A fun little Halloween treat, Mason Coile's short sci-fi horror novel "W1ll1am" is a nasty little mash-up of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia A fun little Halloween treat, Mason Coile's short sci-fi horror novel "W1ll1am" is a nasty little mash-up of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and Dean Koontz's "Demon Seed".
And, for people born in the 21st century who won't get those references at all, it's basically a dysfunctional marriage drama with the added horror of killer robotic A.I. (Think "American Beauty" meets "Ex Machina".)
That's all I'm saying about this book, as the less you know going in, the better.
There is a tendency---especially in horror---of characters doing really stupid things. There's always someone dumb enough to open that closet door or There is a tendency---especially in horror---of characters doing really stupid things. There's always someone dumb enough to open that closet door or walking down into that dark cellar or opening the lid of that old dusty trunk. One could say that they are asking for it, but, if we are honest with ourselves, isn't it pretty believable? Humans are naturally curious creatures, sometimes to our detriment. If there is a door to be opened somewhere, isn't our initial impulse to open it and peek inside?
There is another kind of stupidity in horror that happens quite a lot, and it may also seem believable given the fact that humans don't always think through their actions, especially in high-stress situations. I call it "calamity-dumb", and it usually involves a small group of 3-5 people who are suddenly caught up in some kind of tragic situation. Whether it's a group of frat-boys who have accidentally killed a young woman in a gang-rape or a group of high-schoolers who have just committed a hit and run on a desolate country road, they invariably make horrible decisions.
So, instead of doing the right thing---calling the police and telling the truth, for instance---they decide to hide the truth and make a pact to never talk about it. Of course, doing the former would make for very short novels and, frankly, uninteresting ones. At least by doing the wrong thing, the characters ensure that Peter Straub's "Ghost Story" and Lois Duncan's "I Know What You Did Last Summer" would keep the reader riveted throughout.
Ronald Malfi's "Small Town Horror" is classic calamity-dumb horror.
It involves five high school kids who, 20 years ago, did something horrible on July 4th that resulted in someone's death. It was a terrible accident, but, instead of going to the police, they decided to not report it and never talk about it.
Guilt, however, has a powerful pull sometimes. Never mind any actual vengeful spirits that may be choreographing an elaborate scheme to make sure the guilty parties get their just deserts.
Malfi's story is compelling and suspenseful. It's also---as most calamity-dumb stories are---somewhat depressing. The characters in "Small Town Horror" aren't evil people. They aren't even very bad. They just did something really bad many years ago, and they are now paying the price for it. As they knew they would eventually....more
Ghosts aren’t what they used to be. Hell, horror isn’t what it used to be. And that’s a good thing. That means the genre is maturing.
Remember when ghoGhosts aren’t what they used to be. Hell, horror isn’t what it used to be. And that’s a good thing. That means the genre is maturing.
Remember when ghosts were floating bedsheets? They were good for a jump scare around a campfire, that was about it. Sure, they were a subtle acceptance of death, but never anything upon which to dwell. Ghosts were relatively harmless.
In Josh Malerman’s new novel, “Incidents Around the House”, the ghosts are all grown up. And they ain’t harmless at all.
Probably one of the most terrifying horror novels of the year, if not the last five years, “IAtH” is more than just a ghost story. It’s a story about childhood and innocence and the loss of both. It’s about family and dysfunction and bad parenting and good parenting (and how, more often than not, the two are sometimes indistinguishable) and reconciling with one’s past. It’s about karma and reincarnation and sacrifice. It’s about the very fine line between love and hate. It’s about life and death and after-life and how utterly incomprehensible those are to anyone, especially children.
It’s a ghost story in which the ghost isn’t really a ghost.
It’s all of that, and it’s still scary as fuck.
Historically, horror doesn’t get a lot of credit for its literary merits. Thankfully, a renaissance seems to be happening in the genre, where writers like Paul Tremblay, Catriona Ward, Stephen Graham Jones, Sarah Gailey, T. Kingfisher, Grady Hendrix, Josh Malerman, Cassandra Khaw, and many more are reshaping the genre by adding substance and nuance to a genre that, for many, is still looked at as insubstantial and one-dimensional....more
When the world sets the standards for beauty, those who don’t meet the standards are automatically ugly. To be black in America, in the 1950s, was to When the world sets the standards for beauty, those who don’t meet the standards are automatically ugly. To be black in America, in the 1950s, was to be automatically ugly, because the standard for beauty was white.
Toni Morrison’s first novel “The Bluest Eye”, published in 1970, was a beautifully heart-breaking and infuriating novel about self-hatred among black people. It is not difficult to see how the self-loathing rampant in the black culture aided and abetted the self-destructive tendencies of young black people. By the 1960s, when the “Black is Beautiful” movement started, much of the damage had already been done.
Morrison’s novel is a commentary on the soul-killing standards of (white) beauty that bombarded young black girls growing up in a pre-“Black is Beautiful” America. The novel follows a young black girl named Pecola Breedlove, who wants nothing more in life than to wake up one day and have blue eyes—-bluer than blue—-just like the ones she imagines Shirley Temple to have.
To her family and everyone around her, Pecola is ugly. She comes from ugly parents, and they live in an ugly storefront apartment in Lorain, Ohio. (Morrison herself grew up in Lorain, so it’s not a stretch to imagine that there is some semi-autobiographical truth in this novel.)
The tragedy that befalls Pecola is difficult to digest, and sensitive readers should be aware that the novel includes graphic depictions of child molestation, rape, and pedophelia. There is, sadly, nothing gratuitous about any of these scenes. They are merely the inevitable results of a perverted world-view founded on racist notions of beauty.
It is a great irony that a novel about the ugliness of Racism should also be so beautifully-written.
I read this as an audiobook on CD, read by the author....more
The frat-boy hijinks of the Trump White House—-especially the ridiculously disgusting love triangle between Rob Porter, Hope Hicks, and Corey LewandowThe frat-boy hijinks of the Trump White House—-especially the ridiculously disgusting love triangle between Rob Porter, Hope Hicks, and Corey Lewandowski—-highlighted how Trump—-a human SpongeBob Squarepants minus the charisma—-surrounded himself with a coven of assholes and idiots.
The Trump Administration was basically “Animal House 2”: hilarious, except for the fact that Americans suffered tremendously for it. Trump was, like John Belushi in that film, a human zit that popped himself onto everything and everyone wherever he went, and we are still cleaning the mess.
Michael Wolf, who introduced the world to a new journalistic genre called Presidential Shitshow Verite in “Fire and Fury”, which covered the first 100 days of the dumpster fire that began with the “yuge” inauguration and ended with the divorce of Trump and Steve Bannon, continued his reportage of the madness in his follow-up book, “Siege: Trump Under Fire”, which essentially answers the question: Is Rudy Giuliani really that crazy?
The answer is “yes”, and also “and always drunk”, apparently. Also, when Bannon comes across as one of the few voices of reason in the book, it’s quite clear that the U.S. has entered one of the nine circles of Hell.
From Paul Manafort to Jared Kushner to Trump’s seven minutes in heaven with Vladimir Putin to being “exonerated” by the Mueller Report, Wolf’s book reads like Hunter S. Thompson riffing on David Halberstam, a “Fear and Loathing in Mar-a-lago” meets “The Worst and the Dumbest”.
Seriously, you could make a fun drinking game based on how many times Sean Hannity violates every code of ethics in journalism (which is funny, since nobody in good conscience can call him a journalist) or how many times Bannon expresses actual shock at anything that happens anytime with anyone in the Trump White House.
This was an audiobook, read completely straight-faced and with not a hint of laughter by Holter Graham....more
While considered in today’s racial climate a slur, the term “tar baby” originated in the stories of Bre'r Rabbit and Bre'r Fox as a metaphorical stickWhile considered in today’s racial climate a slur, the term “tar baby” originated in the stories of Bre'r Rabbit and Bre'r Fox as a metaphorical sticky situation that became worse the more one tried to get out of it. (https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/....)
Joel Chandler Harris, the author of a beloved children’s book from 1880 called “Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings” (the basis for the 1946 Disney film “Song of the South”, which has never been released on any format due to its racist portrayals of black folk), was a white journalist intrigued and fascinated by the folklore of former slaves. Many of the stories told to him were popular among slaves because they were thinly-veiled protest stories criticizing their white masters and the institution of slavery.
In 1981, Toni Morrison published the novel “Tar Baby”, a contemporary re-telling of the Uncle Remus story. Like Harris’s stories, Morrison’s novel is a fairy tale that is actually a thinly-veiled protest tale. Morrison, a 20th-century writer, isn’t criticizing slavery (although, in a sense, she is: a mental slavery that still afflicts many white and black people) but rather the deep-rooted racism and white privilege that keeps both whites and blacks in the U.S. enslaved in a position of apathy and lack of self-control.
The “tar baby” of Morrison’s novel is a man named Son, a black man who escapes from a ship to a Caribbean island, where a wealthy older white couple live in a huge mansion. He sneaks into the enormous house, initially for food and a place to sleep, but he ends up staying in the house for a week before finally being caught.
Mr. Valerian Street, the master of the house, rather than call the authorities, makes the fateful decision to invite Son to stay as a guest. Valerian seems to be taken in by the young man, but the other members of the household aren’t as excited.
Valerian’s wife, Margaret, is terrified of the young man, mostly for old-fashioned racist reasons. The staff—an older black couple, Sydney and his wife Ondine—-are troubled for practical reasons: they know nothing about this man, where he came from, what his motives are. Then there is Jadine, the beautiful black niece of Sydney and Ondine, who was essentially raised in the house by both couples. Jadine has experienced the benefits of the white wealthy world (Valerian paid her way through college) while still retaining her black heritage. She is frightened by Son for a variety of reasons but mostly because of the strong sexual attraction she has for him.
Son’s introduction into this world, like the allegorical tar baby, creates a downward spiral in which ancient resentments and hidden racist fears reveal themselves and threaten to topple a household that seemed perfect but, in reality, was far from it.
Morrison’s fascinating novel tackles the lies that men and women tell each other, and themselves, in marriages and friendships; the secret resentments that all employees have for their employers; the damaging traumas we, as parents, wittingly and unwittingly inflict on our children; the misguided and dangerous views that some black people have about education; and the vital importance of empathy and compassion in creating a better world....more
James Baldwin is a national treasure. I have only read a handful of his books, but every one I have read has been a journey of heart-felt emotion and James Baldwin is a national treasure. I have only read a handful of his books, but every one I have read has been a journey of heart-felt emotion and a life-changing experience.
Baldwin, a civil rights activist, wrote primarily about the Black Experience, but in immersing one’s self in one of his books, one quickly realizes that the intersectionalities of a diversity of ethnicities, cultures, and experiences (Baldwin was also gay) made it clear that he was actually writing about the Human Experience.
“If Beale Street Could Talk”, written in 1974, is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read, and I’m berating myself for not discovering it until now, at age 51. I feel like I’ve wasted most of my life by not having Baldwin, and this book, in my life. At the same time, I feel better for having finally discovered it. This is the “life-changing” aspect of the book.
At the heart of the story is a young black couple, Fonny and Tish. Fonny is in jail, awaiting trial for a crime he didn’t commit. Tish, still in her teens, is pregnant with Fonny’s baby. They had planned on getting married right before the alleged crime occurred. Now, Tish has to be strong, and she has never felt strong. Petite and timid, Tish has to find her voice, not just for herself but for the man she loves and for her unborn child. Thankfully, she has a family to support her. But families are fragile things.
To say that this book is a tearjerker is a given. It is more than that, though. There is not a single fake or manipulative emotion in this novel. It is as if Baldwin opened up a vein and bled his sorrow and grief and anger and frustration out upon the page. This is the “heart-felt” aspect of the book.
I daresay that this is, quite simply, one of the best novels I have ever read....more
It would probably be fair to say that any follow-up to a phenomenal horror trilogy like The Indian Lake Trilogy would naturally be somewhat disappointIt would probably be fair to say that any follow-up to a phenomenal horror trilogy like The Indian Lake Trilogy would naturally be somewhat disappointing. It may be fair to say, but it would also be inaccurate.
Stephen Graham Jones’s latest “deconstructed slasher/teen horror opera” is as intense, horrific, funny, emotionally draining, and poignant as his last three novels, and then some.
“I Was a Teenage Slasher” is the story of Tolly Driver, a skinny, awkward teenager with a peanut allergy and one friend—-the town’s only Indian, a girl named Amber. Tolly is also a slasher.
He doesn’t want to be. And, frankly, he doesn’t even know all the “rules” of being a real-life slasher, which is where Amber comes in handy. She loves slasher films. She knows all about the slasher’s motivations (almost always revenge), the fact that a slasher needs a “brand” (in Tolly’s case, he kills with a never-ending supply of leather belts), and who the final girl is. This may be a problem, because there are multiple candidates in town.
The novel is set over a few days in the summer of 1989 in a small Texas town of Lamesa, where Tolly’s wave of mutilation starts with a very weird pool party.
Jones has done something utterly crazy and unheard of: he’s written a slasher novel from the viewpoint of the slasher, and—-on top of that—-made him absolutely lovable.
Sure, he kills a bunch of teenagers, but they all (kind of) deserve it. Or do they? Therein lies the crux of Tolly’s moral dilemma. He’s compelled to kill these kids for (in a cosmic sense anyway) valid reasons, but, deep down, he knows that they are just kids like him: dumb and prone to making bad decisions that they will regret later in life.
This novel reminds me a lot of a 1988 horror/comedy called “Heathers”, starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater. Jones doesn’t mention it as an inspiration, but I’m fairly certain that he had to have seen it. Regardless, both have a whimsical, tongue-in-cheek approach to teen murders that could only have been set in the pre-Columbine pre-“Woke” 1980s. Jones is certainly tapping into that vibe, while simultaneously properly excoriating it....more
Full disclosure: I’ve never been what one would call a fan of Britney Spears. Like most Americans, I was aware of her significance in the pop music scFull disclosure: I’ve never been what one would call a fan of Britney Spears. Like most Americans, I was aware of her significance in the pop music scene, and I was even familiar with some of her songs. I’ll put it this way: I never changed the channel when one of her songs was on the radio, but I never liked her enough to buy any of her albums.
That said, I became intrigued by her life when hearing a story on NPR about her conservatorship, set up by her parents. It sounded weird that a grown woman—-with two children—-was basically being treated almost like an indentured servant by her own family. Accusations of mental illness were bandied about, along with insinuations of her alleged promiscuousness and party lifestyle, but a lot of these accusations seemed to come from her father, who controlled the conservatorship. One didn’t need to be a lawyer to understand that the man who was benefitting the most, financially, from the situation was also wielding the guardianship like a Sword of Damocles over his daughter’s head.
In October 2023, Spears published a memoir, “The Woman In Me”, which was an opportunity to tell her side of the story.
It tells a very moving, sordid story of the dark side of fame and celebrityhood, one that most celebrities probably wouldn’t have the courage to write. With self-deprecation and a wisdom beyond her age borne of some pretty heavy tragedies in her life, Spears manages to give a vivid account of a young girl from a lower-income family in Louisiana who made it big with her two passions: singing and dancing.
It was a success story with almost a not-so-happy ending. A whirlwind romance with Justin Timberlake ended in an abortion and a very public break-up, one in which Timberlake made some rather hurtful statements about Britney. Hounded mercilessly by paparazzi, treated unfairly by a sexist media, and enduring a short-lived marriage with Kevin Federline, Spears became stuck in a life that seemed exotic when the cameras were on but was a hellish nightmare behind closed doors.
Her only bright spot was the birth of her two sons, whom she doted on. So, it was only inevitable that her money-hungry father would use the boys as leverage when he started the conservatorship. He would control every aspect of Britney’s life—-what she ate, how often she would perform, who she could date—-while constantly dangling her sons’ lives and her shared custody with their father, Federline, as carrots on a short stick.
Thankfully, in 2021, Britney was able to speak out in a courtroom about her years of practically being a prisoner of her family. The judge ended the conservatorship, and Britney was finally free from her family’s hold.
It’s hard to believe that an experience like Spear’s still happens in this day and age. Conservatorships seem so draconian and belonging to a more primitive era, but they are actually quite prevalent.
“The Woman in Me” is an eye-opening and engaging memoir about the freedom to make, and learn from, one’s own mistakes and failures.
This was an Audiobook, read by Michelle Williams....more
Celebrity memoirs are iffy. With some exceptions, many of them tend to be self-serving or narcissistic: Hey! Look at me! I’m rich and beautiful and faCelebrity memoirs are iffy. With some exceptions, many of them tend to be self-serving or narcissistic: Hey! Look at me! I’m rich and beautiful and famous, but I can totally relate to normal non-famous people. I shopped at Wal-Mart once and I make an effort to eat at a fast food restaurant once a year to, you know, see how the other half live. I also give 4 percent of my income to charities, like free mental health care for pets or free pedicures for homeless people. They mean well, I suppose.
Once in a while, though, a celebrity memoir slips by that is actually thoughtful, relatable, and about something, not just the arrogant ramblings of someone who is trying to sell a book.
Jennette McCurdy’s memoir “I’m Glad My Mom Died” sounds like it could be callous and mean-spirited, but it’s far from it. It’s as moving and humane as the title is heartless and awful. And let’s be honest: the title is awful. It’s also ironic and pretty damn funny, which is probably why it works.
I never watched the long-running Nickelodeon show “iCarly” that McCurdy co-starred in and made her a famous sitcom child actor. I have never seen an episode of “Sam & Cat”, the spin-off series. I may have seen her in the few “Law & Order” or “CSI” episodes where she played: a) a tween-age victim of rape, b) a tween-age witness of the murder of her parent, or c) a tween-age psycho-killer, but if I have, I don’t remember them.
It doesn’t matter. You don’t need to know her acting work to appreciate the book. Partly because she never really wanted to be an actress. In fact, fame and celebrityhood and the Hollywood lifestyle was something that she never wanted at all, but it’s something she did to please one person in her life: her mom.
Debra McCurdy had issues. That’s putting it nicely. She was abusive, mentally and physically. She was narcissistic and cruel to everyone around her, but she managed to get away with it because she made everyone feel like she was working so hard for them. She forced Jennette into a career that the 8-year-old didn’t want, but Jennette went along with it because it made her mom happy. She took acting classes and worked long, grueling hours because it made her mom happy. She became anorexic and, later, bulimic because it made her mom happy. Notice a trend?
Debra died in 2013, after a long bout with cancer. Jennette was devastated. She loved her mom, but with her death came a sense of freedom—-a terrifying, untethered-from-reality, disastrous freedom. Jennette turned to alcoholism and doubled down on her bulimia. She was beyond depressed.
The fact that she found hope and began the slow process of healing is part of what makes this a great book. The other part is that she was able to find the humor in all of it. And it must be said: this is a funny memoir. Not in a goofy, stand-up comedian kind of way. She’s not telling jokes. Nor is she making light of her situation. She’s merely looking back at a pretty fucked-up childhood and seeing the absurdity and the inherent comedy within tragedy.
“I’m Glad My Mom Died” is, hands-down, one of the best memoirs I have read in a long time.
This was an audiobook, read wonderfully by the author....more
Stuck on an island, far from civilization, with a small clan of barbaric people hunting you for one reason: to kill you, horrifically. It’s just you, Stuck on an island, far from civilization, with a small clan of barbaric people hunting you for one reason: to kill you, horrifically. It’s just you, two young kids, a pen-knife, and a bevy of survivalist knowledge your military father taught you when you were younger.
This is Adrian McKinty’s heart-racing knuckle-biter “The Island”, which is essentially “Deliverance” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” in the Australian Outback. On a scale of one to ten, the suspense is a 34.
Heather and Tom are newlyweds. It’s Tom’s second marriage (he’s a widower), and Heather is the much younger massage therapist trophy wife. Tom’s kids, Owen and Olivia, naturally hate her. The idea for a family vacation to Australia wasn’t Heather’s, but she’s game. And she’s optimistic that this trip might help in building a closer relationship with the kids.
Then, the kids start whining that they haven’t seen a koala bear yet, and Tom convinces some locals to ferry them to an isolated island called Dutch Island. It’s a private island, the only residents a family that have lived there for generations. Tom drives too fast in his rental Porsche down the only good road on the island and hits and kills a young girl on a bike. He and Heather try to cover it up, but the family catch them and throw them in a dirt-floored shack.
The O’Neills don’t like visitors, and they don’t deal with the local authorities. They have their own law and justice. It’s pretty ugly.
Heather and the kids manage to escape into the deep forest of the island. The O’Neills outnumber them and outgun them. They also think Heather will be easy to catch. She’s just a dumb massage therapist, right? The O’Neills underestimate her. She’s used to it, though, because Tom and the kids underestimate her too. For a long while, she was even underestimating herself. But a spark of anger and maternal protection has been lit inside her, and she’s loose on an island with so many interesting ways to kill the people hunting her.
McKinty flipped the script on the traditional kidnapping novel in his thriller “The Chain”, one of the most intense thrillers I’ve read in a while. He does the same for suburban-family-hunted-by-psychos-on-an-island stories in “The Island”. Seriously, check your pacemaker before reading this.
I “read” this as an audiobook on CD, read by Mela Lee....more
There’s a humor in Delilah Dawson’s horror novel “The Violence” that may not be appropriate or even intentional, but it is very necessary, given the bThere’s a humor in Delilah Dawson’s horror novel “The Violence” that may not be appropriate or even intentional, but it is very necessary, given the book’s subject matters, which are (in descending order of importance): domestic abuse, life in post-Trump America, and the therapeutic benefits of professional wrestling.
Actually, the horror in “The Violence” is actually pretty muted and nuanced, which seems deliberate on Dawson’s part. It’s almost like she’s saying that the horror that the real world provides is a helluva lot scarier than any supernatural or speculative horrors she could come up with. This seems to be a trend within contemporary horror, and one that I whole-heartedly support. Real life is fucking scary. It’s also pretty absurd. Indeed, there are parts of “The Violence” that, had they been written pre-Trump and pre-Covid-19, would not be believable. Reading it now, however, those parts are, sadly, spot-on.
The novel follows three generations of women, all dealing with abusive relationships. To make matters worse, there is a new viral global pandemic in which the infected go into a trance and fly into a homicidal rage. When the infected snap out of it, they find that, invariably, they have viciously killed or maimed the person nearest them. The media has dubbed it “The Violence”.
Chelsea is a timid housewife whose husband is mentally and physically abusive. He is constantly demeaning her, and when she is not compliant or does something wrong, he gets violent. His violence, however, manages to never leave bruises, so nobody ever believes her when she speaks about it. She’s learned to stop speaking about it, but she’s deathly afraid that he will escalate his violence to the point that he will start focusing his attention on their two young daughters.
Ella, the oldest daughter, is in a relationship with an asshole who sees her simply as an accessory. When he strikes her one day in the parking lot at high school, a bystander’s cellphone captures everything. The video gets thousands of hits on the Internet. Ella is soon bombarded by people who sympathize with her, but just as many seem to think that she is to blame, that it is ultimately her fault, that she deserves the abuse.
Patricia is Chelsea’s uncaring mother. She can never say anything good or worthwhile about her daughter and granddaughters. She lives an affluent lifestyle in a gated community, until her husband—citing a loophole in the pre-nup—-decides he’d rather just fuck his younger secretaries on his yacht in the Mediterranean and leaves her out to dry. He’s cut off her credit card accounts, her country club membership, and she has until the house sells to vacate the premises.
Then, the Violence hits. The lockdowns occur. The idiot in the White House claims that a vaccine exists, but the pharmaceutical company who manufactures it is charging ridiculous amounts for it, which means only the super-wealthy can afford it. Those who are infected are supposed to report to local law enforcement and be placed in protective custody, which amounts to prison-like hospitals.
Rather than feel defeated, Chelsea, Ella, and Patricia decide to use the global situation to their advantage. Whoever said that violence never solves anything, clearly never had absolutely nothing to lose.
Dawson, a victim of abuse herself, clearly has a lot to say on the subject, and damn does she say it. Be forewarned: there are scenes of domestic violence in this that are extremely graphic and cringe-worthy. They are as frightening, if not moreso, as the scenes involving the virus. But Dawson has clearly come to some kind of peace with her history of abuse, and she has reached the point where she can—-if not laugh at it—-at least find the sense of hope and courage to poke some (serious) fun at it....more
To reveal the horrors at the heart of Grady Hendrix’s novel “How to Sell a Haunted House” would be an unforgivable spoiler, so I will only talk about To reveal the horrors at the heart of Grady Hendrix’s novel “How to Sell a Haunted House” would be an unforgivable spoiler, so I will only talk about my own very personal take-aways.
First off, let me say that Hendrix has succeeded in creating his own genre, what I call “Southern suburban horror tear-jerkers”. He can tell a damn good creepy horror story, but his real gift is finding the humanity and the heart that’s buried (not too) deeply within the horror.
Many people can probably relate well to the family dynamics in “HTSAHH”. The family is, not to put too fine a point on it, dysfunctional as fuck, and it’s apparent that the dysfunction has only gotten worse over the years, as nobody in the family wants to deal with it.
The novel begins with Louise, who lives in San Francisco with her four-year-old daughter, receiving the call that every person dreads: the death of a parent. In her case, though, it is both parents, in a car accident. She immediately flies out to her hometown of Charleston, South Carolina for the funeral arrangements and settling affairs.
Immediately, she starts butting heads with her incorrigible brother, Mark. They are as different as night and day: Louise has a job and responsibilities, Mark is chronically unemployed and pathologically lazy; Louise thinks about the future, Mark only seems to care about the here and now; Louise is raising a child, Mark is a child.
To make things worse, there is the confusion of the Will. The house, and everything in it, is bequeathed to only one of the siblings. Thus begins a fight for the estate, until it is discovered that the house is haunted. Truly, literally haunted. And it all seems to stem from an incident in their childhood that nobody in the family wants to talk about.
This is where Hendrix resonated the most with me. Indeed, there were several things that Hendrix captured really well about family dynamics, but the most significant point is the idea of keeping secrets.
There are some families where the parents are honest and open with their kids. There are some families in which children aren’t afraid to talk about stuff with their parents, stuff like God and religion and death and sex. There are some families that would never think of holding anything back or keeping secrets from each other.
This was not my family.
While I’m sure they did it out of love, my parents kept many things from my sister and me. They spent their whole lives doing it. My father, who died in early February this year, died, I’m sure, leaving many things unspoken. I know that my mom keeps many secrets from us, and I’m afraid that she will go to her grave with those secrets. Because of this, my sister and I have always felt that some things are better left unspoken. Some things should be kept a secret.
Thanks to my wife, a teacher who has training as a trauma counselor and who comes from a family where nothing is a secret, I have learned how unhealthy this mentality is. It also doesn’t make logical sense: you can’t help someone with a problem if you don’t know that they have a problem.
Allow me to vent: My father, whom I loved greatly, had a life-long inability to ask for help. This became increasingly more problematic in the last couple years, where his health began to deteriorate. In 2020, the year Covid struck, my dad nearly died in the hospital due to a gall bladder that went septic. He had been in major pain, probably for months, but never went to a doctor. It was only until the pain became totally unbearable that I took him to the hospital. I remember sitting at the bedside in the ER as doctors rushed in and out of the room. One has not known fear until one has watched sheer terror in the face of an ER doctor who is treating a loved one.
He miraculously pulled through, but it would not be the last time he’d be sent to the hospital. Every time he went it was because he waited too long to see a doctor. I would go with him to the doctor, and he would lie to the doctor about feeling pain. On more than one occasion, I had to tell the doctor what my dad had confided in me, as if he was ashamed to tell the doctor himself. I never understood this.
In January, when he went to the hospital with what started as a chest cold (or so we thought), I had to force him to go to the hospital. He was actually angry at me for making him. Unfortunately, three weeks later, he died of pneumonia. I now live with this constant notion that my dad died somewhat angry at me for forcing him to go to that hospital, that if he had somehow kept quiet about his chest pains, he would still be alive. I know that’s not true, but it’s dysfunctional thinking that comes from years of being part of a dysfunctional family.
Secrets are what helped to kill my dad, and I don’t want to do that to my wife and daughter.
As Hendrix so aptly illustrates in this novel, every family’s house is haunted in some way. It’s only in bringing things out in the open and talking about stuff that we can fully exorcise the demons and ghosts that haunt our lives. ...more
Celeste Ng’s debut novel, “Everything I Never Told You” wowed me, along with the critics, with a gripping story that managed to cover a lot of hot-butCeleste Ng’s debut novel, “Everything I Never Told You” wowed me, along with the critics, with a gripping story that managed to cover a lot of hot-button issues in a short amount of space. While certainly flawed, Ng’s book was a great first novel that revealed a new writer with lots of promise.
Her recent novel, “Little Fires Everywhere” is another powerful story that manages to touch a lot of hot-button issues. It’s not a perfect novel. Ng hasn’t completely improved upon some of the flaws from her first novel (over-reliance of long expository sections, two-dimensional characters, elementary plot devices), but, despite all that, it is still a story worth telling.
Like her first novel, Ng tackles the banality and minutiae of suburban hell deftly and superbly. She is clearly someone who has lived in the suburbs and, perhaps, even a specific kind of suburban hell: the predominantly white, affluent, upper-middle class suburb.
The novel is set in Shaker Heights, OH. This is a very real and well-known eastern suburb of Cleveland. Let’s just say it has a reputation.
I have never lived in Shaker Heights, but I live in what some say is the west-side equivalent: Bay Village. We’re smaller, probably not as wealthy, but our city’s average household income is still probably much higher than surrounding communities. Also predominantly white (total minority population is probably never more than 2%), Bay (the “Village” tends to get dropped in common parlance—-everyone in the Cleveland area knows where you’re from) is basically a gated community without the gates. Black and brown people driving through the city almost invariably tend to get pulled over, for nothing. Bay’s nickname is “The Bubble”. Seriously, ask anyone from Cleveland. They’ve heard of it.
Shaker Heights is Bay, only moreso. Ng, who was born in Pittsburgh, PA, moved to Shaker Heights when she was 10. Her dad was a NASA physicist. Her mom was a college professor. She went to Shaker Heights High. They probably lived in a huge two-story ranch. She gets it.
Only a Shakerite could tell this story. An outsider would probably be accused of making it up or being too critical. Perhaps even mean-spirited. They would be accused of being judgmental and creating issues where there are none.
Critics of Ng can say many things about her, but they can’t say that.
The heart of the novel is two very different families, the Richardsons and the Warrens.
Mr. and Mrs. Richardson are lifetime Shakerites. Elena is legacy: her parents and grandparents have lived there forever. They have three kids, a beautiful home, and Mr. Richardson is a high-paid attorney, which enables Mrs. Richardson to be a stay-at-home mom. (She has a job, of course, working at a local paper—-writing about bake sales, community events, the debate about a new skate park—-but she can do most of this from home. She would never deign to call herself a “stay-at-home” mom.) They hire a housekeeper. They are very white.
The Warrens are, well, different. First off, it’s just Mia, a single mom, and her teenaged daughter Pearl. They move around a lot. They live inexpensively (few furnishings other than clothes and mattresses on the floor), and Mia’s income is irregular. She works odd jobs here and there, but much of her income comes from her photographs. She’s an artist.
The conflict arises from an unusual source. A local Shaker Heights family has adopted a baby that was found outside of the fire department. The baby is Chinese. Mrs. Richardson is friends of the adopted (white) family. Mia inadvertently finds out who the birth-mother is. What Mia does, out of her own sense of morality and fairness, immediately sets off a chain of events that turns the community upside down.
To tell more would be spoilers. What Ng has done is tell a sad story about classism, racism, mothers and daughters, making choices that affect everyone’s lives around you, and the false belief that following rules and regulations is always the best way.
I liked this novel a lot, and while it’s not perfect, it does what a good novel should do: shake things up. It’s thought-provoking, to say the least, and that’s a term that doesn’t get used a lot these days.
P.S. Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington star in the Hulu TV show based on the novel. It’s apparently now streaming, and I’ve heard good things. I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s on my radar....more
Lauren Oliver’s novel “Rooms” is a haunted house/ghost story, but don’t make the same mistake I made by thinking that one is going to read a creepy liLauren Oliver’s novel “Rooms” is a haunted house/ghost story, but don’t make the same mistake I made by thinking that one is going to read a creepy little horror story. There is, in fact, nothing horrifying about the novel. It is, instead, at times funny, sad, and disturbingly real. It is, despite the presence of ghosts in the story, a novel about real life, which, I suppose, can be quite horrifying.
The novel takes place after the estranged family of Richard Walker has come back to the old homestead after Richard has died. Like the house itself, each family member is haunted by parts of their own past and their inability to deal with it.
Caroline is Richard’s ex, who still harbors resentment for the man who cheated on her. Deep down, though, she is still in love with him, but she can’t tell anyone because she has built up so many walls; a scaffolding of hatred, jealousy, self-loathing, and alcoholism.
Minna is the oldest daughter, whose abject loneliness can not be assuaged by the number of loveless sexual encounters with random men.
Trenton is the awkward teenaged son, whose thoughts of suicide are temporarily put on hold by the discovery of the ghost of a young girl in the house. There is also the strange neighborhood girl, Katie, who hangs around the place and seems to actually like Trenton, which is a cognitive dissonance to the troubled young man.
Amy is Minna’s young daughter, whose time is spent playing and living in a fantasy world, inspired by a children’s book that she finds in the house, written by a former occupant.
These are only the living inhabitants of the house. There is also Alice and Sandra, the two main ghosts who preoccupy themselves by spying on the living and arguing with each other constantly. Things get even more stressful when a third ghost---the mysterious young girl---shows up out of the blue.
Over the course of the novel, everyone’s (including the ghosts) secrets are revealed and the thin veneer of normalcy begins to unravel toward a climactic conflagration.
Oliver, best known for her young adult fiction, is a beautiful writer. I’m not sure if “Rooms” can be considered YA because it definitely straddles the line between young adult and grown-up sensibilities. It is most likely intended for mature audiences, although young adult readers who are older than their chronological age will enjoy it, as well....more
The very bizarre and so-strange-as-to-be-unbelievable story of Fauna Hodel’s life was recently the subject of the stylishly-produced, suspenseful 60s-The very bizarre and so-strange-as-to-be-unbelievable story of Fauna Hodel’s life was recently the subject of the stylishly-produced, suspenseful 60s-noir thriller TV series I Am the Night on TNT. The show attempts to capture the grittiness of a bleak Los Angeles underbelly, and it succeeds, perhaps all the more apropos in this #MeToo Movement era in which Hollywood’s darker sins are finally being revealed.
While I loved the show, especially the stand-out performances of Chris Pine and the doe-eyed India Eisley as a young Fauna, it is important to note that it bears very little to no resemblance to the original source material, Hodel’s own 2008 memoir, “One Day She’ll Darken: The Mysterious Beginnings of Fauna Hodel”.
Hodel’s story begins (in her telling) with a young black woman named Jimmie Lee Greenwaide, a ladies’ room attendant in a casino who, one night, accepts an odd proposition from a white woman: adopt a child of mixed race (the mother is white, the father is negro) and raise it as her own. Jimmie Lee had wanted a child but was never blessed with the chance. She accepted.
Several weeks later, she was told to come to a particular address where she would be given the baby. One look at the child impressed upon her the immediate thought: someone was lying. The baby was white as snow. She highly doubted the veracity of the birth certificate, which clearly stated the father’s race as “Negro”. That was some bullshit: this baby was 100% white, anyone could tell.
Still, Jimmie Lee attempted to raise her as her own. She told everyone that the child was adopted and that it was mixed race, and young Fauna grew up not suspecting otherwise. Jimmie Lee tried her best, but between her alcoholism and her sexual profligacy, she wasn’t the best role model.
Despite that, Fauna grew up to be a smart, kind young woman, and she loved Momma. In her own way, Momma loved her, too. At some point, though, Fauna discovered that she was adopted, and she began her search for her real mother and father.
She eventually learned that her birth certificate, as Jimmie Lee had suspected all along, was a lie: she was not mixed race after all. Her mother was white, and her father was white, too. But Fauna also learned that race could be subjective. After all, she believed her entire life that she was part-black. Inside, she felt black, and she identified more with black people, regardless of what her skin color or DNA said.
Her investigation also uncovered her personal link to an extremely dark chapter in the history of L.A. crime. Her grandfather, George Hodel, was a wealthy Angeleno who, beside being involved in a well-known incest case, was also a prime suspect in the legendary Black Dahlia murder, a particularly gruesome unsolved murder of a young woman named Elizabeth Short. She was found bisected at the waist.
The TNT TV show takes this fact as its basis for the show, reshaping Hodel’s personal investigation into a twisted tale of Hollywood excess, perversion, and police corruption. The show more than implies that many people within the LAPD and the city government knew who the murderer of Elizabeth Short was but did nothing due to the fact that the murderer, George Hodel, was stinking rich and had connections throughout the city, including the mob.
Fauna’s memoir is not so grandiose in its accusations. In fact, Fauna focuses less on her grandfather and more on her own life. Appropriate, since it is, in fact, her own life that she is writing about.
Fauna’s real story---a story about race, racial identity, and what family truly means; her relationship to Jimmie Lee, the only woman she ever really knew as a mother; her relationships to her first two husbands---is basically relegated to the back seat in the TV show.
If you want a gritty, creepy James Ellroy-esque noir story, check out I Am the Night, a fascinating fictional look at a real-life murder mystery.
If, however, you are looking for the true story of Fauna’s dysfunctional but ultimately beautiful family drama, read “One Day She’ll Darken”.
One is not better than the other. They are both very different, and they are both excellent....more
In “The Levee”, the second book in Michael McDowell’s chilling Southern Gothic horror series Blackwater, the town of Perdido, Alabama has hired on an In “The Levee”, the second book in Michael McDowell’s chilling Southern Gothic horror series Blackwater, the town of Perdido, Alabama has hired on an engineer to build a levee that would hopefully mitigate or prevent the devastating effects of flood similar to the one several years ago, in 1919, which was also the year that Elinor Dammert mysteriously showed up. Everyone in town seems to be for it, except for Elinor, who believes that the river won’t let them build it.
No one knows or suspects that Elinor isn’t quite human. She is a creature linked inextricably to the river, borne from the fetid black water of the Perdido, and the river demands blood sacrifices now and then.
This is a weird series, and I mean that in a good way. McDowell, born and raised in the South, clearly has a kinship with fellow Southern writers like Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers, and William Faulkner, all of whom had a vivid and existential love-hate relationship with the South.
The best Southern writers all tend to strike a similar chord about the unique nature and, well, personality of the region. The land, the culture, the type of people that choose to live there: all these elements intertwine into a tapestry, which the keenest of regional authors help to weave.
McDowell has done that masterfully in his Blackwater series, capturing the hot sultriness of the Alabama country, the psycho-sexual tensions of a post-Reconstruction era, and the insane family dynamics of a wealthy white Southern legacy family.
Whether one is Southern or not shouldn’t matter when it comes to appreciating this series. When you read McDowell’s words, you are, temporarily, a Southerner....more
Brutal. That’s the one-word review I’d give Lionel Shriver’s 2003 novel, “We Need to Talk About Kevin”. Unabashedly violent and cruel while uncomfortaBrutal. That’s the one-word review I’d give Lionel Shriver’s 2003 novel, “We Need to Talk About Kevin”. Unabashedly violent and cruel while uncomfortably honest. That would be a seven-word review.
Unfortunately, “WNTTAK” can not be summed up in a few words, a few paragraphs, or even in one review. Everyone who has read this book seems to have a passionate reaction, positive or negative, to something in the novel. Critics either love it or hate it, and they give many reasons why. This is as it should be, because the topics in the novel are topics that should be discussed, argued about, dragged kicking and screaming into the light and pummeled to death.
According to 2018 statistics, roughly 193 schools in the U.S. have suffered a school shooting in the years after the Colombine massacre in 1999. On average, roughly 10 school shootings occur per year. Roughly 375 students, teachers, and staff have lost their lives from school shootings. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphi...)
If there is any silver lining in any of this, it is that oft-cited statistic that violent crime has actually declined significantly in the United States since 1999, providing many people with a weird cognitive dissonance when they realize that school shootings are actually quite rare. (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...)
How can this be? one thinks, when every night on the news we seem to hear about another shooting? The truth is, we simply don’t hear about another shooting every night. It perhaps just seems that way because the media likes to freak us out. (As a former journalist, I can attest that one of the main tenets of the editorial staff is the old adage, “If it bleeds, it leads”.)
The truth is, the common misperception among the general public that violent crime is on the rise when, in actuality, it is dropping and has been dropping for twenty years, can probably be attributed to the fact that people are ruled by emotion rather than logic. Even people who claim to “look at things logically” or “think rationally” or “take an objective approach” are, in actuality, full of shit and in complete denial.
Now, this does not mean that we should not be looking at the problems of school shootings, workplace violence, gun control, or mental health issues. On the contrary, those are still serious issues, also inextricably interrelated, that need to be addressed and are, sadly, still being seriously under-addressed by the media.
It does, however, mean that we need to take a level-headed, honest, and apolitical approach to the topics if we ever want to see things improve. And that’s pretty hard to do because, as stated previously, people are ruled by emotion not logic.
In some ways, I think this is what Shriver is attempting to do in her novel. Whether one feels that she succeeds or not is based on your own take-away, but Shriver is raising a lot of interesting and tough questions in her novel, and while she doesn’t deign to prescribe solutions, she does offer some suggestions.
One suggestion is to stop blaming the parents. This is, of course, incredibly difficult to do considering the (admittedly completely judgmental) fact that there are a lot of shitty parents out there.
Eva Katchadourian, the mother of Kevin, spends a majority of the book berating herself for being a bad mother. She also spends some time blaming her husband, Franklin, for being clueless and in denial about their son. The sad truth is that, despite the fact that they may have been shitty parents, they were also parents. By that, I mean, they chose to stick around and actually raise kids, unlike an entirely too-large demographic of dead-beat moms and dads who choose the single life or prison just to get out of parenting.
Franklin is, in my opinion, the most reviled and pathetic character in the novel, completely undeservedly. Yes, he’s clueless and in denial, but I think it’s because he wants so badly to be a good dad. One can’t fault his motivation. It’s his execution. He bends over backwards for his kid, but he does it at the expense of subverting the parental will of his own wife. Parents need to be on the same page when it comes to parenting. There shouldn’t be a “good parent, bad parent” dynamic happening. You need to work together, and if you aren’t, something is seriously wrong with the dynamic.
There is also the fact that Kevin exhibits every indicator of being a homicidal psychopath, even from a very young age. And no amount of parenting, good or bad, is going to alter this in any way. Kevin is just a bad seed, and you can’t blame mom or dad for that.
Shriver also, cleverly, suggests that maybe we should stop misleading the argument away from issues like gun control (which is not to say it’s not an important issue) and more towards issues of mental health, especially in detecting early red flags of tendencies toward sociopathy or psychopathy.
Shriver also, rightly or wrongly, examines and criticizes American society, our rampant consumerism and materialism, our blatant racism, our militarism, our obsession with religion, our xenophobia, and our collective cluelessness and outright ignorance of our own history.
What some critics don’t like about the book is that it is graphic. Indeed, the novel starts out as a serious literary attempt to talk about school shootings but gradually builds up into Stephen King/ “Carrie” horror territory. It becomes a slasher flick by the end of the book.
I’m okay with that, because I understand that Shriver is simply trying to say that nothing should be taboo when it comes to talking about these subjects, and, in talking about it, we are going to have to talk about some pretty brutal, horrible things....more
“South of Broad” is the late Pat Conroy’s seventh novel, published seven years before his death in 2016. Beloved popular novelist, Conroy was best kno“South of Broad” is the late Pat Conroy’s seventh novel, published seven years before his death in 2016. Beloved popular novelist, Conroy was best known for his stories set in and around his hometown of Charleston, South Carolina. While he is considered a “Southern” writer, his many best-selling books have gained a following by fans in all corners of the country and beyond. Conroy may have been a regional author, but his stories touched upon universal themes that struck a chord in everyone.
I read “The Great Santini” years ago. The novel was a fictionalized account of his father, a Marine fighter pilot, who ran his household with an iron fist and, according to Conroy, psychologically abused him and his siblings. I remember cringing at the scenes of verbal and mental abuse at the hands of Bull Meecham, but I also recall the love and respect that Conroy had for his father, despite all the awful things he did to him and his family.
It is perhaps this duality, this human contradiction, that gives Conroy’s stories such an impact and believability. He writes about real people, in real situations, doing things that one could easily categorize as “good” or “evil” until one examines the motivations to reveal the muddled humanity beneath, ultimately acknowledging that the human condition is not black or white but one whole grey area.
Such it is with “South of Broad”, which is, in all fairness, a big hot mess of a novel. Not having read too many other Conroy novels, I’m not sure how this rates among his fans, although I would hazard a guess that it is probably not one of the favorites.
Its lack of focus, shifts in tone, and inconsistent narrative make it an extremely flawed novel, but I was nevertheless drawn in by the beauty of Conroy’s prose. Sections of the book (especially those parts describing Charleston) are incredibly gorgeous and exhibit a writing so powerful as to be almost divine. And while flawed, “South of Broad” is still a joy to read.
The title refers to the section of Charleston that is literally south of Broad Street, at the southern end of the city. It is bordered on two sides by the rivers Cooper and Ashley, and it is a primarily residential area known for its palatial estates and old money.
Figuratively, “South of Broad” refers to the sharp class distinctions of Old Charleston. It is the demarcation of the plebeian lower classes north of Broad Street from the wealthy and elitist members of the high-class society and legacy families that has survived for generations in the city, dating back prior to the Civil War.
In Conroy’s mind, it represents the still-oppressive racist and classist snobbishness that infects the beautiful city that he loves. It is the part of the city that he detests, but he has grown to accept and live with it, as have all Charlestonians. Things may be changing for the better, according to Conroy, but it has been a glacially slow change.
The novel follows a disparate group of friends, centered around the reluctant leader of the group, Leopold Bloom King (named after a character in James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses”), who is as lovable as he is infuriatingly decent and psychologically screwed-up.
His screwed-up psychology may have something to do with the fact that, when he was extremely young, he witnessed his older brother commit suicide by slitting his wrists in the bathtub. Traumatized, Leo spent a few years in a mental hospital, and the stigma of that incident haunts him for the rest of his life.
There is also the fact that he discovers that his mother was a former nun, which explains the rigid Roman Catholicism that he simultaneously finds comfort in but also secretly abhors for its strict legalism and unhealthy judgmentalism. Perhaps because of this, Leo wages a life-long campaign against hypocrisy and hatred in all its forms.
There is a lot to unpack in this novel. At one point, the novel shifts from a pleasant and funny bildungsroman that follows Leo’s spiritual and sexual escapades through high school to a dark mystery-thriller involving the search for an old friend. It is an odd shift in tone. Add to that: an emotionally moving section of the novel set during the early AIDS epidemic in San Francisco; a suspenseful edge-of-the seat section devoted to several characters trying to survive Hurricane Hugo; and a section of the novel in which a psychotic serial killer is hunting down Leo and friends in Charleston.
The novel is a roller coaster of emotions and themes and even genres, and I’m not sure if it works wonderfully all of the time. It may be unfocused, but it is never boring.
The novel’s two saving graces are Conroy’s beautiful writing and the lovableness of his characters. Like Stephen King, Conroy has a penchant for creating well-developed characters in which one can’t help but become emotionally invested. I was rooting for Leo throughout the entire novel, even when his annoyingly strict Catholicism kept him from doing things that would save him pain and anguish. Even the minor characters in the novel are so fleshed-out that there are no minor characters.
“South of Broad” may not be Conroy’s best novel, but if this is Conroy at his less-than-stellar level, it would be a goddamned shame not to read his others....more
I don’t like the term “chick lit” for obvious reasons (but for those who don’t get obvious reasons and need everything spelled out for them: it’s a teI don’t like the term “chick lit” for obvious reasons (but for those who don’t get obvious reasons and need everything spelled out for them: it’s a term that is derogatory, demeaning, and sexist), but in very rare non-ironic cases, it actually fits. This is the case with Robyn Carr’s novel “The Summer that Made Us”.
Carr is, according to her own bio, a “#1 New York Times bestselling author of more than sixty books”. It is the first book of Carr’s that I have read, and I am well aware that my assessment of her writing should be taken with a grain of salt as it is based solely on this book. I realize that writers have off days, that some books are better than others, that some publishers have deadlines that writers need to make and they don’t always do a stellar job of self-editing. Fair enough. This is why I am always willing to give an author a second chance if I don’t happen to like my first attempt at reading them.
“The Summer that Made Us” is one of those books that follow the same formulaic mold as books like “Fried Green Tomatoes”, “How to Make an American Quilt”, and “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood”. Not surprisingly, all of those books were made into films. I would not be surprised if this book is already being shopped around by studios to be made into a movie. I will probably see it when it inevitably arrives in theaters.
Despite my dislike of the term “chick lit”, there is perhaps no better descriptor for books like this: a group of women from all walks of life are brought together for some reason to work out their individual problems and recognize the importance and beauty of sisterhood and female solidarity.
I don’t have a problem with the fact that men are practically and significantly absent from a vast majority of the novel. I get it. Men are usually the root of the problem, and they are rarely, if ever, the solution. I don’t feel offended because I know that I am not the target demographic here.
I don’t even have a problem with the melodramatic plot and dialogue. In truth, parts of the book read like a soap opera, but I have certainly read worse.
My biggest problem with Carr’s writing is a technical one, and one that anyone who has ever taken a creative writing course in high school or college will understand.
One of the first and most important lessons in writing fiction is the short but succinct axiom, “Show, don’t tell.”
Carr spends way too much of her time telling, through lengthy and boring paragraphs of exposition and clunky chunks of dialogue in which way too much information is given. Indeed, so little action actually takes place in the novel mainly because very little is needed. Carr spoon-feeds us every bit of information---back-story, character descriptions, nervous habits, favorite colors, the food they eat. It is mostly extraneous. It is also not very interesting, mainly because she doesn’t seem to have much confidence in her readers and their ability to figure things out.
Somewhere within “The Summer that Made Us” is a good book, with a decent story. Unfortunately, it is buried beneath a lot of expository telling that takes much of the excitement and suspense out of reading....more
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