strange and random happenstance

What Abigail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch
Published by: Subterranean Press
Publication Date: March 16th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 232 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Abigail Kamara should not be left to her own devices. She's not like her brother Paul who is terminally ill and needs looking after. She's just very good at getting into trouble. Just ask her cousin, DC Peter Grant. The second Peter's mom started bragging about her son doing magic Abigail demanded that he teach her. In an attempt to fob her off he said she'd need to get a GCSE A level in Latin. More fool him if he thinks she's not going to hold him to that, she's already in Latin club. She used to imagine her life out there, away from home, on some lonely road, but now she knows about magic, now she imagines seeing in the dark and running with foxes. Now she imagines finding a cure for Paul. When not being the bane of her teachers existence she's always on the lookout for the uncanny as a way to pass the time and impress Peter. There have been a recent spate of disappearances around Hampstead Heath and Abigail thinks they're rather sus. The entire nation is gripped by two white girls missing in Herefordshire and yet in London they can't be bothered with children missing on their own manor. This needs to be looked into, especially something Abigail thinks is extra sus, an old classmate of hers she hadn't seen for years invites her to a "happening" on the Heath. She's stood up but she meets Simon, who was also invited by someone he barely knew who also didn't show. At loose ends Simon and Abigail start to hang out. As Abigail comes to the realization that she's stuck with Simon she lets him help with her investigation. One that gets even stranger when it's revealed the the missing kids have all returned home with no memory of where they were. The most important piece of information is where are the kids going, thankfully Abigail has a skulk of talking foxes who have labeled her as a "person of interest" and are willing to help her with her operation; they're very big on the spy speak. And she needs each and every one of them to monitor the perimeter of the Heath. Which is how she gets her big break. The kids are all going into a house. But when Abigail enters, unlike the other kids, the house doesn't want to let her go. This conundrum is up to her to solve, without the help of the Folly, but oddly with the help of Simon's mom. Simon's mom is well connected, the foxes would be impressed.

While this is a standalone novella it is also technically a companion book to Foxglove Summer. Here we see Abigail in a similar situation to what Peter was dealing with in Herefordshire, missing children. While there are probably millions of stories about missing children what's interesting is seeing how one author handles the same subject in two very different ways. One was successful, the other was not. This book is damn near perfection. The bones of the story are a solid haunting of a house. The inside of the house is different pockets of time and it forces those whom it's lured inside to replay moments from it's past. It's not the most original of concepts, even Angel did a similar story in the season three episode "Waiting in the Wings," which I think was predominately written so that Angel and Cordelia could make out thus acting on years of pent up sexual frustration without them actually becoming an item. Yet Ben Aaronovitch writes his story so cleverly, so perfectly, that you feel like it's the first time you've head a haunted house story like it. What's more, the way that Abigail is trying to dissect the pockets of time while being forced to be a participate is fascinating. She actually appreciates these memories she is being shown while at the same time trying to find the source of the haunting. Abigail is just an amazing character with so much depth. What I personally connected to was the melancholy that is at the heart of her life, the fact that one day her brother Paul is going to die. Since the age of five his world has been getting smaller and smaller and I think that's why she pushes herself beyond her comfort zone. She wants to experience everything, even if it's the ghostly memories that a house gives her. Ben Aaronovitch understands the kind of suffering that a family with chronic illness endures. The hope that is almost worse than the bone deep pain of lifelong trauma. He wrote this book at the beginning of the pandemic and I think it influenced the story in an elegiac way. If you doubt me just read the section wherein Abigail is reading Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man to her brother. As she makes passing reference to that book's conclusion, if you know and love that book like I do, your heart will break anew.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Angel, Ben Aaronovitch, Foxen, Foxglove Summer, Grief, Hampstead Heath, Haunted House, London Calling, Missing Children, Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett, Trauma, Waiting in the Wings, What Abigail Did That Summer

What Abigail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch
Published by: Subterranean Press
Publication Date: March 16th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 232 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Abigail Kamara should not be left to her own devices. She's not like her brother Paul who is terminally ill and needs looking after. She's just very good at getting into trouble. Just ask her cousin, DC Peter Grant. The second Peter's mom started bragging about her son doing magic Abigail demanded that he teach her. In an attempt to fob her off he said she'd need to get a GCSE A level in Latin. More fool him if he thinks she's not going to hold him to that, she's already in Latin club. She used to imagine her life out there, away from home, on some lonely road, but now she knows about magic, now she imagines seeing in the dark and running with foxes. Now she imagines finding a cure for Paul. When not being the bane of her teachers existence she's always on the lookout for the uncanny as a way to pass the time and impress Peter. There have been a recent spate of disappearances around Hampstead Heath and Abigail thinks they're rather sus. The entire nation is gripped by two white girls missing in Herefordshire and yet in London they can't be bothered with children missing on their own manor. This needs to be looked into, especially something Abigail thinks is extra sus, an old classmate of hers she hadn't seen for years invites her to a "happening" on the Heath. She's stood up but she meets Simon, who was also invited by someone he barely knew who also didn't show. At loose ends Simon and Abigail start to hang out. As Abigail comes to the realization that she's stuck with Simon she lets him help with her investigation. One that gets even stranger when it's revealed the the missing kids have all returned home with no memory of where they were. The most important piece of information is where are the kids going, thankfully Abigail has a skulk of talking foxes who have labeled her as a "person of interest" and are willing to help her with her operation; they're very big on the spy speak. And she needs each and every one of them to monitor the perimeter of the Heath. Which is how she gets her big break. The kids are all going into a house. But when Abigail enters, unlike the other kids, the house doesn't want to let her go. This conundrum is up to her to solve, without the help of the Folly, but oddly with the help of Simon's mom. Simon's mom is well connected, the foxes would be impressed.

While this is a standalone novella it is also technically a companion book to Foxglove Summer. Here we see Abigail in a similar situation to what Peter was dealing with in Herefordshire, missing children. While there are probably millions of stories about missing children what's interesting is seeing how one author handles the same subject in two very different ways. One was successful, the other was not. This book is damn near perfection. The bones of the story are a solid haunting of a house. The inside of the house is different pockets of time and it forces those whom it's lured inside to replay moments from it's past. It's not the most original of concepts, even Angel did a similar story in the season three episode "Waiting in the Wings," which I think was predominately written so that Angel and Cordelia could make out thus acting on years of pent up sexual frustration without them actually becoming an item. Yet Ben Aaronovitch writes his story so cleverly, so perfectly, that you feel like it's the first time you've head a haunted house story like it. What's more, the way that Abigail is trying to dissect the pockets of time while being forced to be a participate is fascinating. She actually appreciates these memories she is being shown while at the same time trying to find the source of the haunting. Abigail is just an amazing character with so much depth. What I personally connected to was the melancholy that is at the heart of her life, the fact that one day her brother Paul is going to die. Since the age of five his world has been getting smaller and smaller and I think that's why she pushes herself beyond her comfort zone. She wants to experience everything, even if it's the ghostly memories that a house gives her. Ben Aaronovitch understands the kind of suffering that a family with chronic illness endures. The hope that is almost worse than the bone deep pain of lifelong trauma. He wrote this book at the beginning of the pandemic and I think it influenced the story in an elegiac way. If you doubt me just read the section wherein Abigail is reading Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man to her brother. As she makes passing reference to that book's conclusion, if you know and love that book like I do, your heart will break anew.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Angel, Ben Aaronovitch, Foxen, Foxglove Summer, Grief, Hampstead Heath, Haunted House, London Calling, Missing Children, Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett, Trauma, Waiting in the Wings, What Abigail Did That Summer

When He Was Wicked by Julia Quinn
Published by: Avon
Publication Date: June 29th, 2004
Format: Paperback, 404 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Francesca Bridgerton made a perfect match. She and John Sterling, the Earl of Kilmartin, were made for each other. And Francesca got her dream come true, her own home, her own family. John's cousin Michael even became her best friend. Michael is a notorious rake and she loves to ask him about his wicked ways. Little does she know that he would give it all up for her. The second he set eyes on her he was lost. She was his everything, but he knew he could never have her. And when John dies suddenly he can't help thinking that some greater power is playing the world's cruelest trick on him because yes, he wants Francesca but not like this, never like this. He never wanted John's life or his title so bad to live in a world without John. So he leaves for India and doesn't look back, and in one fell swoop Francesca lost her husband and her best friend. Therefore she did what she had to do, she took up not only the mantel of Countess but that of Earl and runs Kilmartin for the husband and friend she lost. Four years later Francesca comes to a realization. She wants a baby. Of course for that to happen she needs a husband. She's not even sure she can have a baby, John and her were together for two years and she miscarried after his passing. It seems a hassle to go to the work of getting a husband when she just wants a baby, but she has made up her mind and therefore sets off from Scotland earlier than usual to London to go husband hunting. As it happens Michael arrives in London at the same time as Francesca and despite the years that have passed he still loves her as he ever did. Why did she have to come to London early? Why does she have to be on the marriage market? Why can't she be his? He searches his soul and the bottom of a lot of bottles but oddly it's Colin Bridgerton who breaks through when he explains that Michael has the right to be happy. What's more, doesn't Francesca? He could give her the child she wants and she wouldn't even have to love him just be his wife. But what if they could have it all?

With a long running series it's hard to keep it fresh. Just look to Lisa Kleypas's wallflower series. She started with a set four books in mind and by Scandal in Spring had obviously run out of ideas. Here Julia Quinn has set up a series double Kleypas's in length in order to make sure all the Bridgertons get their happily ever afters and yet with the sixth book she has created perhaps one of the strongest and most unique entries in the series so far. In the previous two volumes we have gotten hints about what has been going on in Francesca's life, perhaps the least discussed Bridgerton, and it was quite shocking to find out secondhand that she had not only gotten married by that she was already widowed. Where do we go from here? We go into perhaps the most relatable and affecting of the Bridgerton series. When He Was Wicked is about love and loss and guilt and it was a melancholy tale about taking a second chance at life and love. It was about coming to terms with what has passed and finding a way to forgive yourself for wanting to move on and find happiness. At times I was moved to tears by the way Francesca and Michael handled their grief over John and their desire to love again. Romance is usually just escapism and wish fulfillment, but here I found something more, something relatable. But of course no book is perfect so there was one aspect I really didn't relate to and that's Francesca's desperate need for a child. Children are a complicated issue, as Daphne saw with her Duke. There are people who want them, people who have them and don't want them, people who can't have them, people who choose not to have them, so many different kinds of people, and yet romance tends to lean very heavily to people wanting babies. I'm sorry, but I don't feel that my entire purpose on this planet is to breed and sometimes, just sometimes, it pisses me off that romance books think that I am wrong because it's not what I want. And I get Francesca and I are in different situations, she grew up in a large family and there's the familial bond and it makes sense that she wants a baby. I just want it acknowledged that not everyone wants one. Or can be talked around to wanting one, like the Duke.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Babies, Bridgerton, Colin Bridgerton, Daphne Bridgerton, Francesca Bridgerton, Grief, Julia Quinn, Kilmartin, Lisa Kleypas, Michael Sterling, Regency Romp, Scandal in Spring, Scotland, When He Was Wicked

When He Was Wicked by Julia Quinn
Published by: Avon
Publication Date: June 29th, 2004
Format: Paperback, 404 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Francesca Bridgerton made a perfect match. She and John Sterling, the Earl of Kilmartin, were made for each other. And Francesca got her dream come true, her own home, her own family. John's cousin Michael even became her best friend. Michael is a notorious rake and she loves to ask him about his wicked ways. Little does she know that he would give it all up for her. The second he set eyes on her he was lost. She was his everything, but he knew he could never have her. And when John dies suddenly he can't help thinking that some greater power is playing the world's cruelest trick on him because yes, he wants Francesca but not like this, never like this. He never wanted John's life or his title so bad to live in a world without John. So he leaves for India and doesn't look back, and in one fell swoop Francesca lost her husband and her best friend. Therefore she did what she had to do, she took up not only the mantel of Countess but that of Earl and runs Kilmartin for the husband and friend she lost. Four years later Francesca comes to a realization. She wants a baby. Of course for that to happen she needs a husband. She's not even sure she can have a baby, John and her were together for two years and she miscarried after his passing. It seems a hassle to go to the work of getting a husband when she just wants a baby, but she has made up her mind and therefore sets off from Scotland earlier than usual to London to go husband hunting. As it happens Michael arrives in London at the same time as Francesca and despite the years that have passed he still loves her as he ever did. Why did she have to come to London early? Why does she have to be on the marriage market? Why can't she be his? He searches his soul and the bottom of a lot of bottles but oddly it's Colin Bridgerton who breaks through when he explains that Michael has the right to be happy. What's more, doesn't Francesca? He could give her the child she wants and she wouldn't even have to love him just be his wife. But what if they could have it all?

With a long running series it's hard to keep it fresh. Just look to Lisa Kleypas's wallflower series. She started with a set four books in mind and by Scandal in Spring had obviously run out of ideas. Here Julia Quinn has set up a series double Kleypas's in length in order to make sure all the Bridgertons get their happily ever afters and yet with the sixth book she has created perhaps one of the strongest and most unique entries in the series so far. In the previous two volumes we have gotten hints about what has been going on in Francesca's life, perhaps the least discussed Bridgerton, and it was quite shocking to find out secondhand that she had not only gotten married by that she was already widowed. Where do we go from here? We go into perhaps the most relatable and affecting of the Bridgerton series. When He Was Wicked is about love and loss and guilt and it was a melancholy tale about taking a second chance at life and love. It was about coming to terms with what has passed and finding a way to forgive yourself for wanting to move on and find happiness. At times I was moved to tears by the way Francesca and Michael handled their grief over John and their desire to love again. Romance is usually just escapism and wish fulfillment, but here I found something more, something relatable. But of course no book is perfect so there was one aspect I really didn't relate to and that's Francesca's desperate need for a child. Children are a complicated issue, as Daphne saw with her Duke. There are people who want them, people who have them and don't want them, people who can't have them, people who choose not to have them, so many different kinds of people, and yet romance tends to lean very heavily to people wanting babies. I'm sorry, but I don't feel that my entire purpose on this planet is to breed and sometimes, just sometimes, it pisses me off that romance books think that I am wrong because it's not what I want. And I get Francesca and I are in different situations, she grew up in a large family and there's the familial bond and it makes sense that she wants a baby. I just want it acknowledged that not everyone wants one. Or can be talked around to wanting one, like the Duke.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Babies, Bridgerton, Colin Bridgerton, Daphne Bridgerton, Francesca Bridgerton, Grief, Julia Quinn, Kilmartin, Lisa Kleypas, Michael Sterling, Regency Romp, Scandal in Spring, Scotland, When He Was Wicked

Don't Look Now
Based on the short story by Daphne Du Maurier
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie, Hilary Mason, Clelia Matania, Sharon Williams, Nicholas Salter, Leopoldo Trieste, Massimo Serato, Renato Scarpa, Bruno Cattaneo, David Tree, Ann Rye, and Adelina Poerio
Release Date: October 16th, 1973
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

John and Laura Baxter are trying to pick up the pieces of their life after their young daughter Christine's death by accidental drowning in their backyard. Now in Venice John is working to restore a church while his wife is mired in her grief. Taking off time from work John takes Laura out to lunch where she helps two elderly sisters in the bathroom of the restaurant. One of the sisters is blind and claims to not only be psychic but to see Christine. This revelation has a profound effect on Laura. She collapses at the restaurant but later, back at their hotel, John and her passionately reconnect. Laura makes plans to meet the sisters again and try to contact Christine in a seance. Christine has one message, her father must leave Venice. He is in danger. The threat is unclear and John thinks it's a trick the sisters are playing on him and his wife and is angry. What does he have to fear in Venice?

Maybe the threat isn't in Venice? There's a late night phone call from their son's boarding school saying he has been in an accident. Laura rushes to England but when she is supposed to be homeward bound John sees her with the sisters making a stately procession down one of the canals. Convinced that the sisters tricked his wife into staying behind when their son needs her he frantically searches Venice for the three of them, actually going to the police in the end. But the police have their hands full with a recent spate of murders. In fact they find John's story so unlikely that they think he might just be involved in the murders somehow. When John finally finds Laura she is in England. But how? And more importantly, all this is detracting from the warning. John is still in Venice... is this wise?

Don't Look Now is the only adaptation of her work that Daphne Du Maurier ever blessed with her seal of approval. Frankly it's quite easy to see why she liked this most of all the various adaptations of her work. Don't Look Now remains true to the spirit of her short story. Instead of drastically changing locals or time frames or having Mrs. Danvers self immolate Nicholas Roeg took what Du Maurier had written and used it as a framework and built on it. Everything that happens seems like a natural progression of the short story from the page to the screen. What's more, many of the faults of the story, smug narration, a lack of foreshadowing, are eliminated by the simple expedient of the visual medium of film being able to show us instead of tell us. What I felt worked best was that Roeg carried various thematic imagery through the film but tied it back more firmly to the loss of Christine.

In Du Maurier's short story Christine's death is the driving force of the story but at the same time an afterthought. Her death from meningitis distances the reader. It's rare this could happen to them. But by having Christine drown in an accident it's more relatable. This could happen to anyone. Plus Venice being a city on water the threat of drowning is constantly present. With water and mirrors there is this reflective quality used throughout the film not just being a constant reminder of Christine's death but how it reflects back on her parents and on us. In fact I was reminded again and again of the Michael Caine classic, Dressed to Kill. Don't Look Now has that same feeling of relevancy and horror despite being made over forty years ago.

Seeing Christine's more relatable death isn't the only way Roeg makes the trauma more real. In Du Maurier's story John and Laura are in Venice on holiday, which, to an extent, makes them feel a little uncaring to the reader. Let's just forget about our dead daughter and our grieving son at boarding school and take a little trip shall we? Yeah, not the most sympathetic of characters. In the film John is in Venice for work. By them being in Venice for work and not play makes their suffering more alive. They aren't just trying to brush it under the carpet, they aren't just trying to make do and mend, they are still trapped in the sorrow but are attempting to keep moving forward. John is burying himself in work so that he won't constantly be in pain.

Their pain is a constant presence throughout the film and this connects you to John and Laura. Anyone with an once of empathy has to feel something for them. The scene that really struck me as getting to the heart of their relationship and therefore their story was a rather graphic sex scene, bizarre armpit licking and all. The reason this scene works is it shows two humans groping toward each other, trying to connect; yet at the same time it shows the distance that has grown up between them. They are physically together but mentally apart. This scene, which is a little uncomfortable to watch, is heartbreaking. To be together and apart simultaneously, it shows us, without anything but action, what grief and despair really are.

Roeg is also able to show the seedy side of Venice. This isn't a holiday for John and his wife, they are there off season. Venice is cold and wet and full of pigeons. In the story it's almost tourist perfect, with the murders shoved as far in the background as possible until that salient plot point can't be avoided. Hence when "the end" comes you missed all the clues because Du Maurier used them so sparingly, perhaps wanting that shock to the system at the very end. Roeg uses the murders ubiquitously, but in the background. Always there, always waiting, adding a level of danger, suffusing it throughout the film but never drawing too much attention to it. I loved how one of the sisters described Venice as being "a city in aspic inhabited by the dead." There's poetry and morbidity and danger all in that one phrase. Here there are alleys and shadows and mystery. Running and rushing and the feeling of danger. We aren't just stuck in John's head, we are running along beside him.

Yet the pay dirt of the film is the inclusion of the church. This is introduced by the simple expedient of John being a church restorer. Though why it's brilliant is because it gives the story balance. We have the supernatural ever present with the sisters and their premonitions. The supernatural was built in from the get go. Yet skepticism doesn't quite balance belief in the supernatural. Skepticism can't destroy evil, only good can, and that would be embodied by the church. This addition also helps to place the film strongly amongst it's peers. Good versus evil and the church were part of the zeitgeist of the early seventies. Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, The Omen, the classics of the occult horror genre all had this dichotomy. To include it in Don't Look Now? Where it logically fit? It would have been stupid not to and Roeg was cunning in his adaptation. He knew just what to add and just how to do it. No wonder Du Maurier gave it two thumbs up.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Daphne Du Maurier, Don't Look Now, Donald Sutherland, Drowning, Du Maurier December Deux, Grief, Murder, Nicholas Roeg, Psychic, Rosemary's Baby, Seances, Sex, The Exorcist, The Omen, Venice, Warning

Welcome Home, Bernard Socks by Paul Magrs
ARC Provided by the Author
Published by: Obverse Books
Publication Date: December 5th, 2015
Format: Paperback, 240 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

"Recollection of our past together is the happiest of time travel." That is all that remains of Fester cat. Memories, the fur clinging to the chair in the beach house, and the echo of his voice in Paul's head. The grief is raw and real, but once you open your heart you realize that to shut off love from your life would be doing a disservice to the memory of the one you let in. Therefore Paul and Jeremy are hesitantly aware that perhaps there is room for a new furry face in their lives. At a quaint little charity shop that is also a pet rescue, full of the tat that Paul and Jeremy love most, from old disco records to moldering paperbacks, there's a room in the back full of cats. Paul has been looking at these cat's images online, thinking it was idle curiosity, but once at THARG realizing that it was more specific. They are there to meet a dapper tuxedoed cat named Sox. Despite much to-ing and fro-ing, Sox comes to live with them.

It's a new experience for all three of them. Paul and Jeremy have never adopted a cat, Fester having adopted them. Whereas the newly rechristened Bernard Socks has boundless energy with this new life full of rooms to explore as well as gardens and other cats not locked up! It will be an adjustment for all of them, but more than that, it will be a trial as their world quite literally collapses around them. With their cozy home now a disaster zone with a nice view of the looming storm clouds as their ceilings collapse. Yet they are able cope, to move forward, because of this new fury presence in their lives. They are literally rebuilding their lives post Fester and they have found a new companion for the journey. While Fester might not approve of them moving on so quickly, as he casts his wry gaze from a place that is in no way rainbow or bridge-like, he realizes that his boys need this new fury nucleus that is full of life and vim and vigor. Bernard Socks is there for his boys, and if he occasionally needs a little nudge in the right direction, that's why Fester's watching over them all. Ungow!

"You are my first, my last, my everything." The eternal question is how do you move on from your everything? When that little furry face is gone and it hurts to take a single breath. Most cat memoirs are about the cat that comes into these people's lives, makes everything wonderful, and then leaves his humans the better for having had him around. But this is false and the reason I usually avoid them like the plague. They don't tell the whole story. Despite all these narrative contrivances, life goes on and not in a golden glow of remembered love. Life doesn't stop when you lose the one you love. Cats didn't stop with the death of Fester or with the death of my Spotty. When I lost my kitty I was shocked that the world kept turning while I was stuck standing still, there in the backyard under the stars, unable to move forward.

I still have trouble with the moving forward, which makes me applause the braveness of this book. The Story of Fester Cat was about the joy Fester brought Paul and Jeremy. How despite his death, his time with them made them a family as well as raising the book above the standard fare with Fester's unique voice. While this first volume is bittersweet, knowing that Fester's time on earth is no more, this second volume is more about life. Life is messy and it's hard to pick back up the pieces. Yet Paul and Jeremy do. Paul exorcises his grief by writing Fester's story, though the coming year will try them more than once. Welcome Home, Bernard Socks is about moving on in the wake of disaster. Finding a way to keep moving forward. The bravery of embracing change and letting love in. Being willing to let time move forward and let another furry face into your heart, while not replacing the first. This book is warts and all dealing with grief and how life wins, no matter how hard it gets, which is something we all need to be reminded of.

That is why I connect to this book so strongly. Because Paul is letting us into his life. You see his pain and his joy, you see everything and it forges a strong connection between author and reader. Ironically this is a reason I usually don't read memoirs, even if written in honor of the more elevated feline. There's a lack of connection between the writer and their audience. They have created some sort of image and are there to perpetuate that. Not to offer insight or assistance, just to glorify themselves. Well, after The Story of Fester Cat I've started to revise my stance on memoirs. I saw that they could be a reflection of ourselves. I saw they could be full of truth and love and sadness and humor. This past year I have read more memoirs and autobiographies than I ever have. While I connected to none as strongly as I have Paul's writing, I have gotten more insight into myself then I would have thought possible. I also realize that my life could be a lot worse and am grateful for what I have.

But here, now, with Paul, what I connected with most is the weird little habits that develop after you have lost your furry friend. The secretly looking at adoptable cats online and forming attachments to them based on their stories and pictures. You know it's too soon, yet you can't help downloading a few of these pictures to look at later on your desktop. You might even have a cat folder on your computer, not that there's anything wrong with that. You spin scenarios in your head, you look at the hours of shelters and think, what would it hurt to drop by? Then you are shocked by how large cats are compared to the dainty gentleman that left you too soon. Thankfully for Bernard Socks Paul's habits moved into action, while mine are still in the realm of possibilities...

If there is one flaw in this book that I could point to it is that Fester's voice is so strong that it occasionally crowds out Bernard Socks. I love the little insights into the differences of their personalities. The distinguished old gentleman versus the rollicking teenager. The "ungow" versus the "weeee-oooooo!" The fact that Fester was more of a disco lover, while Bernard Socks is all about the jazz. I'm quite convinced my Spotty was into instrumentals, though not of the loud John Williams type, more the quite Sunday afternoon miniseries type, but he loved it when you changed the lyrics to songs to be all about him. Paul is just learning about Bernard Socks, getting to know him, so aside from one little talk between the two cats, Bernard hasn't found his voice yet and it's still Fester who is talking to Paul. Don't get me wrong, I love Fester's voice, I just wonder what Bernard Socks's voice will be like when he stops racing around and settles down. We all mature into our personalities and the newest inhabitant of Paul and Jeremy's house hasn't matured yet. So in other words, I see a third book in this style in Paul's future.

It's Paul's other books that brought me to him, through his fantasy writing where his stories wrap around you like a comfy blanket as he hands you a mug of spicy tea and is there for sympathy should you need it. Because Paul's books always have a ghost of himself flitting about the pages the transition from his fantasy writing to Fester's memoirs, which stayed mostly in the realm of reality, was a pretty seamless shift. The fantastical elements were missing but not missed, and if you're not a cat person and say that Fester's voice is pretty outlandish, well, obviously these books aren't for you. Yet there was a part of me that was excited to think he might one day combine his two styles. When I read in the book's blurb that "Bernard Socks escapes and discovers a ghostly cat parade that happens every Midsummer Night’s Eve in Levenshulme" I realized that time had come. Here Paul was ready to combine his two styles into something new.  

"Deep underground in back gardens cat bones stir and start to remember." When I read these words a little frisson of excitement went across my skin. I was always the dorky cat kid who totally believed that Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats was real. I'd spend hours sitting in front of the piano with my cat on my lap trying to teach him how to play some of the songs. Because cats are magical beings that smell slightly of sulfur, and while most of their adventures are mundane, a true cat lover knows that not all of them are. And here Paul has brought to life one of those ghostly adventures, where all the cats who have left us come back to cavort on this one night every year. What it reminded me most of was the chapter "Danse Macabre" in Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book which is filled with eerie ghostly revelries. There is a melancholy frivolity to both that make them memorable. But what is most memorable is the knowledge Fester gains on his return, that cats can come back so long as someone remembers them. With this second volume ghostwritten by Fester he has guaranteed his place at the revelries for years to come. Ungow forever!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Autobiography, Bernard Socks, Cats, Danse Macabre, Disco, Fester, Ghosts, Grief, Jazz, Memoir, Neil Gaiman, Paul Magrs, Spot, THARG, The Graveyard Book, The Story of Fester Cat, Ungow, Welcome Home Bernard Socks