars is indicative of my personal enjoyment of the book, but that does not change the fact that this author has done something extraordinary, and this book should probably be read by most people. let's call this 3 3/4 stars for fun.
why did i read this?? duh, obviously, i wanted to see what kind of writing chops this lady had to think she could write a Y/A book about brother-sister incest. how do you market the taboo to the teen set? this is the same impulse that made me read living dead girl - to take a peek at the mechanics of this kind of writing. i find it fascinating. how do you handle this kind of subject matter without going all-out lurid and titillating shock-value tawdry? greg, upon hearing i was reading this, volunteered to write a YA book about "a teen that fucks a dead dog." that one would be harder to pull off without crossing that poor taste line. this one manages very gracefully, and i am very impressed with both her restraint and her candor.
because when i was a teen, books like forever were the big dirrrty books, and although i never read that one when i was young, i read it recently, and lord, is it boring. this book may not ultimately have managed to fall into my "best books ever" category, but that's just me and realistic YA, it's nothing lacking in the book.i still find her achievement impressive, and it is never boring.
there are so many amazing things about this book. lochan and maya are two older teens raising up their three younger siblings while their single mom goes out trying to make up for all the fun she missed out on while she was stuck making all of them. their relationship is very much like that of any tired and harried young couple with young children, except for that little curveball that they are themselves siblings. in this claustrophobic environment of bill-paying and lunch-making and emergency room visits, while still attending high school with all of its pressures, they cling to each other emotionally, and eventually cross that line. some of this is facilitated by lochan's having zero social skills or even any social contact outside of the family. despite being some kind of academic star, he has some pretty seriously stunted emotional development and difficulty communicating outside of the family. maya is more complicated. she has a social set, she has friends and schoolgirl crushes, but nothing can compare to the bond she shares with lochan - their difficult childhood made them one soul divided and all that. there is a lot of slow build, and a lot of pushing away and second-guessing, which makes the idea more believable. nothing is done without considering the danger of the relationship, and the nutty thing is, i totally found myself rooting for them.
this has to go on my icky-sex shelf because incest is still icky, but in this example, it is much less icky than usual because it is wholly consensual, and the circumstances are so unusual. not flowers in the attic unusual, but pretty close. but like flowers in the attic, there are consequences to every action. and they unspool pretty much as you expect, on the bitter side of bittersweet.
definitely worth reading, just to see how it's all done.
sawney beane: scotland's favorite cannibal-patriarch. the man who brought a lady to a cave, and emerged twenty-five years later with eight sons, six dsawney beane: scotland's favorite cannibal-patriarch. the man who brought a lady to a cave, and emerged twenty-five years later with eight sons, six daughters, eighteen grandsons, and fourteen granddaughters, having robbed, killed, and digested hundreds of people during his incest and bloodbath extravaganza. bring your own dropcloths!!
the legend inspired many artists, from painters and sculptors:
so why not literature? how can you take this story and end up with something dull?? ta-daaaa! for the most part, this is indeed pretty dull. i gave it three stars because i never hated reading it, but if you are familiar with the story, you don't need to read this. it's basically what you know with some sort of subplot thrown in that is mostly just expository "slice of life in scotland's sixteenth century." ms. gates is not a historian, but this book somehow reads like the work of a historian trying their hand at fiction:
Living in a cave was not unusual. Prehistoric man and many primitive tribes were known to be troglodytes. But in sixteenth century Scotland, all most people knew about caves was based on local folklore; and because these tales involved frightening superstitions, it was not common for people to want to live in them, or even enter them.
and:
A settlement in Scotland was called a farm town, or if it contained a parish church or gristmill, it was a kirk town or mill town, respectively. The size of these settlements, which centered on a grouping of individually-owned fields, was determined by the total area of land that one or sometimes two or three plough teams of horses or oxen could keep under cultivation. Homes, which were mainly small huts, all focused on a central street or green where the market was set up once a week. This gave the residents, as well as nearby farmsteaders and peasants from nearby estates, an opportunity to buy and sell their produce and crafts. Sawney's father sold his excess produce in such a town.
zzzzzzzz - you are boring the cannibals, ms gates.
less textbook and more
[image]
, please.
before reading this, i always thought that sawney beane was a for-true story like the donner party. but it turns out, while some places claim that the story has in fact been authenticated, others pooh-pooh him as the stuff of legends. too bad, because i really love the idea of him, and i like to think he was a real man, waylaying travelers and lining his walls with their cloaks and eating them off of their very own dishes.
sawney beane gets 5 stars, this book gets a low 3 - we have rounded those scores into a medium-three because we are not very good at math.
do you know what happened to the sawney bean clan, once they were captured?? you can find out from wikipedia, so i don't think this counts as a spoiler, but they were all rounded up and the men had their genitals removed and tossed into a bonfire, and then they were dismembered for as long as they were alive and tossed piece by piece into the same bonfire while the womenfolk were forced to watch. the women were just burned alive without ceremony. this includes all the babies and young'uns who were born into the clan and had no idea that what they were doing was taboo.
scotland!!!
i would like to read a better novel about this. come to think of it, i was underwhelmed with the novel i read about the donner party, too. i need better cannibal fiction, please.
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