Twenty-six year old crime novelist Nora receives an unexpected e-vite from her old high school friend, Clare – she’s getting married and Nora’s inviteTwenty-six year old crime novelist Nora receives an unexpected e-vite from her old high school friend, Clare – she’s getting married and Nora’s invited to the hen night! Nora’s wary though as she hasn’t seen Clare in ten years and they parted ways bitterly – why reach out to her now? She agrees to go and, along with the five other guests, heads to the maid of honour’s aunt’s house in the wintry Northern England countryside for the party. Except foul play is afoot and someone won’t be leaving the house alive…
Ruth Ware’s debut novel is a thriller worthy of its name! She snares the reader instantly by introducing Nora seriously injured in a hospital’s intensive care unit and then flashes back to days before as the hen night begins – wha’ happen in between?? The jumping from present to the recent past is very effective in slowly revealing to the reader what’s going on as well as moving both the narrative forward while keeping the tension up.
In a Dark, Dark Wood reminded me of Agatha Christie’s novel And Then There Were None… (it's also referenced in the book too) which has a similar setup of an isolated house full of strangers with a murderer among them. The “country house murder mystery” trope is also one of Christie’s staples. That’s all to the good by the way as I loved And Then There Were None… and a modern day version of it is very welcome, though it’s just one murder victim here rather than several.
I’m of the Elmore Leonard school of writing where adverbs should never be used to modify the verb “said” (he mentioned hilariously solemnly) but Ware isn’t and throws in an adverb after almost every “said” which bothered me a bit. Otherwise her writing is very good, especially her characterisation – everyone in the story is distinctive and sharply realised.
The last third of the book is a little slower than the first two thirds but it’s still an exciting story to see play out and I barrelled through this. I couldn’t tell who the killer was and the unpredictability is kept up remarkably strongly towards the end. When we find out though, the reveal is a bit underwhelming and the motivation kinda stupid. It’s not an amazing finale but it’s a great ride getting there.
Ruth Ware’s In a Dark, Dark Wood is a really enjoyable murder mystery recommended to all fans of this genre, especially fans of Agatha Christie’s books....more
This isn’t the setup for a joke: what do you call someone who just gives handjobs – not a prostitute, who does everything else, right? Sex worker? So This isn’t the setup for a joke: what do you call someone who just gives handjobs – not a prostitute, who does everything else, right? Sex worker? So anyway our nameless narrator is a handywoman who, after giving thousands of handies, now has carpal tunnel syndrome and is thinking of a career move to something that requires less repetitive motion… Luckily (handily?) her place of work also doubles as a psychic reading shop and she decides to begin her career as a fraud, I mean charlatan, I mean psychic!
There she meets Susan, a distraught mother of two at her wits’ end who believes her Victorian house is haunted – the walls are bleeding! - and that her 15 year old stepson Miles is possessed of a malevolent spirit: Handywoman to the rescue! She doesn’t believe in ghosts, exorcisms, etc. but knows that she’ll make decent scratch pretending to “cleanse” the house. And then she meets mega-creepy Miles and everything changes – maybe true evil does exist?
Gillian Flynn’s The Grownup is a short story that originally appeared in George R. R. Martin’s Rogues anthology last year and consequently won an Edgar Award for its refreshing and inspired take on the classic haunted house tale. It’s being published by itself in just a few days (not in time for Halloween for some strange reason) and it’s also really good and genuinely scary!
The first part with the narrator talking about handjobs felt very weird and unusual until you get to the final few pages and realise it’s key to how everything plays out. The misdirection is indicative of the story as a whole – that summary I gave above is not at all how things turn out to be and it’s a good too as what it actually is is even creepier than something generic.
The one thing that bothered me was that our narrator works in a shop that gives handies to male clients AND psychic readings to female clients – do such places really exist? Because it feels like a creation made purely for this short story to work. It definitely feels contrived because without it the whole tale collapses. Maybe places like this do exist and I’m just not very worldly?
Otherwise: bravo, Gillian Flynn! The Grownup takes numerous horror genre tropes and spins them into something absolutely brilliant and new. I read it straight through (at night by lamplight, of course!) becoming increasingly beguiled with and drawn into the narrative and loved how Flynn played with our expectations of the characters. You can’t predict where it’s all headed as Flynn deploys her famous story twists that made Gone Girl such a success. If you’re one of those readers who doesn’t like open-endings, you might be peeved at The Grownup’s resolution, but I loved how Flynn left the interpretation up to the reader – what is Miles really and was he telling the truth or not? Has the narrator sealed her fate? What’s real and what’s not? So clever.
If you can get your hands on a copy of George R. R. Martin’s Rogues, it’s definitely worth seeking out just to read this short story on Halloween – it is perfect for the season! Otherwise, check it out next week when it’s published. It’s easily one of the best, most original horror stories I’ve read in years! ...more
Felicia Day is an internet personality who made her name a few years ago writing/producing/starring in a Youtube show called The Guild, a comedy aboutFelicia Day is an internet personality who made her name a few years ago writing/producing/starring in a Youtube show called The Guild, a comedy about nerds obsessed with a World of Warcraft-type game. She’s appeared in several mainstream shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Eureka and Supernatural in supporting roles but it’s her online video channel, Geek and Sundry, for which she’s best known.
Her first book, You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost), is a memoir of her short life centred around her lifelong love of computer gaming which has led her to find enormous success online, carving out a place on the internet that’s distinctly hers.
The memoir covers the usual bases: childhood, where she was homeschooled and which led to her spending time reading tons of books, writing and living in her head - all to the good of where she was heading. She talks about her awkward first kiss and going to college early, studying maths and violin, and graduating with a double award in both (though weirdly she doesn't have a high school diploma!). From there she went to Hollywood to pursue an acting career and spent most of her 20s starring in commercials and picking up the occasional small role.
But the book is mostly framed around gaming and the internet which ended up becoming her career (like most people she did nothing with her degree!). She discovered role-playing text adventure games at a young age and in her teens played Ultima Online on ye olde dial-up (remember the sounds your PC made when connecting to the internet, older people? And you couldn’t use your phone while you were online, you were charged by the hour, and if you picked up the phone while online you’d lose the connection - thank god we’re past all that!).
From there she was introduced to World of Warcraft by her brother Ryon (with whom she has an online show, Co-Optitude, where they play games, often retro, often badly, for yuks) and became heavily addicted to it. But her addiction led to The Guild, and there are worse addictions anyway, so it was worth it!
She talks about her Youtube channel, Geek and Sundry, which celebrates her love of gaming and other nerdy pastimes, as well as the pressures of producing content for it. She closes with last year’s Gamergate, where she was one of the targets, being labelled a fake gamer - apparently you can’t be a beautiful woman and a real gamer at the same time!
Some readers may be disappointed with the lack of detail in some areas of her career, notably her TV work. If you didn’t know better, you’d think she went from commercials to The Guild and that was it. She doesn’t tell stories about her TV appearances or working with Joss Whedon (who does however write the intro to this book). She also keeps a lot of her personal life with other people out of the book (I think she dated Nathan Fillion at one point but I’m not sure - it’s not mentioned anyway), though her reticence is understandable given her experience with Gamergate.
I don’t mind that she left out that stuff but I would’ve liked to know more about how she set up Geek and Sundry, the details of which are glossed over. The impression you get from the book is that the timeline basically goes from Felicia and co. producing The Guild to suddenly having this channel and infrastructure set up which is a bit abrupt. Her experiences with writing The Guild and her breakdown over the pressure of constant content production for Youtube though were very real and fascinating to read about.
The book is very accessible and easy to read - Day is a natural writer and her style is very informal, chatty and breezy, filled with photoshopped pics and screenshots of tweets. Reading it, you can easily hear her voice in the words and that’s the mark of a good writer. The pages fly by.
I don’t think it’s a book that has much crossover appeal though. I don't see total strangers picking this one up - it’s very much for her fans who already like her and what she does. Then again you could say that about most memoirs/celebrity autobiographies. Anyone unfamiliar with her might not find her story as interesting as it’s not that remarkable generally, but I think Felicia’s awesome so I enjoyed the hell out of it!
You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) is a fun and inspiring story about how the internet has made possible a career for Felicia Day out of her interests, as well as making the point that the internet has given everyone the opportunity to do the same with enough hard work and talent. It’s also part of the broader narrative about how (and I hate the “g” word but I’ll use it anyway) geekdom has gone from the mocked fringes of culture to becoming the mainstream. Felicia’s corner of the internet is a part of that growing mainstream and it’s a delight, much like she is. If you like Felicia Day and her work, you’ll love this book....more
"YOU'RE AN ARROGANT CONDESCENDING BASTARD!" "I RESENT YOU FOR HOLDING THE PHONE!"
Jon Ronson is in a Shame Eradication Workshop in Chicago being screame"YOU'RE AN ARROGANT CONDESCENDING BASTARD!" "I RESENT YOU FOR HOLDING THE PHONE!"
Jon Ronson is in a Shame Eradication Workshop in Chicago being screamed at by people who are letting out their inner monologues, uncensored. A couple of them have just admitted they enjoy having sex with their cats.
It’s part of Ronson’s exploration of modern public shaming, a lot of which focuses on social media sites like Twitter. A PR Exec called Justine Sacco tweeted “Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!" – a bad joke but obviously intended satirically – that blew up, caught the attention of millions, and got her fired. Lindsey Stone, a care worker, took a photo of her flipping off a “Silence and Respect” sign in a veterans’ graveyard in Washington DC (the setup is part of an in-joke with her friends), and consequently became a hate figure online, as well as losing her job.
Bestselling author and New Yorker columnist, Jonah Lehrer, lost his job, his book contract, his agent, a number of speaking gigs and his credibility when it turned out he’d fabricated Bob Dylan quotes used in his last book, Imagine: How Creativity Works. Dylan actually said: "God, I'm glad I'm not me," but Lehrer changed it to: "God, I'm glad I'm not me. I'm glad I'm not that". He created some other lies (one of them, “Stop asking me to explain”, was pretty ironic) and tried to pass them off as truth before being discredited by journalist Michael Moynihan.
The various stories recounted here are fascinating. Besides the ones already mentioned there’s Texas Judge Ted Poe who incorporates public shaming in his punishments and claims it lowers re-offending; Max Mosley, the Formula One honcho and son of Oswald Mosley, the famed WW2 British Nazi, who got caught in an S&M orgy; and two American software developers who made a couple of dumb Beavis and Butthead-type jokes during a tech expo and got fired when a woman sat in front of them retweeted what they were saying.
There’s no real thesis here though. Ronson is being entertaining collecting these various stories with a running theme, but there’s not much behind them besides the shock of how these people paid an enormous price for – let’s face it – damn small things. But because of the ubiquity of social media sites, self-righteous hysteria can be whipped up instantaneously and people’s lives dramatically changed by enough outraged strangers.
The blurb says that ordinary people are using shame as a force of social control, that people on social media are tearing apart people who exist outside the boundaries of what we perceive as “normal”, but it’s not a convincing argument. Plenty of people say tasteless things online and never have their lives trashed like the ones in this book and they’re never ashamed of their behaviour.
Ronson does make the interesting observation though that men who’ve digressed in some way are often threatened with sackings while women, in a similar situation, receive rape and death threats instead. But, like a lot in this book, it’s touched upon and then just as quickly discarded. Clearly a lot of work’s gone into this book but it doesn’t feel very substantial. Social media can be scary and shame can destroy some people’s lives while completely bypass others isn’t a powerful conclusion.
That’s alright though because I read Ronson for laughs and gossip and there’s plenty of that here. The opening chapter about a Jon Ronson spambot on Twitter who loves food was hilarious and I had no idea that Jonah Lehrer publicly apologised while having a live Twitter feed behind him that was instantly destroying his speech. And I just like the full title and author name: So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson - really, what’d that jerk do to you!? (You gotta make yourself laugh, y’know?)
There are plenty more great bits in this book that are good fun to read and very well written. If you enjoy Louis Theroux’s docs, you’ll like Jon Ronson’s books which are essentially the literary equivalent. They reveal fascinating stories but are basically playing off of humans’ trashy natures at the same time - and that’s a fine trade-off I’m happy with!...more
Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with posterior cortical atrophy, a rare strain of Alzheimer’s disease, in 2007. The illness shrinks and shrivels areas aTerry Pratchett was diagnosed with posterior cortical atrophy, a rare strain of Alzheimer’s disease, in 2007. The illness shrinks and shrivels areas at the back of the brain. In his humorous way, Pratchett labelled his illness “the embuggerance” but it was a very serious threat to his life.
In Shaking Hands with Death, a transcript of his speech for the Richard Dimbleby Lecture, Pratchett addresses, and argues for, assisted death, particularly as he didn’t want to become hooked up to machines in a state of living death and wanted to die still himself.
It’s a clearly articulated and reasonable, convincing argument for a humanist approach to death, a moving speech made all the more powerful for not being sentimental or schmaltzy in the least. It’s also an angry swipe at the British healthcare system/the Health and Safety Executive which takes choice out of the patient’s hands and into those who seek to prolong life even if the patient exists in only the technical sense of “living”.
Pratchett being Pratchett, he can’t help but be amusing even when he’s deadly solemn and his “nostalgia” for the Victorian doctors who’d cheerfully euthanize patients who wanted it, made me smile.
Assisted death is an important issue though and the case for it that Pratchett outlines here brings home its relevance to many sufferers of Alzheimer’s, and their families. Death – like life – is sacred too. And so is dignity.
Terry Pratchett died a natural death due to his illness in his home surrounded by his family in March this year. I hope that, once the life left him, he heard a voice to his side say: HELLO, SIR TERRY. I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.
(This essay/speech is also included in the non-fiction collection A Slip of the Keyboard)...more
Every nine years down Slade Alley, on Halloween weekend only, a small black door – so small, people have to stoop to get in – appears. Not everyone seEvery nine years down Slade Alley, on Halloween weekend only, a small black door – so small, people have to stoop to get in – appears. Not everyone sees it – hardly anyone goes in. But some do. The door opens onto an impossibly large garden leading to a house: Slade House. And then the small black door closes and those who see the house are never heard from again…
David Mitchell’s written a really good haunted house story with Slade House. Starting in 1979, we meet Nathan Bishop, an autistic child, going to Slade House with his mother Rita, a pianist, for a recital. The small black door is an odd entrance but, once inside, the house is a charming place with wealthy hosts. Then terrible things happen to poor Nathan and Rita.
Each of the five chapters is set on Halloween weekend every nine years from 1979 on (ending on the last weekend of October 2015 - guess when the publication date is? WooOOooOOooo!). Nathan was our first narrator, and each chapter has a different one, talking to the reader in the first person. I’ve never read a David Mitchell book before so I was pleasantly surprised to discover he’s a writer who can write different voices convincingly and each chapter has its own distinct identity. I understand the characters here have all appeared in Mitchell’s previous novels but not having read them doesn’t affect the experience of reading this – Slade House works perfectly fine as a standalone novel.
The end of Chapter Two has a very awkward amount of exposition so the reader is left with no doubt as to what’s happening. Besides being clunky it removes the air of enticing mystery that’d been in the story up til that point. However, the structure of the book is very repetitive and once you know what’s happening – a kind of Inception-esque horror – it does make for a darkly enjoyable read as you begin to anticipate the deaths. Also, Mitchell’s talented enough where the variations on the formula don’t make the repetition boring to read in any way.
It’s a bit misleading to say Slade House is a haunted house story as it is to start with and then it becomes something else, crossing beyond the horror genre into others – and it’s great! But I’m keeping this review spoiler-free as the less you know about Slade House, the more fun you’ll get out of this book. And it is a pleasing, poisonous little read! Slade House is well-written, imaginative, dark, unsettling and mildly disorienting; it’s really entertaining, clever horror that I highly recommend....more
The Harder They Come revolves around three characters: Sten, a 70 year-old retired school principal and Vietnam vet; his mentally unbalanced son, AdamThe Harder They Come revolves around three characters: Sten, a 70 year-old retired school principal and Vietnam vet; his mentally unbalanced son, Adam, 25 years old; and 40 year old paranoid libertarian Sara. Set in present-day Fort Bragg, California, the novel sees Adam’s mind slowly unravelling as he becomes more and more obsessed with historical figure John Colter, a scout on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Adam’s untreated schizophrenia, exacerbated by liquor and hard drugs, can only end one way once he grabs his gun and heads into the woods.
I’m going to avoid spoilers because it’ll be a more powerful read if you go into it blind. The Harder They come is a brilliant novel. Like many of TC Boyle’s books, this one explores a number of issues, though violent American culture is at the forefront. Not just the United States’ gun culture (and yes he is rightfully critical of it), but the legacy of violence that reaches back to the early days of the Republic.
The Colter flashbacks to the beginning of the 19th century remind us that Americans were once the underdogs and the Native Americans were dominant – a fact that would swiftly change as the century wore on. Sten is a veteran of Vietnam, a theatre of war that was an extension of American Imperialism from the last century, and Sara is extremely belligerent towards local and federal authority for, as she sees it, limiting her freedoms as a citizen. Adam, the youngest character in the cast, embodies all of those characters as a terrifying avatar of confused, but very real, carnage – a modern day wannabe mountain man waging his forest warfare on the government.
For a relatively limited cast, Boyle covers an enormous number of subjects, weaving them into his narrative effortlessly: Mexican drug manufacturers destroying rural California, contemporary mental issues and their treatment (as well as lack of), gun control, extreme right wing politics, as well as more broad, traditional subjects like the differences between generations, fathers and sons, and the complexities of love.
The chapters alternate between Sten, Sara and Adam, and the only part of the book I didn’t totally enjoy were some of Adam’s chapters once he loses it. Boyle writes these adopting the viewpoint of a paranoid schizophrenic off of his prescribed medicine and self-medicating with numerous illegal drugs (cocaine, meth, opium). These chapters are appropriately rambling, circuitous, and diverge at peculiar tangents, as this is supposedly Adam’s disordered mind, but it still made for some uninteresting passages. That and the ending – Boyle going on for just a few more pages than he should have.
Otherwise, Boyle’s writing, characterisations, set pieces? Superb. Boyle always produces outstanding prose and his storytelling is rich and gripping. Each character is their own person with their own voice and world and the plot unfolds beautifully and tragically. It’s a fantastic story – a real literary thriller - from a modern master. The Harder They come is another excellent addition to this tremendously gifted writer’s remarkable oeuvre.
(The novel is inspired by the 2011 case of Aaron Bassler however if you’re planning on reading this book, I would recommend not looking up his details until afterwards as Boyle parallels Bassler’s last few weeks with Adam’s very closely. For that matter, if you don’t know much about John Colter, I wouldn’t look him up until after either – the Colter passages will be much more exciting as a result.)...more
“For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth,” Isiah 21:6
The book opens with Jean Louise “Scout” Finch on a “For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth,” Isiah 21:6
The book opens with Jean Louise “Scout” Finch on a train journey from the North to Maycomb, Alabama. It’s a journey that’s taken five and a half decades in the real world, since the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960, but only some twenty years have passed in Scout’s.
She is returning home from New York City to Maycomb for a two week holiday, visiting her elderly father Atticus, now 72 and ready to hand over his practice to Henry Clinton, his protege and Scout’s high school crush. Needless to say things have changed while she’s been away.
Civil rights is right around the corner and segregation in the South is to become a thing of the past. Pro-segregation groups have sprung up to “preserve the Southern way of life”, taking the form of Citizen’s Councils. But when Scout secretly attends one of the council’s meetings, her world is shattered. On the board of the council is Atticus.
Harper Lee is 89 years old this year. She didn’t write Go Set a Watchman recently so this isn’t representative of the person she is today. She wrote the Watchman manuscript in 1957, before Mockingbird, but is a sequel to her most famous, and up until this past week, only published novel.
Lee has done little press for the book’s launch (as if she needed to!) but she said that her editor at the time was taken with the flashbacks to Scout’s youth in Watchman and persuaded her to write a novel solely about them. That book became To Kill a Mockingbird. Watchman was put aside and only recently discovered by Lee’s lawyer.
The circumstances of how Watchman came to be published are murky at the moment and I won’t go into them here. But I am glad that we got the book after all these years because it is a superb novel from a literary legend and we do get to meet these beloved characters once more. But also because Watchman is a more nuanced look at the character of Atticus Finch.
(Spoilers ahead for those who haven’t read the book yet)
Atticus is one of the great literary fathers. Wise, calm, intelligent, patient, loving - he is certainly one of the most idealised father figures in fiction. The “watchman” of the title could be interpreted as a reference to Atticus - the moral guardian of Maycomb and Scout herself - as much as it is about everyone’s own moral code.
Watchman muddies this image laid out so pristinely in Mockingbird: Atticus, it’s revealed, is a racist.
For some readers, that’s reason enough to instantly dislike this novel and wish it had stayed hidden. Scout reacts in a similarly outraged fashion. For me, I like that detail. Not because I’m racist but because I always felt Atticus was a little too simplistically portrayed in Mockingbird. Watchman gives him heretofore unseen depth and complexity. It doesn’t make him more aspirational - if anything it makes him less! - but it does make him a more real, more interesting character.
That’s the brilliance of Watchman: the way it reintroduces us to the familiar characters and shatters what we know about them. If Mockingbird is appropriately black and white morality because our hero was a child, Watchman is nothing but gray - as complicated as adult life is.
While the novel explores themes of race from the perspectives of the north (represented by Scout) and the south (Atticus), it also looks at the changing role of women in society. Scout is a modern woman who isn’t looking to marry and is happy to be single and working independently, while her Aunt Alexandra pushes for the traditional role of women, which is the opposite.
Above all, Watchman’s main theme is growing up. Scout is forced to realise her father is not the infallible god she has built up in her mind, like readers of Mockingbird came to view him as the ideal father; he is a good man but flawed. And it’s as shocking for Scout to understand as it is for the reader (an alternate title sprang to mind: You Can’t Go Home Again, Mockingbird!).
I also fully expected an explanation for why Atticus was attending the Citizen’s Council to banish any fault on his character - and there was none. That’s a brave choice by Lee.
That’s not to say Atticus’ character is completely rewritten. Aside from this bombshell, it’s the same beloved character and he remains Lee’s most enduring creation. Scout is a charming delight who has unsurprisingly blossomed into a wonderful person, though with still much to learn about the world. Atticus’ sister Alexandra is also a sharply realised persona whose conflicts with Scout are a wonderful addition to the novel. So too is Dr Jack Finch, Atticus’ brother, who has no less a powerful character and has some of the best dialogues with Scout in Watchman.
The conversations between the characters are the highlights of the novel. Scout’s discussion with Henry reveals the politics of small town life, not to mention the realities of coming from a poor family with a bad reputation; her many back and forths with Jack are thoughtful and amusing; and her final, passionate debate with Atticus is the centrepiece of the book. It’s no less than a national conversation held between two characters in a room.
You don’t necessarily need to have read Mockingbird before reading Watchman but it’ll make for a more meaningful experience if you do. Because as sparklingly as the dialogue engages the mind, Scout’s reunion with Calpurnia quietly breaks the heart. Nobody could fail to be moved when Scout’s true mother figure addresses her as a white person instead of the little girl she raised. It’s written so well, you’ll be as devastated as Scout when reading it.
There are also the aforementioned flashbacks to Scout’s youth scattered throughout, covering her awkward teenage years as she became a young woman. There are some sweet moments between Scout and Henry but I’m glad they were included as we get to see some more of Jem (Dill is absent).
Like Mockingbird, Watchman moves at its own rambling pace with many side anecdotes to bring local colour to the story. But when it needs to, it cuts to the quick with alarming briskness and force. It’s a character-driven novel, not plot, but what characters to spend your time with! Whether they’re recounting Maycomb gossip or debating politics, they’re never less than entertaining, witty and compelling.
To Kill a Mockingbird will always be one of the great works of the 20th century teaching generation after generation its message of equality, compassion and justice. Go Set a Watchman reminds us that such ideals are tenable sometimes by those who don’t necessarily believe in them and that all childhood heroes change as we get older. (Ironically this novel will sell millions because of nostalgia and yet it’s such an anti-nostalgic story!) It is a seemingly simple message that belies its complexity and importance composed beautifully, Harper Lee speaks to us freshly and clearly today from the 1950s.
I had Karin Slaughter pegged as one of those novelists who writes police procedurals with extremely detailed autopsy scenes that are inexplicably popuI had Karin Slaughter pegged as one of those novelists who writes police procedurals with extremely detailed autopsy scenes that are inexplicably popular (Patricia Cornwell, Mo Hayder, that sort of thing). That’s why I stayed away from her writing but on a whim decided to give her a shot with this collection of three short stories. I’m so glad I did because I was blown away! She is nothing like that (at least going by these stories)!
The first of the stories is Go Deep which is set in the 1970s. Seedy car salesman Charlie Lam runs over a homeless black man - and his life becomes inexplicably stranger afterwards.
Slaughter sets the gritty tone straight away - Charlie’s a nasty piece of work who’s in with the mob and treats women like objects. It’s unpleasant material but I thought I knew what Slaughter was all about. This wasn’t a police procedural but it was a grimy street story with plenty of violence, sex, corruption, and so on.
And then it goes in a completely unpredictable direction, almost turning into a comedic fairy tale!
Whaaat?!
It was such a weird transition and massive tonal shift - but oddly not awkward at all - that I decided not to try and second guess Slaughter and let the stories wash over me instead. Slaughter turns Charlie Lam’s life into a farce with one genuinely funny scene towards the end. Fantastic stuff.
Necessary Women is the darkest story here and goes for pure, chilling, understated horror - and achieves it. It’s the kind of story where describing the setup is almost giving away part of the surprise so I’ll just say our narrator is a teen girl in the rural south (though already some of you have gotten an idea of what that could mean just from that - it gets worse than what you’re imagining).
The story is a masterclass in tense mystery writing, slowly revealing itself right up until the final sentence when you get to see the whole thing and finally come to understand (sort of) the mind of our narrator. And when you look back, you realise the story itself is twisted and dark but kinda straightforward - it’s Slaughter’s telling of the story that turns it into such a gem. Again, really solid writing.
Remmy Rothstein Toes the Line is the final story and was the most awkward to get into but, by the end, might’ve been my favourite of the three. Slaughter switches gears again, this time shooting for nothing but comedy. The story takes the form of email correspondence from Mindy Patel, a Guinness World Records Adjudicator, who’s visiting the swamps of South Georgia to meet Remmy Rothstein, an African-American Jewish Albino, who claims to have the longest tongue in the world.
The email format with its many footnotes was annoying at first, and the difference in tone, light and chirpy, after the pitch blackness of the last story threw me. But once you settle into the story, it completely wins you over.
Through the emails we see Mindy’s visit go from bad to worse to worst, with an unexpected twist at the end. The correspondence reminded me of some of George Saunders’ best stories and I lost count of the times I laughed at Mindy’s bizarre trip. You’ll find it extremely funny so long as your sense of humour skews towards the dark and dirty!
Three Twisted Stories is a superbly written collection of incredibly imaginative, completely entertaining short stories that blew my hair back each time. Every one of the narrators’ voices was unique and different from one another and utterly convincing. Each story grabbed my attention and drew me into its world.
I now get why this writer is so popular and, while this was my first experience with Karin Slaughter, it’s definitely not going to be my last. Three Twisted Stories is first class fiction - highly recommended!...more
Cunning Plans is a short collection of talks Warren Ellis gave between 2011 and 2015 at various conferences around the world.
Ellis is best known as aCunning Plans is a short collection of talks Warren Ellis gave between 2011 and 2015 at various conferences around the world.
Ellis is best known as a comics writer whose work includes Transmetropolitan, Planetary, The Authority, Freakangels, and numerous books at Marvel and DC. A lot of his best work concerns futurism, history and technology, all of which are themes covered in the talks and delivered in an intelligent but accessible, and funny, way.
He talks about the perception of science fiction as a means of predicting the future and what utter bullshit it is. Captain Kirk may have had a mobile-phone-looking device but it’s nothing like the smartphones we use today. Using it to talk to others is just one of a million functions our little black mirrors can do - Star Trek and other science fictions predicted nothing! Looking at the present is more relevant than throwing out guesses as Ellis writes: “To improve reality is to clearly see where you are, and then wonder how to make that better.”
But also, science fiction is always about the time it was written. 1984 is about 1948, and Orwell wasn’t trying to predict anything, he was using the novel to discuss concerns of the post-war years.
Ellis ties in ideas of magic and history into our current state of technology. You’ll learn about Cunning Murrell, a 19th century magician, who’s linked to Baldrick, a character from the British sitcom Blackadder whose catchphrase “I have a cunning plan…” is where the title comes from. Also, how older forms of magic and its language informs the technology that’s appeared. As he says, “Technology is the process of replicating the condition of magic. That’s the paradigm.”
The subjects in the talks are wide-ranging from a Kenyan peasant farmer called Mogo to Hannah Beswick the Manchester mummy to the story of the Tongva people who inhabited the Los Angeles basin once upon a time - I won’t spoil those here, you’ll have to read them yourself, but they’re excellent true stories.
Ellis’ talks are erudite but also have moments of humour, which is what makes his somewhat misanthropic attitude more palatable. On the subject of the Vorticists, he says:
“Modernism says that things can be right. Post-modernism says that nothing can be right. So if you ever wonder why nothing new ever seems to happen any more, find a post-modernist and beat the shit out of them.”
Some talks seem a bit random but are entertaining nevertheless. One morbid talk about old cities has Ellis musing:
“This is the point about old cities that everyone forgets - they’re nothing but dead people all the way down. And this is the point about America that everyone forgets - it is not a young country. It simply has the worst case of cultural amnesia on the planet. The worst, but not the only case. Because it happens everywhere. We only ever focus on the skin of a city, and never its blood and bone.”
Some of the talks are repetitive - Cunning Murrell appears again as mentions of Apple tech - and his talk on pop music was a bit uninteresting, but on the whole these are some wonderful essays full of fascinating history and observations. Ellis’ real voice is similar to his authorial one so if you’re a fan of his comics or books, like me, you’ll definitely find a lot to enjoy with Cunning Plans. Get in league with the fantastic!...more
