The Dark Divine

The Dark Divine, by Bree Despain

Grace Divine, the daughter of the local pastor, always knew something terrible happened the night Daniel Kalbi disappeared -- the night she found her brother Jude collapsed on the porch, covered in his own blood -- but she has no idea what a truly monstrous secret that night held. The memories her family has tried to bury resurface when Daniel returns, three years later, and enrolls in Grace's and Jude's high school. Despite promising Jude she'll stay away, Grace cannot deny her attraction to Daniel's shocking artistic abilities, his way of getting her to look at the world from new angles, and the strange, hungry glint in his eyes. The closer Grace gets to Daniel, the more she jeopardizes her life, as her actions stir resentment in Jude and drive him to embrace the ancient evil Daniel unleashed that horrific night. Grace must discover the truth behind the boy's dark secret. . . and the cure that can save the one she loves. But she may have to lay down the ultimate sacrifice t do it -- her soul.

Before we get too much further, let me just say that this review is infested with spoilers, like ticks on a werewolf. FYI, yo.

I have complicated feelings about TDD. This is one of the many monster-themed teen novels that arrived in the wake of Twilight's success. And maybe that's part of my problem with TDD: I do not hate Twilight, but nor do I love it. I read it, and it was a non-entity in terms of books. There's a fair number of books which just do not register with me at all. Kind of like the first Harry Potter movie. I must have seen that at least four times now, and I still do not remember watching it even once. Which is probably for the best, I don't really have a yen to remember fantasy movies with poor child acting, and the book was so memorable I have no problem picturing events. It's one of the reasons I wanted to start writing these reviews - so that I could actually keep track of everything I've read, for once. Naturally, that's been almost a complete failure, mostly because if a book doesn't leave an impression, I don't want to talk about it. It does work sometimes though - The Amaranth Enchantment is one that wouldn't otherwise be taking up space in my memory banks. And to wind-up this boringly in-depth look at the way my mind works, let me finally make my point: TDD is a lot like Twilight, and like Twilight, didn't move me very much at all.

That's not to say there were no enjoyable parts or flat out ridiculousness. This is a teen fantasy novel, y'all! So: dark, mysterious, sexy young man arrives in town, unknown enough to be attracted to, familiar enough to be safe to act on that attraction. Awesome! Naturally, odd things begin happening, young romances are forbidden, promises are made and broken, and a young man kidnaps his own baby brother to um, well, not for any reason really. I guess, because he was there?

TDD is kind of a slow starter - anyone with half a brain, or enough drive to read a review of the book knows it's about werewolves, but the protagonist, Grace, does not. Even though she sometimes, sort of, does. For example, when her afore-mentioned little brother goes missing, and everyone crowds out to look at the window, she thinks:

There was a spattering of blood there, like someone had shaken a wounded hand. Or paw.

I'm sorry, the italics are my own, I couldn't resist. Considering how little Grace is aware (at this point in the story) of werewolves and such monsters, she's pretty spot-on about that whole hand/paw thing. I will admit, usually when I see a crime scene, I do not think, "Hey, this could have been done by a person. . . or a giant wolf." Sometimes the characters make random intuits of logic that jarred me out of the story. Such as when Grace is reading about this guy Gabriel, who sounds like he's in the Crusades, talking about moons and wolves:

[T]he Urbat have much greater difficulty controlling the wolf possession during the night of the full moon. As if the moon itself has power over them. Because of this, I think there may be a way to manage these beasts. Perhaps if an Urbat were ti keep a small piece of the moon close to his body, it would act as a counteragent to the effects of the larger moon, helping him keep the wolf at bay while still retaining its mythical strength. Much like how the ancient Greeks treated disease with the idea that like cures like.

I have heard tales of rocks that fall in fiery glory from the heavens. What if some of these rocks have fallen from the moon itself? If I were able to fashion a necklace from one of these moonstones - if finding one was possible - perhaps I could help the Death Dogs reclaim their blessings.

However, such a necklace would be no cure. It would only offer control.

So within the space of two and a half short paragraphs, Gabriel posits 1) The moon controls the beasts, 2) A small piece of moon would control the beasts, 3) In a good, counter-effective kind of way, 4) Rocks that fall from the sky might come from the moon, 5) If we make a necklace from fallen rocks then the beasts will be helped, and 5) The necklace will not cure the beasts, it will only preserve their strength but dampen the hunger.

That is so many leaps of logic right there. It's irritating because we the readers know all of this works, since Daniel is wearing a necklace of moon rock, which patently works. But for Gabriel to be all, the moon affects the wolves, so what we really need is a necklace made of moon rocks, and furthermore, this necklace, which I have just dreamed up, will only help them in very specific ways, but not cure them, is outrageous. Utter coincidence would be more palatable to me than this forced and twisted "reasoning".

TDD is actually kind of obnoxious about information and background. It drops hints by the truckload, but our beautiful protagonist can't put them all together until Daniel, her long-lost swain fills her in on the rest. So we, the readers, are stuck reading about Grace's younger sister watching a television program about wolves, while clueless Grace just mopes about omega wolves getting enough to eat, with no insight on her own situation, despite her earlier out-of-left-field *paw* Eureka moment. It's all very frustrating. It's like, sometimes Grace knows too much, sometimes she doesn't know anything at all. Make up your mind, Grace!

So it starts slowly, and really only gets going about 85% of the way in. Which is not a problem, the climax should be towards the end like that, but there's very little payoff happening before then, which is more of an issue for me. Despain created an interesting mythology about werewolves, but there's almost no time to explore it, since Grace receives only a few pieces at a time, so the whole picture doesn't come into focus for awhile.

The first half of the book sets up a lot of questions, some of which it just doesn't answer, such as, why do Grace's parents appear to hate each other? It's never really addressed, and I kept expecting something to be going on with her mother, but she's not really part of the resolution at all. I guess the mother was just angry that the father was helping Daniel out? And decided to be passive-aggressive about over Thanksgiving? I kept waiting for the pay-off, but her anger just sort of went away. I will say, it seems odd that Grace would hear her parents argue for the first time ever and then not follow-up, looking for signs that they're back to normal. It's a little confusing.

The romance between Grace and Daniel was one of the better done parts of the book. Grace, while obtuse in some respects, doesn't do too shabby a job at wanting Daniel while trying not to entangle herself with him. I didn't want to shake her too much for being stupid, which is high praise for teenage heroines. Although, jesus, can we declare a moratorium on violet eyes? I can't tell you how much this bugs me, it's a sloppy shortcut to making your heroine (the ladies always get purple eyes, the men always get dark flashing ones) a unique little snowflake without giving her any skills or real qualities. It's a joke, at this point, and Despain completely took me out of the story when that got mentioned. Just say she has brown eyes! Just because her nail polish is purple doesn't mean her eyes have to be too. My nails would look hideous if I matched them to my eyes. Like vomit.

So Grace is also the pastor's daughter, so there's a religious aspect involved here, too. That didn't bother me in the least, and I'm a godless atheist. It adds a convincing tension to Grace's interactions with other characters and her decisions about trying to do the right thing. Her religious background gives her terror of monsters more depth, and her attempts to be a good person more weight. She's not sanctimonious, and I actually liked the religious aspect to her character, it made her decisions more believable.

I also enjoyed the end of the book - the final denouement is a classic on-the-rooftop, battling between two creatures of darkness moment, and it works. I felt anxious on behalf of Grace, and very sorry for her when she was attacked. I will not, however, be purchasing the sequel, even if Jude's future is left hanging. TDD just had too many head-scratching moments, and characters seemed forced into odd or simply unexplained behavior to fit the storyline. And despite the entertaining finale, my patience was strained by the lead-in to it.

An inoffensive entry in the monster-of-the-week fantasy novels.

The Name of the Rose

The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco

Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and an English Brother, William of Baskerville, is sent to investigate. His delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre murders that take place in seven days and nights of terror. One monk is found dead in a cask of pig's blood; another is discovered floating in a bathhouse; still another has been crushed to death after falling from a window. Rumors hum throughout the abbey, and people piously cover their tracks, hiding clues. Brother William turns detective, and a uniquely deft one at that. His tools are the logic of Aristotle, the theology of Aquinas, the empirical insights of Roger Bacon - all sharpened to a glistening edge by wry humor and ferocious curiosity. He collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie secret labyrinth of abbey life. Before his task is completed, Brother William witnesses crimes beyond his imaginings and meets an enemy with the awesome features of the Antichrist...

So that was... unenjoyable. I spent a goodly sum of time on this book, and I really wish I had it all back. The book is a six hundred page monster about heresy in 1327 Italy and by golly, I soldiered through it, but I'll be gosh darned if I'd do it again. It was a frustrating and slow read. I read this over a period of seven days (well, six, really), partly because the book takes place over seven days, and there's nothing I like so much as a gimmick, and partly because each day takes up about 100 pages and 100 pages a day is all I could take. Oh, my god, I would re-read sections over and over again trying to make heads or tails of it and come up with nothing. For example, this description of the church:

And beneath the feet of the ancients, and arched over them and over the throne and over the tetramorphic group, arranged in symmetrical bands, barely distinguishable one from another because the artist's skill had made them all so mutually proportionate, united in their variety and varied in their unity, unique in their diversity and diverse in their apt assembly, in wonderous congruency of the parts with the delightful sweetness of hues, miracle of consonance and concord of voices among themselves dissimilar, a company arrayed like the strings of the zither, consentient and conspiring continued cognition through deep and interior force suited to perform univocally in same alternating play of the equivocal, decoration and collage of creatures beyond reduction to vicissitudes reduced, work of amorous connecting sustained by a law at once heavenly and worldly (bond and stable nexus of peace, love, virtue, regimen, power, order, origin, life, light, splendor, species, and figure), numerous and resplendent equality through the shining of the form over the proportionate parts of the material—there, all the flowers and leaves and vines and bushes and corymbs were entwined, of all the grasses that adores the gardens of earth and heaven, violet, cystus, thyme, lily, privet, narcissus, taro, acanthus, mallow, myrrh, and Mecca balsam.

What, I ask you, is "consentient and conspiring continued cognition through deep and interior force suited to perform univocally in same alternating play of the equivocal, decoration and collage of creatures beyond reduction to vicissitudes reduced"? It's like Jabberwocky, except without order or sense. Also, it takes itself a lot more seriously than Lewis Carroll.

Be forewarned, I fell asleep after reading TNotR and I had the worst dream, all monks and monsters, and people going up like firecrackers, and Alec Baldwin from 30 Rock and the voice of Christopher Lee the way he plays Saruman in The Lord of the Rings. And no, not all of that is TNotR's fault (I'm looking at you, Alec Baldwin), but fyi, this may give you nightmares.

Anyway, it's pages and pages of utter nonsense, interspersed with latin (rimshot!), and let me tell you, I participated in the Latin Olympics as a child, when I was young and foolish, and easily talked into doing things I didn't want to do by teachers who held my academic future in their hands, and I still did not understand a tenth of what was being said (in latin. I understood at least half of what was being said in English, although mostly I didn't care). There is a whole section about how people are sederunting and all I got out of it was that sederunt can be used as a verb even though it's a type of chant, which still doesn't make sense, like saying "Let's go hymn!"

Okay, to the plot! It's narrated by Adso of Melk, and here I was super excited when I first cracked this book, cause I was all, "Melk! I have totally been there and will be able to picture everything!" and then I found out that none of it takes place in Melk, and thus I suffered the first of many disappointments. Adso is looking back on the events of his misspent novitiate youth, where he tagged along with the 14th century Sherlock Holmes, aka William of Baskerville.
They arrive at mysterioso abbey, where someone is dead and the abbott wants William to investigate. William gets into a lot of arguments about heresy, most of which sound utterly ridiculous to me: whether or not it's okay to laugh, and whether or not monks should be allowed to take a vow of poverty. One of these is the impetus behind seven deaths and the burning of the abbey. I will let you guess which one (hint: why am I so pissed about the ending?).

As it turns out, the first monk committed suicide, apparently because he read a book? I'm still not really clear on that one. There's a big reveal at the end, but I guess the readers are already supposed to know why Adelmo died, because it does not come up. Oh, and FYI, there be spoilers ahead, because I have to get this out of my system.

So, okay, Jorge is eeeevil, and he brings this book back from his hometown or wherever, which disagrees with his most deeply held beliefs about how EVERYONE MUST BE SERIOUS ALL THE TIME, but instead of getting rid of it, he puts poison on the pages so people reading it will lick their fingers and slowly die. WHAT A GREAT PLAN! Except it IS, because everyone licks their goddamn fingers. So then, I guess, uh, Berenger, who was the Assistant Librarian, and who is shtupping Adelmo, decides he wants to impress Adelmo, so he shows him the book, and then... Adelmo checks out, somehow. And then Venantius, who may or may not have been having sex with Adelmo too (by the time I got to the end, I forgot most of what happened in the beginning) finds out about this magic book, and reads it, licking his fingers all the while. Then Berengar finds Venantius, who has collapsed in the kitchen, and he drags the body over to the pigsties and dumps him in a cask of pig's blood. What in the name of all that is holy is going on here?! They explain this by saying that Berengar does this "thinking everyone will be convinced Venantius drowned."

NO, REALLY. Berengar dumps a monk headfirst into a cask of pig's blood, thinking everyone will just assume this guy drowned.

Because that happens all the time! I can't tell how many times I've gone out for a midnight snack of semi-congealed pig's blood and wound up almost drowning. Too many to count, that's for sure!

Moving on: Berengar reads the book in the infirmary, licking his way through it, and winds up actually dying in the baths. Severinus, the infirmary man, finds the book, and tells William, but then William indiscreetly blabs this to everyone within hearing, so Jorge gets Malachi (the head librarian) to kill Severinus, by telling Malachi that Berengar (who had also been having sex with Malachi, in addition to Adelmo) was sleeping with Severinus, making Malachi jealous, and getting him to steal the book back. Whatever, man, there is a lot of sex in this book, especially considering it takes place in an abbey. Then Malachi reads the fucking thing, licking his fingers like there is no tomorrow, and he dies. Then William finally tells the Abbott (conveniently named "Abo") what the hell is going on, and the Abbott, who knows about this book...uh, somehow... goes to confront Jorge and winds up suffocating in the tower after Jorge cuts him off. Then William and Adso confront Jorge and wind up managing to not only not save the Abbott, or the book, but also kill Jorge, and get the entire abbey burned to the ground. Whole thing.

I can only describe my feelings by comparing it to that scene, in the Jim Carrey movie Liar Liar, when he picks up the phone to give a burglar client some legal advice, and he screams, "Quit breaking the law, asshole!" I want to shake these guys and scream, "Quit licking your fingers, morons!" Even if the pages weren't coated in poison, that is a nasty habit, and continually moistening the pages will damage them. Although not, obviously, as much as setting the whole damned library on fire. Well played, William and Adso.

Meanwhile, the book which sets everyone off is a long lost copy of Aristotle's treatise on why it's okay to laugh. First of all, what the fuck? Second of all, why is Aristotle the end-all be-all of authority on comedy? Jorge acts like once everyone realizes Aristotle said it was okay, it would, like, destroy the church. Buddy, I have news for you: you can shit all over the peasants all you want for laughing, but that will not stop them from doing it. It's like the most futile battle in the world. Maybe it's meant to be ironic, but mostly I just felt annoyed that I read 600 pages to find out Jorge is the biggest idiot on the face of the planet.

Okay, maybe not the biggest: what is up with that "beautiful girl"? Let me explain: Salvatore, who is ugly, procures hot young ladies from the village to have sex with Remigio, who runs the larder, in exchange for food. Adso is running around the library late at night (by himself, no less, despite the fact that 1) the last time he was in the library he had a psychotic breakdown, 2) he has no idea how the library is laid out, and even with William "Sherlock" of Baskerville, they were wandering around in there for hours and 3) he has shit for brains) and runs into this girl and Salvatore and scares Salvatore off, and this girl is so wowed by Adso, and so grateful that she doesn't have to sleep with Remigio for food, that she promptly fucks Adso, then leaves her meat behind. Listen, if your family is so hungry that you are willing to sleep with an old nasty monk for some tripe, and circumstances conspire so that you are left with the food, and released of the obligation to whore yourself out, why would you then fuck someone else and leave empty-handed? It boggles the mind. Then, naturally, Adso moons about her for the rest of the book, going on and on about how much he is in love with her, and the ways that he could try to fall out of love with her (interestingly, I believe "get a grip on yourself" is mentioned, but not elected).

The other big plot point (if "plot" encompasses a lot of stuff that actually has nothing to do with moving the plot forward) is about the pope and the emperor and a bunch of monkish factions arguing about whether or not it's okay to take vows of poverty. I guess the pope is really against this idea, since it spreads the message that maybe monks shouldn't be sitting around in their fancy gold-covered abbeys counting all their money. They have clearly never heard of "live and let live". I found this to be the more tense argument about heresy, because I thought both sides had good points, but this is mostly grounded in historical events, and I have only the faintest idea of what historical events of the early 1300s were. There's a lot of infighting, and a lot of names, some whose significance is not explained for a good chunk of the book, so that the arguments were taking place without relevance to me, since until I found out who "Dolcino" was, arguing about him meant nothing to me.

So, picture all that going on, and then read this conversation between William and Adso, in which William is explicating his thought processes:

"[S]olving a mystery is not the same as deducing from first principles. Nor does it amount simply to collecting a number of particular data from which to infer a general law. It means, rather, facing one or two or three particular data apparently with nothing in common, and trying to imagine whether they could represent so many instances of a general law you don't yet know, and which perhaps has never been pronounced. To be sure, if you know, as the philosopher says, that man, the horse, and the mule are all without bile and are all long-lived, you can venture the principle that animals without bile live a long time. But take the case of animals with horns. Why do they have horns? Suddenly you realize that all animals with horns are without teeth in the upper jaw. This would be a fine discovery, if you did not also realize that, alas, there are animals without teeth in the upper jaw who, however, do not have horns: the camel, to name one. And finally you realize that all animals without teeth in the upper jaw have four stomachs. Well, then, you can suppose that one who cannot chew well must need four stomachs to digest food better. But what about the horns? You then try to imagine a material cause for horns--say, the lack of teeth provides the animal with an excess of osseous matter that must emerge somewhere else. But is that sufficient explanation? No, because the camel has no upper teeth, has four stomachs, but does not have horns. And you must also imagine a final cause. The osseous matter emerges in horns only in animals without other means of defense. But the camel has a very tough hide and doesn't need horns. So the law could be . . . "

"But what have horns to do with anything?" I asked impatiently. "And why are you concerned with animals having horns?"

"I have never concerned myself with them, but the Bishop of Lincoln was greatly interested in them, pursuing an idea of Aristotle. Honestly, I don't know whether his conclusions are the right ones, nor have I ever checked to see where the camel's teeth are or how many stomachs he has. I was trying to tell you that the search for explicative laws in natural facts proceeds in a tortuous fashion. []"

Tortuous is right. I like how William is going on and on about teeth and horns and stomachs, and in the end, he's all, I have no idea what conclusion is right! I just like long-winded examples! Dude, I know.

I will admit, there is a lot of description and symbology in the book that went right over my head. Maybe my experience would have been a richer, rewarding thing, if I had understood these symbols and signs. Then again, maybe not. It's not that I find people's actions inexplicable, merely stupid. I understand very well those who desire learning and knowledge, and those who desire censorship. There is a passage in the TNotR in which William talks about insatiable curiosity and intellectual pride, when he says, "The good of a book lies in its being read. . . This library was perhaps born to save the books it houses, but now it lives to bury them. This is why it has become a sink of iniquity."

TNotR is a thoughtful, exhaustive treatise on heresy, learning, knowledge, lust, politics, and monkhood. A good murder mystery....well, maybe not so much. Certainly a lot of people are very enthusiastic about it, but for me, well:

"I have many fine hypotheses, but there is no evident fact that allows me to say which is best. So, rather than appear foolish afterward, let me renounce seeming clever now. Let me think no more, until tomorrow at least."

Prince of Tides

Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy

Lila Wingo - the beautiful, proud matriarch. Abused by her husband, she is the sweet and steely woman with social aspirations so great she is willing to sell her kids down the river to achieve them.

Henry Wingo - the cruel partriarch. Shrimper, schemer and loser, he is a man who will beat his sons to teach them not to cry. Now, perhaps too late, he strives to make peace with his own family.

Luke - the older son, a Vietnam veteran, a strong man of burning convictions who races towards a shocking fate while trying to save an entire town.

Savannah - the famous, gifted, and troubled poet. The cadenced beauty of her art and the cries of her illness are clues to the secret she holds in her heart. She has locked away the too-long hidden story of her wounded family. Now, to avoid destruction, it must be fully revealed.

Tom - Savannah's twin brother, the narrator. He is an unemployed football coach and English teacher with a loving wife who loves someone else. With his troubled sister and a perceptive psychiatrist, he is forced to look backward to unravel a history of violence, abandonment, commitment and love - and to find an answer for them all....

Woooo, doggy. This one was a doozy. I hope y'all like your Southern Gothic with a whole lotta shrimp, melodrama, and TIGERS, because that's what's on the menu tonight, folks. Now, strictly speaking, I'm not sure TPOT is Southern Gothic, since I get all my information from Wikipedia, and Wikipedia doesn't list TPOT on their Southern Gothic list. However, Wikipedia does describe Southern Gothic as:

[A] subgenre of gothic fiction unique to American literature that takes place exclusively in the American South. It resembles its parent genre in that it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot. . . One of the most notable features of the Southern Gothic is "the grotesque" - this includes situations, places, or stock characters that often possess some cringe-inducing qualities, typically racial bigotry and egotistical self-righteousness - but enough good traits that readers find themselves interested nevertheless.

So let's see: set in the South? Check. Ironic or unusual events? Check check. The grotesque? Uh, yeah, check. The novel begins with events already piling up in quick succession: Tom, our narrator, learns in short order that his sister has been hospitalized for trying to commit suicide (again) and his wife is cheating on him, in part because of the emotional distance between them after his brother Luke's death and Tom's resultant nervous breakdown. Phew. Have you got all that? Good, because it doesn't slow down. The story is set up as Tom is relating his family history through flashbacks to his sister's psychiatrist, who is attempting to discover why Savannah is trying to die. The basic format is Tom, present day, telling the shrink of childhood events, which are related to us in episodic flashbacks. A great SECRET lies at the heart of the novel, but the flashbacks continue after that, up to the day of his brother Luke's death, which sets up the present day retelling.

TPOT is a rollicking good read. It's chock-a-block full of fine melodrama, aching sadness and depression, and long-buried secrets of the type you drive you insane. The pace doesn't let up - the foreshadowing in the first half of the book is enough to drive you to get to the big reveal, after which it's all downhill. And I mean that. The giant SECRET which is the apex of the novel is also oddly glossed over. If you read the flashbacks both before and after that, you would be hard pressed to say that anything had happened in between. The fallout, emotionally, is not discussed, in contrast to the fallout from Luke's death, which is what drives the New York scenes.

Conroy seems to think that the ending, with the final revelation of Luke's death, will be sufficient to explain the events of the present day (i.e., Savannah's wrist-cutting, Tom's breakdown, and the confession of all to Savannah's psychiatrist). Unfortunately, I didn't find that to be the case at all. If anything, I was left cold by Luke's demise, which is a feat, since I had been so fond of him in the flashbacks. Maybe it was the straw that broke the camel's back, but the close unbreakable bond between siblings in the flashbacks seemed to have cooled by the time Luke's one-man stand rolled around, leaving me to question just why Tom and Savannah both went so kablooey over it. That's maybe the biggest weakness of the book. The SECRET in the middle is completely unforgettable, and knits a tight bond between the family, while in comparison, Luke's one man vigilantism just seems to show how disparate and scattered the family has become. The siblings have gone on to separate lives, the mother has remarried (not a spoiler unless you are worse at picking up hints than I am). Maybe it's meant to be an illustration of how close the brothers and sister are no matter time or distance, but it just did not work for me.

In fact, the whole New York thing was complete filler for me. Part of my problem is that the people in the present day, and to some extent those flashbacks occurring towards the end of the narrative, all talk like cretins. Look, people don't talk like that in real life. I can't describe how crazy it made me to read exchanges like this between Tom and Susan, the psychiatrist:

"You make jokes about your sister's psychosis. What an odd man you are!"
"It's the southern way, Doctor."

and

"I must admit, Tom, that it irritates me every time you don your mantle of cultural yahoo intimidated by the big city. You're too smart a man to play that role very effectively."

"I'm sorry, Lowenstein," I said. "No one finds my role of New York debunker and cultural redneck more tiring than I do myself. I just wish it wasn't a cliche to hate New York, that it was a startling new doctrine originated by Tom Wingo."

I can't convey how ridiculous these exchanges sound to me (maybe they're perfectly normal and I'm the only one who found them to be as if aliens were trying to mimic actual human conversation) but let me attempt to describe it thusly: You know Life of Pi (just, bear with me)? And how in the end, people were arguing about whether or not the creatures in the boat were people or animals or just figments of Pi's imagination? It's like every character in Tom's adult life is a figment of his imagination, another aspect of him reflected in a mirror. That's why they all sound so similar. Similar and weird, because Tom is weird. And also because he's basically talking to himself.

Anyway.

The book is a glorious read, though, and Conroy has an artist's touch with the English language. And a very liberal hand with metaphor and simile. The flashbacks are ripe with description, overflowing with images:

[The undertaker] was tall and thin and had a complexion like goat cheese left on the table too long. The funeral parlor smelled like dead flowers and unanswered prayers. When he wished us a good day, his voice was reptilian and unctuous and you knew he was only truly comfortable in the presence of the dead. He looked as if he had died two or three times himself in order to better appreciate the subtleties of his vocation.

How great is that?! So it baffles me that when they made the movie, they focused more on the present New York stuff than the flashback scenes (or so I've heard through the imdb grapevine), because the flashbacks are what make this book, man. They are awesome. Every chapter has new tragedies, each presents a new evil set against the family. Every event brings us closer to doooooooooom. Or, okay, maybe not, but it sure feels like it! TPOT builds wonderfully to its violent climax, like a train wreck you can see in the making.

TPOT has too many faults to be a great piece of literature, but it's definitely worth reading, and you will probably never forget it as long as you live. The lyrical tone of the writing balances nicely the grim events of the Wingo family. Although a more ridiculous final line, I have never read. I am not even going to spoil it, no matter how much I want to, and no matter that even if I did spoil it, it wouldn't matter because it doesn't make any more sense out of context than in! (okay, maybe a little more sense, but not much).

P.S. Poll time! Greatest improbability in the The Prince of Tides: the events of the SECRET, or the fact that Savannah got her version published as a children's book?

I mean, really.

At Home

At Home, by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as found in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to "write a history of the world without leaving home." The bathroom provides the occasion for the history of hygiene, the bedroom for an account of sex, death, and sleep, the kitchen for a discussion of nutrition and the spice trade, and so on, showing how each has figured in the evolution of private life. From architecture to electricity, from food preservation to epidemics, from the telephone to the Eiffel Tower, from crinolines to toilets - and the brilliant, creative, and often eccentric talents behind them - Bryson demonstrates that whatever happens in the world ends up in our houses, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.

This is a no-brainer. Either you like Bill Bryson, and you like At Home, or you hate Bill Bryson, and you hate At Home. Or you feel tepid about both, whatever. All your myriad complicated feelings about Bryson's other work will hold equally true here, there is no great departure of style or character from his usual. Lucky for me, I happen to like his style and character.

Bryson takes on a bit more to chew this time around - more or less European and American history from maybe the 17th to the 19th century, with a bit of older events tossed in. It's an interesting read, for sure. Bryson covers just about every topic at least once (there's a handy index in the back which runs from actuarial tables to Yellow Fever - although come to think of it, those two topics may have something in common) skipping around in each chapter to discuss things not dreamed of when presented with the heading "The Study". For example: bats. Or using the Nursery as an opportunity to talk about workhouses.

For all it's compelling and fascinating, Bryson does like to go off on tangents, and often will mention a person in passing, only to reintroduce them fifty pages later, on a side tangent for a completely different topic. It can get a little frustrating at times, the sheer amount of information which Bryson pours out makes it well nigh impossible to retain individual names and events, especially when one (me) reads the books in chaptered segments instead of in one glorious swoop. Because the information is ordered -loosely- by room, instead of chronologically, it can get hard to figure out just what happened when. Did people have telephones and lawnmowers at the same time, or were they mowing and creating landscapes before they could call their neighbors to tell them about it? Was Coade stone popular when Thomas Jefferson began his never-ending quest to build Monticello, and did he use it in his plans? Did Darwin leave with gas lights and come back to kerosene, or vice versa or was it completely different? It's all in there, but it's so mixed up in stoves and wells and Phylloxera and smog and iron and locusts and the tendency of the British peerage to marry American heiresses that I did not, let's be honest, retain much of anything at all.

But for all it's faults, it's still a very entertaining read, and no matter how long the index is, or how many important-sounding names it contains, I would call At Home light reading. Bryson is a master at the art of the anecdote, the light quip. Every page has a bit to smile at:

While showing off his [$519,750 bottle of Chateau Margaux wine] at a New York restaurant in 1989, William Sokolin, a wine merchant, accidentally knocked the bottle against the side of a serving cart and it broke, in an instant converting the world's most expensive bottle of wine into the world's most expensive carpet stain. The restaurant manager dipped a finger in the wine and declared that it was no longer drinkable anyway. [The Garden - p.279]


At one point, a single manufacturer offered no fewer than 146 types of flatware for the table. Curiously, among the few survivors from this culinary onslaught is one that is most difficult to understand: the fish knife. Though it remains the standard instrument for dealing with fish of all kinds, no one has ever identified a single advantage conferred by its odd scalloped shape or worked out the original thinking behind it. There isn't a single kind of fish that that it cuts better or bones more delicately than a conventional knife does. [The Dining Room - p.187]

During [Benjamin Franklin's] years in London, he developed the custom of taking "air baths," basking naked in front of an open upstairs window. This can't have got him any cleaner, but it seems to have done him no harm and it must at least have given the neighbors something to talk about. [The Bathroom - p.350]

Oliver Goldsmith lamented the practice [of razing villages for a better view] in a long, sentimental poem, "The Deserted Village," inspired by a visit to Nuneham Park in Oxfordshire when the first Earl Harcourt was in the process of erasing an ancient village to create a more picturesque space for his new house. Here at least fate exacted an interesting revenge. After completing the work, the earl went for a stroll around his newly reconfigured grounds, but failed to recall where the old village well had been, fell into it, and drowned. [The Garden - p.259]

It's all very amusing - I just wish I could remember it better.

My Prizes: An Accounting

Meine Preise [My Prizes], by Thomas Bernhard

A gathering of brilliant and viciously funny recollections from one of the twentieth century’s most famous literary enfants terribles.

Written in 1980 but published here for the first time, these texts tell the story of the various farces that developed around the literary prizes Thomas Bernhard received in his lifetime. Whether it was the Bremen Literature Prize, the Grillparzer Prize, or the Austrian State Prize, his participation in the acceptance ceremony—always less than gracious, it must be said—resulted in scandal (only at the awarding of the prize from Austria’s Federal Chamber of Commerce did Bernhard feel at home: he received that one, he said, in recognition of the great example he set for shopkeeping apprentices). And the remuneration connected with the prizes presented him with opportunities for adventure—of the new-house and luxury-car variety.

Here is a portrait of the writer as a prizewinner: laconic, sardonic, and shaking his head with biting amusement at the world and at himself. A revelatory work of dazzling comedy, the pinnacle of Bernhardian art.

If I could, I would write a love ode to this short collection. It is a series of personal remembrances of prizes which Thomas Bernhard collected over the years for his plays and novels. Prizes which, he reminds us again and again, he would be loathe to accept were it not for the prize money attached. Nevertheless, I can only be thankful he did deign to attend, because without it, I would not have been able to read the marvelous My Prizes.

Bernhard is acerbic, rude, and sarcastic, but also endearingly susceptible to supposed insults about his commitment to Austria, his adopted homeland, with which he has a complicated love-hate relationship. During his acceptance of the Austrian State Prize for Literature (which he prefaces by relating his extreme embarrassment to have won, given that it is only the Small State Prize, which is usually given out to young new up-and-comers, not older established writers, and that he only "came to terms with the prize" because of the twenty-five thousand schillings attached to it) the minister, perhaps unwisely, upsets him by calling him a foreigner born in Holland, though living amongst the Austrians for some time. However factually accurate it may have been, the provocation it offers Bernhard is amply repaid as he gives what has to be one of the rudest acceptance speeches in history. Bernhard describes it thusly:

[T]he theme was a philosophical one, profound even, I felt, and I had uttered the word State several times. I thought, it's a very calm text, one I can use here to get myself up out of the dirt without causing a ruckus because almost no one will understand it, all about death and its conquering power and the absurdity of all things human, about man's incapacity and man's mortality and the nullity of all states.

At this point in My Prizes, the reader knows to take Bernhard's description of his actions as calm and reasonable with a grain of salt. Luckily and hilariously, the actual speech given is reprinted in the back of the book. To be sure, Bernhard's speech does mention the State a couple of times, and it does talk about death and man's incapacity and the nullity of government. It also says:

Our era is feebleminded, the demonic in us a perpetual national prison in which the elements of stupidity and thoughtlessness have become a daily need
....

We're Austrian, we're apathetic, our lives evince the basest disinterest in life, in the workings of nature we represent the future as megalomania.

We have nothing to report except that we are pitiful, brought down by all the imaginative powers of an amalgam of philosophical, economic, and machine-driven monotony.

Before ending with:

In my name and in the name of those here who have also been selected by this jury, I thank you.

If only the state minister had stuck around to hear that last part! Graciousness itself, amirite? After causing a near-riot and clearing the auditorium, Bernhard is completely satisfied, as it means the next prize committee thinks twice about hosting a ceremony and instead just asks him to pick up the check at his convenience, which is probably best for all the parties concerned.

Bernhard writes with panache, and often the prizes and ceremonies are merely an aside to whatever more random topic Bernhard wants to discuss - buying and returning a suit:

Whoever buys the suit I have just returned, I thought, has no idea that it's been with me at the awarding of the Grillparzer Prize of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna. It was an absurd thought, and at this absurd thought I took heart. I spent a most enjoyable day with my aunt and we kept laughing over the people at Sir Anthony, who had let me exchange my suit without objections, even though I had worn it to the awarding of the Grillparzer Prize in the Academy of Sciences. That they were so obliging is something about the people in Sir Anthony in the Kohlmarkt that I shall never forget.

getting a luxury car (which he insists on buying right now, from the showroom, even though he has no idea how to drive it out of the store), his time staying in the Lung Disease Hospital attached to the Steinhof Insane Asylum (which "had seven rooms of either two or three patients, all of which patients died during the time I was there, with the exception of a theology student and me. I have to mention this because it is quite simply essential for what follows." N.B.: It isn't.), or getting ambushed by an acquaintance who will not. stop. talking ("Whenever I'm reminded of Saiko, who, as I mentioned, was the author of The Man in the Reeds, the first thing I think of is his lecture about never buying shoes before four in the afternoon and I have retained something of that lecture even today, and his four-hour lecture on what a novel is comes in second.").

My Prizes is vastly entertaining, and it's written with a sly knowledge of the author's own ridiculous behavior. Bernhard is fully realized within the pages, and he displays his foibles and eccentricities with sublime indifference of your good opinion. The reader is quickly charmed by his sardonic outlook on life and the vast machine that is prize- giving.

Bernhard is a character, and I wish only that he had been more recognized during life, that we might have more accounts of his unparalleled talent for accepting prizes.

Sunshine

Sunshine, by Robin McKinley

Rae Seddon, nicknamed Sunshine, lives a quiet life working at her stepfather's bakery. One night, she goes out to the lake for some peace and quiet. Big mistake. She is set upon by vampires, who take her to an old mansion. They chain her to the wall and leave her with another vampire, who is also chained. But the vampire, Constantine, doesn't try to eat her. Instead, he implores her to tell him stories to keep them both sane. Realizing she will have to save herself, Sunshine calls on the long-forgotten powers her grandmother began to cultivate in her when she was a child. She transforms her pocketknife into a key and unchains herself--and Constantine. Surprised, he agrees to flee with her when she offers to protect him from the sun with magic. They escape back to town, but Constantine knows his enemies won't be far behind, which means that he and Sunshine will have to face them together.

I really wanted to like this book. I've read it at least three times. Robin McKinley is just one of those writers that are just not very accessible to me. But Sunshine is even harder for me than her other books for a couple of reasons.

One: the info-dumping. Oh, god, the info-dumping. Sunshine is narrated by the titular character, a young twenty-something who is the baker in a Cheers-type bakery/cafe. And while the narration might be a good idea in some cases, as it involves us in her world quickly, sometimes it just. . . stinks. Often in the middle of conversations, Sunshine will begin thinking along a tangent, about the new realities of the post-magic world, or about demon/sorcerer mixes, or about comics she's read about vampires. It's annoying - Sunshine piles on information, without context or relevance. And it happens constantly. I will be halfway through an interrogation and someone will ask Sunshine a question and then five pages about Sunshine's regulars at the bakery will intrude before we get back to the answer. It's a lot of repetition and it drags the story down. And even with all that, there's still huge gaps in my knowledge about the world. What caused the magical wars? How did all this demon blood get mixed into the population in the first place (since even small manifestations of it are so obvious, wouldn't a full-blood demon be infinitely so?), how come everyone in the book has some heretofore unsuspected magical past? Has Sunshine really never asked her boyfriend about his unique and complicated magic tattoos, even after four years of being together?

Additionally, the mental gymnastics never seem to tend to anything. In a series, I could almost forgive the constant, seemingly irrelevant musings. But this is a stand-alone, and there is no pay-off for most of the internal questions.

For example, Sunshine spends pages and pages thinking about the possibility that she is one of the unfortunate demon blood/sorcerer crosses. We find out that 90% are criminally insane, that it manifests at puberty often, but not always, that if she is, she could go bad, etc. etc. ad nauseum, but we never find out if she actually is or not. We know that there is a demon blood test, but Sunshine never even wonders about taking it. She thinks for pages about whether the demon blood came from her mother's side, but spends maybe one sentence wondering just what kind of demon. So it's hard to care about that eternal question, "Is she or isn't she?" because Sunshine herself seems so detached about it. There's no tension there.

Two: for a magic-handler whose element is sunshine, Sunshine sure is morose.

Honestly, the biggest problem with the book is the main character. That sounds like the kiss of death, but it's not, oddly enough. Here, the world that Robin McKinley is interesting enough to suck you in, at least for a while. Plus, Sunshine's weaknesses as narrator and key character are really only terrible when she's thinking. When she simply acts or talks, she's instantly more likable and bearable, and even cool. The introspection - and there is a lot of introspection - is the weakest part of the book. If McKinley had tightened it up a lot - cut some, combined some - then even that could have been an asset, rather than a debit.

Sunshine is not wrapped up very tightly in the end. A lot of things are still open when the final page is turned. Which is to say: if Sunshine had been the first in a series, or even the first of a collection of books set in this world, I would be a lot more cool with it (assuming, of course, that the info-dump-style narration ceases with the next books). But it's meant to stand alone, and the jumble of information dispensed throughout remains just that: a jumble. This type of narrator (morose, detached) is a bad choice for a first-person story.

Doomsday Book

Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

For Kivrin, preparing for on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of he fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be retrieved. But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin - barely of age herself - finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.

I just want to start off by saying that writing this up, I accidentally wrote "Boomsday Book" instead, which I wish was a real book, filled with people saying things like, "This! Is my boomstick!" and generally being a lot more lighthearted than Doomsday Book. Not that I didn't enjoy Doomsday Book. Just that it was not lighthearted. And didn't contain popular characters from the Evil Dead movies. Well, nobody's perfect.

The book's title is a play on words, from the ancient English survey record spelled "Domesday Book", but which was at the time it was written (1086 a.d.), in my abbreviated understanding, pronounced "doomsday". The book is the first in what became Willis' most well-known world: sometime in the twenty-first century, historians use time travel to do research in the location and time of the actual events, which is pretty much the awesomest idea ever. Here, Kivrin gets sent off to the 1300s, a century which an incompetent adminstrator has only just deemed safe enough to explore. A series of extremely unlikely events combine to prevent Kivrin and the people waiting anxiously for her return (namely her advisor and father-figure of sorts Dunworthy) from being reunited.

I like this book, I really do. But it is a loooong book. Too long. Often, I found myself skipping descriptions and minor character chatter because it was repetitive and senseless. Which is Willis' point (and trademark), to some extent: people are idiots, and always looking for someone else to blame. But Doomsday could easily have been cut by a hundred pages. Things go pretty quickly in the beginning, and at light-speed in the end (especially when Dunworthy winds up unconscious for more than a week and a somewhat major character gets sick and dies off-screen. What, what!) but the middle drags. In fact, just about all of book two (which in my version is 259 pages out of the book's 578 total, a whopping 45%) drags. There's a lot of hand-wringing in the twenty-first century, and, as others have pointed out, the reveal at the end of book two is something we all see coming a mile away, or 259 pages ago.

Willis tends to write screwball comedies, which she does well, but it's very much out of place here. The tone of the book is really not appropriate for it, since you're following along on the whimsical plot of the rationed toilet paper and then --BAM! People start dying left and right. Whiplash much? She only uses it for the twenty-first century parts, which is a relief, since I doubt very much that the fourteenth century resembled a screwball comedy, especially when people began dying of *Spoiler!* the black plaaaaaaaaague! Or here, the "blue sickness," as they call it poetically. Yeeeeeeah, you're still gonna vomit up blood and grow buboes with that. (NB: Buboes! Best word ever, y/y? But a word to the wise, do not, repeat, do not google image it)

Once you get past all the highly improbably coincidences (a terrible strain of influenza was released from a seven hundred year old tomb, that managed to infect Kivrin and the tech putting in her coordinates, for starters) the historical part is pretty interesting. No doubt it is completely made up out of whole cloth, since the records for this period are slim pickin's, but Doomsday's a fascinating take on how we interpret and create a story for the past, which can bear little or no resemblance to the real thing. Or, to put it another way, it is Motel of the Mysteries, but for the Middle Ages, rather than the 1980s.

Although I skimmed the modern (or, okay, "futuristic", even though it sounds about as futuristic as 1994) parts, I did enjoy the historical parts. The story of the family Kivrin falls in with is interesting, although I was a bit frustrated with her sometimes completely thoughtless actions, given that she was supposed to be able to blend in with the "contemps". Especially when everyone in the twenty-first century seemed to assume that not blending in would lead to a swift burning at the stake. Well if you believed that, Kivrin, why did you try and chat up Gawyn by his lonesome, you hussy? In fact, no one in the Middle Ages even approaches the suggestion of burning Kivrin at the stake, which is almost a let down, especially after she does a whole bunch of incredibly suspicious, time-period unfriendly things whilst trying to get information about the rendezvous point out of her host family.

As I said earlier, book three goes lightening fast, both as the plague gathers momentum in the village, and as Dunworthy and crew finally realize that Kivrin is stuck in 1348 and they scramble for a way to get her out. The ending is super bittersweet, which is why I don't enjoy this as much as some of Willis' other works, but also uplifting in some ways, as the priest of the village gives to the utmost, even as he puts himself at risk for catching the disease. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Kivrin does get rescued in the end (Willis is not that dark, y'all), but can anyone say PTSD? I mean, she pretty much got to watch as everyone she had bonded with died horribly of a disease that Kivrin knew all about but couldn't cure, and that she herself was immune to. And then she got to bury all of them. I don't know about you, but gosh darn if that wouldn't put me off of time travel for a good long while. Also, talk about unsafe working conditions. I'm sure OSHA wouldn't approve.

Jellicoe Road

Jellicoe Road, by Melina Marchetta

Abandoned by her mother on Jellicoe Road when she was eleven, Taylor Markham, now seventeen, is finally being confronted with her past. But as the reluctant leader of her boarding school dorm, there isn't a lot of time for introspection. And while Hannah, the closest adult Taylor has to family, has disappeared, Jonah Griggs is back in town, moody stares and all.

Nothing is as it seems and every clue leads to more questions as Taylor tries to work out the connection between her mother dumping her, Hannah finding her then and her sudden departure now, a mysterious stranger who once whispered something in her ear, a boy in her dreams, five kids who lived on Jellicoe Road eighteen years ago, and the maddening and magnetic Jonah Griggs, who knows her better than she thinks he does. If Taylor can put together the pieces of her past, she might just be able to change her future.

Jellicoe Road is really two stories in one: the events of twenty-two years ago (it says eighteen in the description because the people in the "B" plotline age about four years throughout the novel) and how they affected five friends, and the senior year of Taylor Markham, who has a new position of power in the Territory Wars at her boarding school. The stories intertwine (through a manuscript that Taylor has read) and eventually intersect in ways that would seem pat in the hands of a lesser author. Marchetta does wonderful things with all the characters, even secondary and tertiary ones. Even characters that never appear on the scene, and are only mentioned by other characters, are imbued with personality, like Jonah's mother and brother.

This is one of the most fantastic books I've read. It starts out slow, as Marchetta sets out the threads of all the story lines, but as you get further into the two time lines, you begin to match up events and people, so that by the end of the book, you immediately want to re-read it, just so you can lengthen that "Aha!" moment. I freely admit that I was sobbing straight through the last third of the book the first time I read it, and the whole way through the second time.

It's a complex book, in that you really are sort of given a lot of pieces which don't fit together, until later events in the book put them into order and context. Sort of like Pulp Fiction, only about teenagers instead of gangsters. Marchetta is a master at spooling out details, things that seem insignificant until they suddenly become very important. She does this in such a way that although you may not take very much notice of this or that small detail, when the revelations come, you remember what came before very clearly - so that the process of piecing these stories together isn't a strain on your memory or patience. Which is all the more impressive because I have a terrible memory, so managing to make seemingly irrelevant details memorable is quite a feat.

Marchetta has always been one of my favorite authors in terms of what she understands about teenage girls, and she manages to get humor, sorrow, love, action, romance, and mystery all packed in, without being melodramatic or overbearing. Or well, it is melodramatic, but only in that teen angst, my-whole-world-is-splitting-apart-and-no-one-even-realizes-it kind of way. In Marchetta's hands, the unabashed rawness of the emotion is both thrilling and terrifying.

I am kind of a sucker for this type of book (if it is a "type" and not just some one-off description) where people love each other so much, but it's still not enough to keep out sorrow and pain, and the characters just have to find a way to manage the pain and find the joy in life. Actually, that's what most of Marchetta's books are about - the equivalent of her characters all ending the books singing, "I get by with a little help from my friends". And there's no need to sneer, finding out you're not alone can be the best feeling in the world.


How do I feel by the end of the day
(Are you sad because you're on your own)
No, I get by with a little help from my friends.
Do you need anybody?
I need somebody to love.
Could it be anybody?
I want somebody to love.

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends.
Mmm, gonna try with a little help from my friends.

The Trouble with Jenny's Ear

The Trouble with Jenny's Ear, by Oliver Butterworth

Suddenly Jenny can hear what people are thinking. Her enterprising brothers immediately think of ways to take advantage of this unusual talent but Je...more Suddenly Jenny can hear what people are thinking. Her enterprising and electronically-inclined brothers immediately think of ways to take advantage of this unusual talent but Jenny is less comfortable with her new knowledge. The adventure culminates in a plot by the children to get Jenny on game shows and win enough money to buy land that is otherwise destined for the developer's table, but all their efforts may not be enough as everything spirals out of control.

This one is a childhood, well, not fave, exactly, but a comfortable reminder of my youth. Also, when I first read it, it didn't seem so out of date as it does now. It's almost quaint, in its depictions of a model New England town, wherein young boys are excited as anything to get a pile of cast off electronics so they can make radios and invent closed-circuit television. Nowadays, of course, it's a lot easier to set up camera and recording systems. That is, everyone (including me) can do it, because cameras do it automatically. All the discussion of the magic of intercom systems (and the accompanying explanations to bewildered parents and teachers) and the ringing of phones underline my point: the crucial action which takes place at the end of the book and enables Jenny at al. to keep their beautiful lake and forest (nb: that was not a spoiler. I mean, come on, what kinds of kid's books do you read that you think they won't get to save the land from suburban stasis?) could have easily been averted by an operational cell phone.

It's a sweet, nostalgic book, in which the government wants only to protect children who have magnificent mind-reading abilities, and the president just bemoans the loss of his buttons in the morning, where men and women fall in love and get engaged after a week, and parents let their children cook up cock-eyed schemes to defraud people with a "It probably wouldn't do any harm to try. . . "

There isn't any character development to speak of, as the action drives the plot. The trouble with Jenny's ear doesn't even enter the story for a good fifth of the way into the book, and we spend our time watching her brothers wreck all kinds of havoc with their gadgets before they get around to Jenny's ear. It's a slow, easy-going pace, even if (as a repeat reader) I wanted to hurry up and get to the meat of the story.

Jenny remains sweet and wholesome throughout, and perhaps gains a little backbone by the end. She plays the role of the wise old person, dispensing wisdom and serenity with both hands, despite being only five years old. It's all a light bit of fluff, a "cute little trick" of a book that manages to get its protagonists through crisis after crisis without demonizing anyone. There are no villains, only gently misunderstood people, and everything ties up in a neat little bow in the end. All in all, a harmless bit of fluff.

Connie Willis, "All My Darling Daughters"

Connie Willis, "All My Darling Daughters"

I was reminded of this short story today, and since it left such an indelible scar on me, I figured maybe I should talk it out as some sort of PTSD therapy effort. I have read the story twice, once when I checked Fire Watch out of the library in undergrad, and then again years later when I found it in The Winds of Marble Arch, just to see if I remembered it accurately. The second go-round was actually less traumatic, mostly because I knew what was coming. The slow dawning of horrified realization from my first reading was, thankfully, a unique experience.

I didn't think it was an easy story to get into - it's set in a boarding school type place, in the future, and Willis does the old Clockwork Orange slang thing, although not to such an extent (or else the story would be completely incomprehensible). There is some explanation for the situation, although since it's told from one girl's point of view, the reader is not given a tutorial on the inner workings of this society. That factor helps set the tone for sure, and the only real problem from doing it this way was that when things finally click for the reader (at least in my case), you're not sure for awhile if you're interpreting words and actions correctly in this fictionalized world, or if you're mistaken about what these things mean (and if you are like me, you're thinking, "please, let me be mistaken."). This somewhat lessened the impact of the reveal for me, thank goodness.

I don't want to spoil this story, so this discussion will have to remain disappointing vague, for anyone who has both a morbid sense of curiosity to know what happens and a desire to protect their own fragile psychosis by not reading it themselves. The story does make you think about power and desire, and the way in which people can look at someone and see only an object, something that is less than the sum of their parts. I'm glad Willis wrote it, and I'm glad I read it, even though I feel like I lost some of my innocence. I have no doubt that there are people who see the world and behave the way that the villains of the story do, and it's heartbreaking to think of the people they destroy by so doing.



Also, it helps to know I have company. Here are some other reviews of the story:

In describing an aspect of the story, tvTropes says: "[It is] the least horrifying thing, out of the many horrifying things about ["All My Darling Daughters"].

"Features an Excellent Vocabulary of Expletives Worthy of College Students of the Future"
"Manages to Both Titillate and Terrify"
"Creepy"
"One of the Most Disturbing Things I've Ever Read"
"Not to My Liking"
-All from GoodReads

"Frack This Creepy Father Pet Stuff"
-Blue Tyson

"So Incredibly Horrible to Read" and "I'm Not Sure I've Ever Been So Shaken by Anything Else I've Ever Read"
-Marchenland

And then, most poetically and succinctly:

"Ouch"
-Susan Stepney