strange and random happenstance

Hot air balloons and Phileas Fogg go together like Amelia Earhart and aeroplanes. But here's the thing I learned from Michael Palin; Phileas Fogg never goes up in a hot air balloon once in the book. It's a conceit entirely made up for the adaptations and ingrained on our minds by the poster for the 1956 film starring David Niven. In fact almost everything I know about Around the World in Eighty Days I learned from Michael Palin and his documentary where he tried to recreate the journey. Perhaps I should read the book? Or perhaps not. Reading the summary it doesn't seem to have aged well with regard to indigenous cultures. Well, the best thing that can be said about this adaptation is it gets the balloon out of the way in the first episode. I really don't know who this adaptation is made for, aside from my Dad who loves it despite all it's faults. Each episode feels like they have to build to a "teaching moment" with a "very special guest star" who will explain why whatever the issue of the day is is bad. How did they get Lindsay Duncan to do this show? I know she has some schlock on her resume, but seriously? Which brings me back to the who is this written for? Children would be bored stiff, adults just see what's wrong with the whole production and feel a little talked down to when we're told racism is bad. Yeah, I do know a lot of people might need reminding, but I don't think those people are watching PBS. The aesthetic is more Dickensian than Attenborough, and I think you'd want to marvel at the world not make it so dark and dirty. But perhaps they were pushing against all the previous primary color adaptations. As for the music? Hans Zimmer's studio has a lot to answer for for this entirely unappealing Murray Gold wannabe vibe it's failing hard at. It would literally be better without music. Or if it wasn't ripping off another of their own productions, His Dark Materials. In fact everything about this production, aside from the casting, is poor. I actually feel sorry for the actors. David Tennant, Ibrahim Koma, and Leonie Benesch are acting their hearts out and breaking ours and the material is just failing them. I feel bad. Especially for Miss Fix. Here we have a woman finally with her own initiative in this male world, being based on Nellie Bly and her attempt to beat the fictional Phileas Fogg's eighty day journey, and instead it takes her from being a world class journalist and intrepid explorer to someone prey to love and yelling about the Chinese not inventing forks. Seriously!?! At least have some standards for the writing! And shoehorning in how she's "changed" as a throwaway line in the finale doesn't count as proper character development. And don't get me started on her pretty dress!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Around the World in Eighty Days, David Niven, David Tennant, Dickensian, Fifty-Five Years a Masterpiece, Han Zimmer, His Dark Materials, Ibrahim Koma, Leonie Benesch, Michael Palin, Murray Gold, Nellie Bly, PBS, Phileas Fogg

Unlike some of the other authors featured during Regency Magic I didn't have a serendipitous series of events that led to me discovering H.G. Parry. Instead it was fairly straightforward if you're a book blogger. So NetGalley is a website that lets "book advocates," such as reviewers and bloggers, request digital galleys of upcoming publications. My morning routine every day is to check my email and then check NetGalley. Because you never really know what's going to show up when and one of the reasons I started my blog was to get books by my favorite authors before anyone else. Small goal, but it was achieved. One day in 2019 I was looking through the new titles and one caught my eye, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heap. The description sounded very Ffordian so I hit request and according to my records on June 12th, 2019 I was approved. I mean who doesn't want to read a book with more than one Mr. Darcy? Though it was a book published a year later by H.G. Parry, A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians, that was even more up my alley. Because it was "technically" Regency Magic. I say technically because it's more Regency adjacent as H.G. pointed out to me in our recent email exchange. But I will counter that they do have a Regency crisis, it's just averted for the moment, and everything that's happening feeds into the Regency. And of course, because I wanted to read this book more than anything I was denied. There was some weeping and wailing but I recovered and they did approve me for the sequel, A Radical Act of Free Magic, so that was some cold comfort. But the thing that is so interesting to me is that H.G.'s writing, especially in her Shadow Histories, is so densely Dickensian and Uriah Heep is Dickens's creation. I just feel that H.G. really knows what she's doing. Her writing is so put together and thorough. Plus she's cranking out doorstop sized books at the rate of one a year, which, well, my hat is off to her. And now that my hat is off, let me cordially welcome her to my blog. 

Question: When did you first discover Jane Austen?

Answer: It was Northanger Abbey at my first year of university. I'd never studied her in high school and I think I was expecting something romantic, so I was knocked sideways by how absurdly funny and clever it was. That opening paragraph is still one of the wittiest I've ever read.

Question: What do you think Jane Austen would think of her impact with so many literary offshoots, from parody to pastiche?

Answer: Oh, I think she'd love it! And also mock most of them mercilessly! But her first published book was gloriously intertextual and had great fun with The Mysteries of Udolpho, so she'd get it.

Question: Where do you get your inspiration from?

Answer: Usually, from reading history and famous novels, and then seeing what happens if certain kinds of magic is added - what can it be used to illuminate, or explore, or cast in a different light? I love books that are in conversation with other books.

Question: What makes the early 19th century mesh so well with magic?

Answer: I'm not sure I can answer this: the Shadow Histories are mostly the Revolutionary Wars, so I barely got to the 19th century. I think in general though there's a really interesting overlap between historical fiction and fantasy because there's an equally interesting overlap between the way we think about history and the way we think about secondary world fantasy - both take place in worlds that are in some ways very similar and in others very different to our own. Magic gives us a way of exploring history at a remove, as it does the present day. And the turn of the 19th century was a fascinating and dramatic time, where so many choices were being made that shaped our present day for better or worse.

Question: The world building and system of magic varies greatly in the regency fantasy genre, how did you go about creating yours?

Answer: In the Shadow Histories, magic is innate in certain people, but the right to use it is jealously guarded by the aristocracy - so when the tide begins to turn toward revolution, magic is a right that is being fought for along with other freedoms. I wanted it to be a way of thinking about power - who has it, who wields it, what compromises we make to get it, how we use it to fight for a better world, and all those complicated questions that the French Revolution made a matter of life or death.

Question: If you had to choose between writing only period literature or only fantasy literature, which would win?

Answer: I've written fantasy books set in the present day and I've never written historical fiction without magic, so it would have to be fantasy. But I'd find a way to cheat somehow! My contemporary fantasy had five Mr. Darcys, so...

Question: Be honest, have you ever dressed up in Regency clothes just to pretend for a moment you are in the past?

Answer: Ha! I'm definitely better in the present day. The closest I came was at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath, where we were all allowed to try on dresses and shawls and bonnets. I was very excited, but then I just sort of looked like Jemima Puddleduck.

Biography:
H.G. Parry is the author of  The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep, The Shadow Histories duology, and The Magician's Daughter. Her short fiction has appeared in Intergalactic Medicine Show, Daily Science Fiction, and small press anthologies, and she holds a PhD in English Literature from Victoria University of Wellington. She currently lives in a book-infested flat on the Kāpiti Coast in New Zealand, which she shares with her sister and an increasing menagerie of small animals.

H.G.'s Social Media:
Website
Instagram
Twitter
Goodreads

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians, A Radical Act of Free Magic, Dickensian, H.G. Parry, Jasper Fforde, Netgalley, Northanger Abbey, Regency Magic, The Shadow Histories, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

Hot air balloons and Phileas Fogg go together like Amelia Earhart and aeroplanes. But here's the thing I learned from Michael Palin; Phileas Fogg never goes up in a hot air balloon once in the book. It's a conceit entirely made up for the adaptations and ingrained on our minds by the poster for the 1956 film starring David Niven. In fact almost everything I know about Around the World in Eighty Days I learned from Michael Palin and his documentary where he tried to recreate the journey. Perhaps I should read the book? Or perhaps not. Reading the summary it doesn't seem to have aged well with regard to indigenous cultures. Well, the best thing that can be said about this adaptation is it gets the balloon out of the way in the first episode. I really don't know who this adaptation is made for, aside from my Dad who loves it despite all it's faults. Each episode feels like they have to build to a "teaching moment" with a "very special guest star" who will explain why whatever the issue of the day is is bad. How did they get Lindsay Duncan to do this show? I know she has some schlock on her resume, but seriously? Which brings me back to the who is this written for? Children would be bored stiff, adults just see what's wrong with the whole production and feel a little talked down to when we're told racism is bad. Yeah, I do know a lot of people might need reminding, but I don't think those people are watching PBS. The aesthetic is more Dickensian than Attenborough, and I think you'd want to marvel at the world not make it so dark and dirty. But perhaps they were pushing against all the previous primary color adaptations. As for the music? Hans Zimmer's studio has a lot to answer for for this entirely unappealing Murray Gold wannabe vibe it's failing hard at. It would literally be better without music. Or if it wasn't ripping off another of their own productions, His Dark Materials. In fact everything about this production, aside from the casting, is poor. I actually feel sorry for the actors. David Tennant, Ibrahim Koma, and Leonie Benesch are acting their hearts out and breaking ours and the material is just failing them. I feel bad. Especially for Miss Fix. Here we have a woman finally with her own initiative in this male's world, being based on Nellie Bly and her attempt to beat the fictional Phileas Fogg's eighty day journey, and instead it takes her from being a world class journalist and intrepid explorer to someone prey to love and yelling about the Chinese not inventing forks. Seriously!?! At least have some standards for the writing! And shoehorning in how she's "changed" as a throwaway line in the finale doesn't count as proper character development. And don't get me started on her pretty dress!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: And the Emmy Goes To, Around the World in Eighty Days, David Niven, David Tennant, Dickensian, Han Zimmer, His Dark Materials, Ibrahim Koma, Leonie Benesch, Murray Gold, Nellie Bly, PBS, Phileas Fogg

A Civil Contact by Georgette Heyer
Published by: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Publication Date: 1961
Format: Paperback, 422 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Adam Deveril was never meant to be Viscount Lynton. That was for his father and his older brother. But his brother has been gone these many years and now his father has had a riding accident and is likewise gone before his time. Adam was happy with his regiment and now he's had to sell up and come home. Little did he know that his father had so encumbered the estate with mortgages and debts. The only way he can see a way through it is to sell his family's beloved home, Fontley. Everyone, even he, abhors this idea, but what else is he to do? His younger sister Lydia vows to marry an elderly wealthy man, preferably with not long to live, but seeing as she's not yet out this seems an impractical plan. But Adam's solicitor thinks Lydia's idea is splendid, for Adam. Adam can not stomach the idea, mainly because he is madly in love with Julia Oversley. He knows he has to cry off their engagement, but marrying another in her place he will never accept. Julia doesn't handle the news well, claiming that she could survive on love alone. Adam and Julia's father both know this is piffle. In fact, once Julia has been dealt with, it's her father that helps Adam with his finances by introducing him to Mr. Chawleigh. Mr. Chawleigh's daughter Jenny was at school with Julia and so the two men have gotten to know each other. In fact Mr. Chawleigh has helped Lord Oversley a time or two with monetary issues. Mr. Chawleigh is a Cit with aspirations. He has none for himself, they are all for his daughter, which is why she attended school with the daughters of lords. Therefore he has been on the lookout for the right husband for his daughter and he thinks that Adam will do. Adam, realizing the perilous situation he is in agrees to meet Jenny and realizes that Jenny will do very nicely. He knows now he will never love again after Julia, but Jenny is a sensible girl. She will make a very capable wife and her father will make all his money problems disappear. Sure, there are some growing pains as the two families become one, but that was to be expected. The real question is, can Adam learn to love again, in a different, more mature way?

I've never really given much thought to the comparisons between Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen. I just assumed that it was because Heyer wrote books set during the Regency and would name check Austen that a connection was made and never questioned. The Sourcebooks reissues seem to all feature a pull quote from Publishers Weekly that declaims that "[r]eading Georgette Heyer is the next best thing to reading Jane Austen." But I have to say, I finally get it. For once I agree with you Publishers Weekly! Everything finally clicked and I see the connection. Heyer, like Austen, revels in the quirky side characters. I would in fact go so far as to say that these are what make the works of both authors memorable. The older I get the less I am drawn to Austen's heroes and heroines and the more I am drawn to the comic stylings of Sir John Middleton or Mr. Collins or Miss Bates. These very human and very humorous characters make the books shine. The same can be said for Heyer. In all the books of hers I've read I've found one or both of the leads rather annoying and tedious, yet the second all the side characters start popping out of the woodwork, and especially once large family gatherings start happening, I'm a happy camper. And if it wasn't for Mr. Chawleigh, even if he is a tad more Dickensian then Austenesque, this book would have been a no go for me. He is viewed by Adam as vulgar and ostentatious with odious taste in decor, but Adam is an ass and a hypocrite, so his opinion doesn't mater. What matters is that Mr. Chawleigh does everything with love in his heart. Sure, his gestures are usually too big and too grand, but he really, deep down, is asking nothing for himself, and just wants those he loves to be happy. Thankfully Adam was at least somewhat redeemed by the fact he was unwilling to cuckquean Jenny with Julia. And the less said about Julia the better. She and Adam are the weakest characters in A Civil Contract and when for the denouement the narrative is shouldered by Adam the book went down a full star. Is it too late for Mr. Chawleigh to get a spinoff series? Anything but more Wellington and Waterloo!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Civil Contract, Adam Deveril, Austenesque, Dickensian, Fontley, Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen, Jenny Chawliegh, Julia Oversley, Miss Bates, Money, Mr. Chawleigh, Mr. Collins, Regency Romp, Sir John Middleton

The First Escape by G.P. Taylor
Published by: Tyndale
Publication Date: 2008
Format: Paperback, 282 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Sadie and Saskia Dopple are the queens of the Isambard Dunstan School for Wayward Children. They rule all the girls in the orphanage with cunning ruthlessness. Until one day the headmistress is a little more crafty then they are. Saskia gets adopted by one Muzz Elliott, who will have one or none. Being a prestigious donor to the school she gets her wish and the twins are separated, much to the headmistress's delight. So Sadie stays behind while Saskia goes to live in the mysterious home of Muzz Elliott out on Hampstead Heath. She is given her own room in the tower where she mustn't ever answer the phone. Meanwhile, back at the orphanage, one of Sadie's pranks badly backfires and she's locked up for the night without food or water. But the school's only boy, and odd job man, overhears the mistress saying that Sadie will be off to prison for her stunt so Erik Ganger risks his neck and releases Sadie so that they can flee across the Heath to Saskia. Of course a rescue can never be as easy as that when you flee across Hampstead Heath at night with bloodhounds baying at your heels and a psychotic magician named The Great Potemkin offering concealment, if you'll only help with one little experimental magic trick that may or may not kill you. But things aren't going well for Saskia either. There's a mysterious painting she may not look at, a seance to recover a lost fortune, and a Muzz Elliott doppelganger out to kill them all. How will these three kids reunite and save the day?

It's interesting what remains after time. I read G.P. Taylor's Shadowmancer so many years ago now I don't even remember when it was I read it. I do remember how much I hated it. In fact I'm more often to remember why I hate a book than why I love a book but Shadowmancer is that rare book that I hated everything about it so much that I have blocked as much of it from my memory as possible as a precautionary measure. So it's kind of the definition of insanity to pick up another book by G.P. Taylor, but what am I if not slightly mad? When I first read this book five years ago I was impressed by how much I didn't hate it. Re-reading it five years later I see that perhaps I shouldn't base my opinions on a book by how much it didn't suck in comparison to another book by the same author. Because the truth is, this book is flawed. Very flawed. Yes, it's a fast read and has the nice comic versus prose structure of a Brian Selznick book. But seeing as I just read a Brian Selznick book recently, the yawning divide in quality is readily apparent. It makes me queasy even trying to place the two in the same category, but it has to be done no matter how disparate they are. Yet what nags me most about this book and in fact this whole series, or at least how much of it I've read while typing this, is that I have no idea when it takes place. It's almost Dickensian with lost inheritances, mistaken identities, evil twins, and ever so polite ghosts. Yet there is more modern technologies, like cars. So while I want to say Edwardian, it's actually more interwar, making me scratch my head. In the end I just have to throw up my hands and say that it lacks identity but at least it's not Shadowmancer.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Brian Selznick, Dickensian, Doppelganger, Edwardian, Erik Ganger, G.P. Taylor, Going Gothic, Hampstead Heath, Muzz Elliott, Sadie Dopple, Saskia Dopple, Shadowmancer, The Dopple Ganger Chronicles, The First Escape

If you've only seen the Gillian Anderson adaptation of Bleak House you might think with the star power of the late Dame Diana Rigg playing the role of Lady Honoria Dedlock in this older adaptation she would be equally the star that Gillian Anderson was. You'd be wrong. This version showcases all the characters more evenly than the Andrew Davies adaptation. Yes, there are omissions here and there, there's nary a Turveydrop in sight, but it makes the interpretation different enough that you can enjoy both equally. The highlight of this version being that Bleak House has become the William Guppy show. Jonathan Moore as William Guppy is the Steve 'The Hair' Harrington of Dickensian London! I always thought Burn Gorman was a good casting choice in the Andrew Davies adaptation because he kind of looks like a fish, a true guppy if you will... But now I know who the real Guppy is, Jonathan Moore. There was such joy in watching his smarm. He took each and every scene he was in to the next level, which is impressive in that he witnesses the spontaneous human combustion of Krook in the most magnificent eighties horror film way that literally anyone could have made the scene work. If there was music it could have been an eighties music video it was that epic. Yet he made it even better. But one of the best scenes is Esther's rejection of his proposal of marriage. AKA the proposal of epic failure. It was staged in such a way that it stretched out the awkwardness. Esther sits down in front of the hearth. This hearth has a bench-like seat that extends the entire length of the room. So every time Guppy moves in for the romantic gesture, Esther slides further away from him. Perfect. Comic. Timing. Of course, this being Bleak House, it's not all laughs, this adaptation wanted to make sure you knew that Dickensian London was all about mud, mud, mud, and then some more mud. Then factor in the rain and the fog and I'm actually surprised that the street sets didn't claim any victims from the cast and crew. And oh, this cast! Denholm Elliott, Peter Vaughn, and the aforementioned Dame Diana Rigg! And Esther as she should have been, not Anna Maxwell Martin but Suzanne Burden! As my Dad pointed out when Diana Rigg as Lady Dedlock and Peter Vaughn as Tulkinghorn spare, sometimes it's just an honor to get to watch two magnificent actors at the top of their game go at it. I couldn't agree more.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Andrew Davies, Bleak House, Burn Gorman, Charles Dickens, Denholm Elliott, Diana Rigg, Dickensian, Fifty Years a Masterpiece, Gillian Anderson, Lady Dedlock, Peter Vaughn, Steve Harrington, William Guppy

Misfortune by Wesley Stace
Published by: Back Bay Books
Publication Date: January 1st, 2005
Format: Paperback, 560 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

A young baby boy is being thrown out with the trash. Unwanted and alone a chance of fate has him picked up by the richest Lord in the land, Lord Loveall. Lord Loveall has been mourning all his life for his dear departed sister and when he sees this baby he assumes it to be a female and a chance to have his sister back. But Lord Loveall can't just miraculously have an heir, a quick marriage is arranged with his sister's old governess, Anonyma, who has stayed on as resident librarian at Love Hall to catalog the works of her icon, the poetess Mary Day. Anonyma agrees to raising "Rose" female because Mary Day had some interesting theories on gender and Anonyma sees a chance to put her heroine's thoughts into action. An experiment if you will. For many years the couple are able to keep up this farce, until one day the world crashes down on them in the form of puberty and Rose can no longer hide who he is.

Rose flees in the middle of the night without a trace, unable to face what he is or his feelings for his best friend. He takes to the continent and eventually ends up where all those pilgrims seeking answers often end up, the Levant. Rose's journey won't be an easy one, through awkward sexual awakenings, near death fever dreams, and chance encounters, Rose begins to embrace the odd life that he has been given in this strange world and the companions in his journey who truly love him. Though while he has been traveling, trying to put himself back together, things aren't going so well at home, where Rose's absence is duly noted. The familial vultures have swooped in to claim what they have always lusted after, Love Hall. A scandal would be so unbecoming so Anonyma withdraws into the works of Mary Day... what does she have now that Rose has fled? It will be up to Rose to save the day, once he saves himself.

Misfortune is a Dickensian tale with at LGBTQ mindset. Full of interesting incestuous characters I felt that it never quite lived up to it's full potential due to the shifting narrative that, in the end, opted for a shorter, sleeker story with annoying time jumps, instead of becoming a book of true Dickensian girth. Now I'm not saying that I wanted every detail on Rose's debauched journey to Turkey, but covering such an expanse of time as a fever dream seemed indulgent of the author. In fact, that might be the crux of my problem, the modern sensibilities thrust into this Victorian age by Stace's whim alienates me from the story. Stace says in an interview in the back of the book that he didn't want to be drawn into the trappings of the time period, a carriage is a carriage, not a barouche, not a gig. By having Misfortune be a modern book set in the past he seems to be wanting to make the book more of a post modern statement piece than a quality read.

By breaking convention he is writing a book that will appeal more to those who have never read Dickens or historical fiction while leaving those of us who love 19th century literature and period pieces cold. Coupled with the fact that he pulls a complete Dickensian HEA that was obvious from page one, his tendency to use some literary tropes and abandon others just goes to show that he was gratifying himself instead of his audience, plus exactly HOW was Rose to inherit... she being a she? Many such little questions bothered me throughout. Though my biggest problem with the book that has nothing to do with Stace might just be a side effect of this lack of interest in the historical details. This problem being that the cover illustration shows clothes incorrect to 1820. Yes, I know I should let this go, but the thing is, I remember the day I picked up this book on a table in Barnes and Noble and it was those lovely Regency clothes that sold me on it...

Yet in the end it's not covers nor conceits that are the root of my issues, Rose is what's problematical to me. Firstly, the sheer self-centered delusions indulged by her parents scares the shit out of me. That two adults could contrive to raise a boy as a girl is just wrong to me. I know in this day and age there are a lot of people who talk about wanting to raise their children gender neutral so that they can come into their sexuality on their own. Personally, I think this is bullshit. It takes awhile for children to become aware of things, just look to Rose for an example, and by at least not setting down for them the basics, well, you are going to get one f'd up kid, again, look to Rose. Children need to understand the world around them in order to find their place, wherever that may be. By taking away Rose's knowledge of the world around her with regard to her body, that's just so many levels of wrong. At least her father Geoffroy has some excuse, obviously being insane, but Anonyma, the cold amd calculated way she sees changing her child's sex as an experiment just makes me want to slap her so hard. While yes, this does lead to some amusing situations, in the end, I felt such sorrow and pity for Rose that at times the book became hard to read.

The collusion to keep this lie up just fills me with rage. Personally, the fact that they were able to pull it off for so long makes me a little awestruck. I personally don't see how they did it. I liked that they mentioned that all paintings with genitals shown were hidden, because that was a problem I really had. How, in an English Country House, with the great artwork that is usually in said houses, were they able to keep Rose in the dark? The secluded environment helped, but still, how? Recent studies have shown that people in the 19th century weren't so repressed sexually as we like to imagine. Yes the book has Anonyma lecturing a young Rose on what is private and what is public, and never stripping or lifting of skirts... but still... how? Rose was raised with two other children and they never once lifted a skirt or whipped it out of their pants? That is giving those kids some amazing, I would say unbelievable, restraint. Were they sewn into their clothes? Because that's the only way I see this happening, otherwise, I just don't buy it. I can't buy it. There's too much suspension of disbelief needed here and that just doesn't work for me.

And yet... if we take a step back and look at the larger picture, not those hanging at Love Hall, forcing Rose into a female role is almost equivalent to forcing any child into any role. While yes, as I've said, I do thing it's important to show kids how the world works but I also think it's important that once they grasp the basics that they be allowed to be who they are. However they want to identity themselves, dress themselves, whatever, it is important to be who you are no matter what society thrusts on you. It is your right to choose your own identity and that is the final message we are left with from Rose. He has this unique upbringing, then the upheaval and identity crisis, but in the end he finds out who he truly is. So in one regard, though I had many issues with the book, I'd kind of like to make any bigot I can find read it because the sorrow and pity that you feel for Rose as he finds himself, that might be the first step to understanding those who don't fit the binary world. So yes, issues with the book, but not issues with the message? I know, it can be as confusing as Rose's situation at times, but sometimes even a book that I just don't engage with can connect and resonate on a deeper level with regard to certain issues. Sure, this book is flawed, but so are all of us. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anonyma, Backlog Bonanza, Carriage, Charles Dickens, Child-rearing, Cross-Dressing, Dickensian, HEA, Inheritance, Levant, LGBTQ, Lord Lovall, Misfortune, Non-Binary, Orphan, Poetry, Regency, Victorian, Wesley Stace

Most people know Dickens before they know Dickens. That sentence does seem like a tongue twister, yet it relates to the basic fact that people know of his stories and his characters long before they ever hear his name. Miss Havisham works as a secondary character in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books because people know of the slightly off lady dressed in her wedding gown as if it where widows weeds even if they haven't read Great Expectations. Dickens's stories have a universality to them. You know the stories, and most of us know them through the medium of film.

I was very young when I first discovered Dickens, again, that name meant nothing to me, what meant something to me was Mickey's Christmas Carol. I remember watching it on tv and being enraptured by it. This was so much better than any other Christmas special on tv. Mickey had Snoopy beaten by a mile. Scrooge was mean and sad and so many things, and awesomely a duck! Also, for the first time I can ever think of, Goofy wasn't just totally lame. As Marley's Ghost, he was actually a little scary, in particular with the door knocker scene. This aired long before such a thing as a VCR existed in my family, so it was something I looked forward to every Christmas. I even remember dreaming about it. This was almost as good as Christmas itself.

Dickens got me at that young age. Over the years I have watched many an adaptation of A Christmas Carol, from plays where my 6th grade teacher's brother was in the production, a production I might add that cast everyone by if they could fit the costumes because they didn't have the money to replace any of them, to Muppets to Bill Murray, to bad animation to Captain Picard to Blackadder. I have watched them all hoping to find the same joy. But none have come up to the wide eyed childish joy of Mickey Mouse. I'm sure my father would be appalled that I chose a Duck over George C. Scott, so I should probably mention that at this juncture. Love live the Duck!

While I connected to a cartoon from the 1980s, Dickens's works have been adapted continuously for the screen since the invention of cinema. Many of his works were adopted for the stage during his own lifetime and as early as 1913 the first film version of his work appeared with The Pickwick Papers. Today there are a least two hundred motion pictures and tv adaptations based on his works. So for the bicentenary, the first question on everyone's lips was, what adaptations will be made? Well, besides the dueling Miss Havishams, for my money, I think Gillian Anderson might be able to beat Helena Bonham Carter in a fight, we had an adaptation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, as well as the biopic staring Ralph Fiennes slated for early 2013, missing the centenary there Ralph. While not as heavy as in past years, Dickens is a major tent pole for the BBC with its previous star studded adaptations, Bleak House being the most raved about.

Yet, as Ralph Fiennes shows, we have even gone beyond just dramatizing Dickens's works, we are now dramatizing the man himself. Simon Callow has gained a bit of notoriety playing Dickens, much like Hal Holbrook and Mark Twain. Callow has not only played Dickens several times on stage and screen, notably on Doctor Who, in my mind, he has also written a book on Dickens, because Dickens transcends all boundaries of media. Dickens will continue to live on through many mediums, besides the written word. Now is the time to gather your family together, sit back and watch a few Dickensian adaptations, to capture that perfect holiday mood. Might I interest you in a Duck as the protagonist?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Blackadder, Dickensian, Doctor Who, Edwin Drood, Gillian Anderson, Great Expectations, Jasper Fforde, Mickey's Christmas Carol, Miss Havisham, Muppets, Simon Callow, Thursday Next

The First Escape, Dopple Ganger Chronicles Book 1 by G.P. Taylor
Published by: Tyndale
Publication Date: 2008
Format: Paperback, 282 Pages
Challenge: Typically British, 1st in Series
Rating: ★★★
To Buy
Sadie and Saskia Dopple are the queens of the Isambard Dunstan School for Wayward Children. They rule all the girls in the orphanage with cunning and ruthlessness. Until one day the headmistress is a little more crafty then they. Saskia gets adopted by one Muzz Elliott, who will have one or none. Being a prestigious donor to the home, she gets her wish and the twins are separated, much to the headmistresses delight. So Sadie stays behind while Saskia goes to live in the mysterious home of Muzz Elliott out on Hampstead Heath, were she is given her own room in the tower where she mustn't ever answer the phone. Meanwhile, back at the orphanage, one of Sadie's pranks badly backfires and she's locked up for the night without food or water. But the school's only boy, and odd job man, overhears the mistress saying that Sadie will be off to prison for her stunt, so Erik Ganger risks his neck and releases Sadie so that they can flee across the Heath to Saskia. Of course a rescue can never be as easy as that when you flee across Hampstead Heath at night with bloodhounds baying at your heels and a psychotic magician named The Great Potemkin offering concealment, if you'll only help with one little experimental magic trick, that may or may not kill you. But things aren't going well for Saskia either. There's a mysterious painting she may not look at, a seance to recover a lost fortune and a Muzz Elliott Doppelganger out to kill them all. How will these three kids reunite and save the day?

I was hesitant to pick up this book due to my hatred of G.P. Taylor's Shadowmancer. But I was finally worn down by the pretty cover and the graphic, comic book style combined with chapter writing, in the vein of Hugo Cabret. I am very glad that I did. It was a fun, visual feast with a witty, almost Dickensian story of lost inheritances, mistaken identities, evil twins and ever so polite ghosts. It was an amazingly fast read and I find it amazing that with three separate artists, there is a very nice cohesiveness to the whole book, as if only one person had drawn it. Like Hugo Cabret, I was a bit thrown my the "real" image thrown in in the middle of the book. Why throw in this reality in a world of ink and linework? I don't know, it was off in that book and this one, so please, if someone who is planning on doing this in a book, just don't. I also applaud this new medium that is coming to the forefront. As a bridge between comics and chapter books I think it will encourage hesitant readers to risk moving on from just comics. But more importantly, it's just so beautiful and gorgeous, it's wonderful to see what can be done in this medium if you're willing to push the boundaries. More please! I guess that means I should go out and grab the sequel right?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Dickensian, Erik Ganger, G.P. Taylor, Hampstead Heath, Hugo Cabret, Muzz Elliott, Orphanage, Reading Challenge, Sadie and Saskia Dopple, Shadowmancer, The Dopple Ganger Chronicles, The First Escape

The Well of Lost Plots: Thursday Next Novel the 3rd by Jasper Fforde
Published by: Viking
Publication Date: February 23rd, 2004 US, 2003 UK
Format: Hardcover, 375 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Thursday, finding the real world a bit much at present, what with SpecOps, Aronis Hades and Goliath, has decided to take a bit of a sabbatical thanks to Jurisfiction's generous character exchange program. Thursday's husband Landen my still be missing from the collective conscious, but at least she's got a nice book to live in while she awaits the birth of their child and schemes how to get him re-actualized. Taking over for a character by the name of Mary in the book Caversham Heights, Thursday thinks that it will be a nice relaxing time, occasionally doing her narrative duty with Inspector Jack Spratt while living in a fictionalized version of Reading. Little does she know that things are never as they seem in The Library, especially when you are in the well of lost plots. Besides having two generic characters living with her, they may one day end up being someones, maybe even someones of note in literature, she also has her Gran, who never really explains how she's able to just pop round. Luckily for Thursday she has such a resourceful Gran, because who else will keep reminding her to remember Landen and defeat the mind worm that Aronis has planted in Thursday's brain to destroy Thursday and the love of her life. But worst of all Caversham Heights may be heading for the great text sea... it's time may be at an end, but what will happen to Thursday's new home and all the friends she's met?

But Thursday's living situation, while accomplished by her job in Jurisfiction, doesn't even match her job for all out weirdness. There's a missing Minotaur, which may be responsible for not only the death of a colleague, but also an outbreak of the misspelling virus. There's counseling sessions that need to be held within Wuthering Heights to keep the characters in line. Heathcliff hatred being at an all time high, with danger from within and danger from without, with the Pro Caths. Thursday's ongoing court case for her changing the ending of Jane Eyre. Havisham's need for speed is at an all time high and she's determined to beat Toad, from The Wind in the Willows... no matter what it takes! Also that rogue, Vernham Deane, might be behind the rash of disappearances and murders happening among the ranks of Jursifiction... he is after all missing in action. With the unveiling of the new book operating system, UltraWord, just days away at the annual book awards, things need to be resolved, and resolved fast, so that the new OS can be embraced and a new day will dawn for books the world over. But what's that you said about a thrice read rule?

You can't really sum up a Jasper Fforde book. Jasper himself has never found a satisfactory way to do so. The Nextian logic is so random and nonsensical you just have to read it and enjoy it, while at the same time trying not to over-analyze it. The problem I face at the beginning of each of his books is that with it's fragmented nature it's hard to get into it. You can't quite grasp what's going on for awhile, until suddenly something happens that is so wonderful and so funny you can't help but fall in love with it from that moment on. For me that happened at the Wuthering Heights counseling session. Having Havisham being forced to counsel a group of misfits who are rightfully angry at Heathcliff, who saunters in late all brooding sexiness, until his life is threatened and he is cowering like a dog begging Havisham to save him was too perfect. Plus to have an avowed man hater standing up for Heathcliff and trying to aid in the discussion is just dripping with irony. But aside from that scene, which has to be in my top Fforde scenes, I found this my least favorite of his books.

I took issue with the whole construction of the well of lost plots. It's kind of a weird Dickensian back alley or market place where trading is going on in a distinctly black-market way. I viewed the well more shadowy threats and cold barren hallways, not in your face hawkers and bars with back room dealings. The well, with it's trades and auctions and generics seemed to demystify the writing process and make it more of an industry or business. A stripping away of the mystery of inspiration and making it more slot a into tab b, but with a slutty girl being slot a and tab b being a plot contrivance. I found it a little odd that an author would kind of openly, not slam, but take writers down a peg. It's not that Jasper is saying anyone can do it, more that he's saying that, everything is here and bits and pieces in the right amounts assembled by the right person a novel do make. And I'm not sure I agree, but I am sure that I will read his next book... which happens to be a Next book. On a quick final note, I didn't like what happened to Havisham...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Book Review, Caversham Heights, Dickensian, Heathcliff, Jack Spratt, Jasper Fforde, Miss Havisham, Nextian, Pro Caths, Spec Ops, The Well of Lost Plots, Thursday Next, UltraWord, Wuthering Heights