strange and random happenstance

Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch
Published by: Gollancz
Publication Date: March 1st, 2011
Format: Paperback, 375 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

A body is just a body unless something uncanny happened to it. Cyrus Wilkinson apparently dropped dead of a heart attack while playing with his jazz quartet. He wasn't the first and he won't be the last jazz musician to die in such a fashion. But his body is different. As PC Peter Grant examines the body he sees why he was brought in. Or should that be hears why. Because he hears the strains to the song "Body and Soul." Despite outward appearances, this man died by magic. And the song is the key. Which means instead of turning to his boss, DCI Thomas Nightingale, he's turning to his dad. "Lord" Grant was a legend in his time. That's when he was able to play and not crippled by his addiction. It has always broken his father's heart that Peter just doesn't like jazz, but he is more than happy to spend time with Peter looking for the exact version of "Body and Soul" that Cyrus Wilkinson's body was emitting. This version has a little swing, a little something special, and it was played by one Ken "Snakehips" Johnson who died in the Blitz when a bomb hit the Café de Paris in Soho. Which leads Peter into the heart of Soho. He's sure that Cyrus Wilkinson's death wasn't the first and won't be the last. Someone is draining the life force out these talented musicians like some sort of jazz vampire, and yes, he realizes that he should have probably thought of a better name, but it's too late to change it now. With Nightingale recuperating from his recent gunshot wound and Lesley on medical leave in Brightlingsea, Peter is on this case by himself, until he picks up the remaining members of Cyrus Wilkinson's quartet as his own Irregulars who view him as a descendant of royalty. But really, the "Lord" is just a moniker gifted to his father by Ray Charles. But then there's also Simone. Simone was living with Cyrus Wilkinson before his death and she just keeps showing up wherever Peter turns. Sure Soho is small, but it can't be a coincidence. Soon she is all he is concerned with. His obsession leaves his police work by the wayside. Peter needs to remember there are jazz vampires and something far worse walking the streets of Soho and he's at the center of it.

As it so happens with the randomness of the universe I read two books set in Soho back to back. One perfectly captured Soho, and let's say, it wasn't the one written by a heavily lauded author known for her historical fiction, it was the one written by a former writer of Doctor Who novelizations which happened to include jazz vampires. While repeatedly saying jazz vampires might make you think that this book which perfectly blends the paranormal with the procedural might be a bit absurd and silly, I would counter that there's more snark and the humor is perfectly dark so the jazz vampires really do make sense even if Peter will forever feel a bit silly about giving them that name. There's also this storied history about Soho, we see the layers of time and the shifting of taste and music. I kept thinking it was the supernatural equivalent of Last Night in Soho. These two different forms of art captured a time and a place better than the previously alluded to historical fiction award winner. Then adding the procedural element on top and, oh my, I started to get Endeavour vibes. That seediness, that world where the line between cops and criminals was so narrow as to hardly exist. Clubs with smoke clinging to the wallpaper and the ever present threat of danger. And don't even get me started on the Strip Club of Doctor Moreau. Again, sounds funny, but really terrifying. Like the most horrific mashup of the London nightclub scene with "human" trafficking. I devoured this book over two days in which I literally did nothing else that wasn't necessary to keep myself alive. I enjoyed the first book, I worship this one. But what has given Peter a permanent place in my heart is his opinion on jazz. Peter's inner monologue when his Dad "played a couple of bars of 'Body and Soul', stating the melody before vamping and then taking the line in a direction that I've never been able to follow or appreciate. He looked disappointed at my reaction - he keeps hoping that I'll grow into it one day." Made my heart sing. I can't stand jazz, I can't stand the vamping. I NEED a melody that doesn't spiral off into wankery for thirty minute impromptu solos of experimentation. The music will never take me, or Peter, like that, and I am forever grateful to find a kindred soul.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Ben Aaronovitch, Doctor Who, Endeavour, Jazz, Jazz Vampires, Kate Atkinson, Last Night in Soho, London Calling, Lord Grant, Moon Over Soho, Nightingale, Peter Grant, Rivers of London, Soho, The Island of Dr. Moreau

If you were only allowed to pick one writer who encapsulated the zeitgeist of the 1920s your answer would be F. Scott Fitzgerald. I mean he is credited with naming this era the Jazz Age, a moniker first used in his 1922 short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. What's more is he embodied the hedonistic lifestyle of free flowing booze and partying that everyone associates with this decade. Most of his early life, growing up in Minnesota and New York State, disappears in the telling of his life as if he emerged fully formed as a not-quite-graduate of Princeton and a second lieutenant in the infantry stationed in Montgomery, Alabama, where he met Zelda. Their lives were so entwined that you can't tell the story of one without the other. Their pasts are almost irrelevant. Yet Scott wanted to be a writer more than he wanted anything else, even a degree from Princeton. But his hastily completed novel, The Romantic Egotist, was rejected by Scribners. With the war ended and the thought that he might forever lose Zelda if he couldn't support her he rewrote The Romantic Egotist and it was published by Scribners as This Side of Paradise on March 26th, 1920, and eight days later he married Zelda.

Always hard up for cash due to their dissolute lifestyle Scott was forever writing short stories which he hated while trying to write his next great novel. He failed in many artistic attempts, from theater to cinema, and eventually he, Zelda, and their daughter Scottie, ended up in Paris as part of the Lost Generation where a dollar could stretch farther. But Europe, and Scott's friendship with Hemingway, didn't help their marriage, and they slowly destroyed each other. Scott died in Hollywood at the age of 44 from a heart attack virtually forgotten. After his death his work was reevaluated due to a resurgence in popularity in World War II because The Great Gatsby was chosen to be a part of the Armed Services Editions. His work is also a staple of high schools and colleges across the country, guaranteeing he will never be forgotten, even if it's sometimes students bemoaning having to read his work. Well Scott would have probably bemoaned it himself, not read the book, and written his own.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 1920s, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hollywood, Jazz, Paris, Princeton, Roaring Back to Reading, Tales of the Jazz Age, The Great Gatsby, The Lost Generation, This Side of Paradise, WWII, Zelda Fitzgerald

The Uninvited by Cat Winters
Published by: William Morrow
Publication Date: August 11th, 2015
Format: Kindle, 368 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Ivy Rowan has been abed with the flu for days. The last night she is to spend at home she awakes to see the ghost of her grandmother. She instantly knows something is wrong. She has only ever seen these uninvited guests, these ghosts, as harbingers of death; someone close to her will die. Her grandmother came to warn Ivy, her father and brother have killed a man. They have murdered the owner of the furniture store, who was a German immigrant. Ivy's brother Billy died the week previously in the Great War and there are rumors that the Germans are responsible for this plague that has descended on Ivy's small Midwestern town. Her brother and father committed this horrible act of vengeance on an innocent man. Though the papers will ascribed the death to patriotic vagrants, Ivy knows the truth. Ivy's mind and body rebels, she packs her belongings and flees into the night. Out in the world, Ivy, the virtual recluse, starts to live life and form friendships amongst all the death. She helps two red cross nurses ferry the ill, she lodges with the widow of a former classmate, but most importantly she tries to make amends to the grieving brother of the man her family killed, Daniel Schendel. She is drawn to Daniel as much as she is drawn to the jazz music playing every night across the road from his store. As their relationship grows more intense Ivy starts to realize that not everything is at it seems. There are secrets too horrific to face so one should just face the music and dance.

One of my friends said that I should have been forewarned that I wouldn't like this book because the blurb declaimed that it was "perfect for those who loved The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield." To say I loved The Thirteenth Tale would be grossly untrue, even saying I liked it would be a lie... so I should have had an inkling that The Uninvited wasn't for me. But it was the deal of the day on Kindle and that cover... well, that cover has more atmosphere than the whole book and I seriously need to stop being tricked by a pretty cover. The main problem I had was that I was looking for a good Gothic read and while this does have all the elements of Gothic literature it has all these elements without them ever coming together into a cohesive whole and being Gothic. Ghosts, check, virginal heroine, check, olden days, check, laws flouted, check, add to that a horrid plague and well, I am just baffled. I think the reason it failed is twofold. The ghosts aren't scary, they're just a part of the virginal heroine's life during the Great War. On top of that while a world destroying plague is terrifying and does have the Gothic element in spades, the problem is us modern readers aren't scared of this plague. We know what the cause is. You have to take this truth and spin it or distort it in order to keep the horror relevant to modern readers.

But everything about this book was like Gothic Literature turned upside down. You think it will work and it doesn't. I had this feeling from the first pages as Ivy raised herself from her sickbed that this felt like the conclusion of a story. That we missed Ivy's story, we missed her imprisonment and illness, we missed her journey and here we are at the end and she gets her happily ever after. She is no longer in seclusion but enjoying life and getting a chance at love. Oddly enough it turns out I was somewhat astute in this observation. Because the irony is, and this is a big spoiler folks, Ivy is dead. So this whole story happens after her death. Therefore her journey has happened, her day is done, what we read here is some imagined ghostly happily ever after that Christopher Reeve was so desperately searching and then dying for in Somewhere in Time. It's most likely Winters did this setup on purpose, but that doesn't satisfy me. It makes me feel like I was manipulated from page one. I went in expecting a certain kind of book and I basically got The Others, the disappointing Nicole Kidman movie. So if you're looking for a slightly otherworldly World War I book set in the Midwest that will give your tear ducts a workout, go for it.

Your tear ducts won't be the only thing getting a workout, because this book is determined to pull out your heartstrings and beat you to death with them. One of the reasons I like Gothic literature is that it preys on other emotions, fear being the primary one. I don't like chick flicks, I don't long for a good cry, I'm not pining for something new from Nicholas Sparks. I don't want my emotions manipulated. If in the telling of a good story my emotions suffer, well, that's fine, it's the sign of good storytelling. On the other hand, if a story is written just to play merry havoc on my emotions, well, it starts to piss me off. The repeated reveals of just how many of Ivy's friends are actually ghosts besides herself was unnecessarily cruel. Yes, Winters wanted to show that these people were more than just statistics, that each and every life claimed by the Spanish Flu was a life someone missed, a life that mattered, but there's a point when you just can't take anymore. This drain on my emotions was too much to handle. The first time Ivy returns home to talk to her mother, what with everything that's been going on in my own life at the moment I just couldn't deal with it. I wanted this book to be banished from my sight. I wanted it to stop hurting me. At one point I thought, I'll hurt it by giving it one star! But then I thought, no. While this book isn't for me, while it's not what I expected, Winters is still too competent a writer to punish, like she did to me.

What with everyone being dead you can't help to start drawing conclusions to the aforementioned The Others, or to The Sixth Sense, or more importantly to the television show Life on Mars and it's sequel Ashes to Ashes. In particular the television shows spent seasons building your rapport with these characters only to have the finale of Ashes to Ashes reveal that they are in a way station after their deaths awaiting the next phase of their journey, through a pub, The Railway Arms, which leads to heaven. Now let's look at The Uninvited Guests, ghosts, stuck continuing their lives until they go to the Jazz Club and ascend... so basically exactly what happens in Ashes to Ashes without the time slip... this similarity, even if the author has never seen or heard of these shows made me feel like there was nothing truly original in this book. It felt like it was never trying to be it's own thing, just a combination of other things that worked more successfully. With Ashes to Ashes when the reveal was made with the character of Shazzer I lost my shit. This wasn't a narrative that had ever made me cry, but I was so connected to the characters that this undid me. Whereas, as I've mentioned previously, here Winters just repeatedly pulls the rug out from under you. It's not a real connection, it's not real emotion, she never works to get you to feel, it's a false feeling. Whereas Shazzer's death will always stay with me, I don't think this book will stay with me after a few more weeks.

Though there is one thing that might stick. The jazz of it all. Once you realize the characters are dead and it's basically a siren song it makes a little more sense how much the music is driving Ivy. The thing is, while I love certain artists, play piano and even saxophone at one time, I'm not one of those people with music in my veins. If you cut me I will likely bleed ink from being such a word person. Therefore I have a hard time connecting to people like Ivy who hear music and just can't stop their toes tapping. Who can't stop the call of the music as it pumps through their veins. If music is pumping through my veins I'm usually the person wondering if we can turn the music down a bit cause it's loud. Also if there's one kind of music I detest it's jazz. Seriously. Can. Not. Stand. It. Therefore this jazz that runs through the book was annoying but also was antithesis to trying to get any Gothic vibe going. So it alienated me as it blithely made the book more and more the opposite of what I was hoping for. Can we also talk about how depressing it is that these ghosts are drawn to jazz? While it was popular at this time it wasn't until the roaring twenties when this genre took hold, a decade none of these characters are going to live to see. The music and the characters are full of false life. Their story is done, thankfully for me, and it was a bleak one.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Ashes to Ashes, Cat Winters, Diane Setterfield, Ghosts, Going Gothic, Gothic, Jazz, Life on Mars, Somewhere in Time, Spanish Flu, The Others, The Sixth Sense, The Thirteenth Tale, The Uninvited, WWI

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

"There's a reason why they're called the ROARING 20s--there was a flask in anyone's pocket and a song in everyone's heart. Nights were long. Hemlines were short. Jazz was quick, and wits were quicker. The Roaring 20s make for a great getaway, if you're so inclined to make the trip." - J.J. Murphy

J.J.'s Algonquin Roundtable books, besides being addictive reads and totally deserving of a themed month on my blog, where actually my inspiration for this third section of my Golden Summer. Because there is this trend now for authors, in the historic sense, like Dorothy Parker and Josephine Tey, to be crime solvers, not like in some weird twist that the author writing the book is also the crime solver because I think that would be more non-fiction then... or Lemony Snicket... but I digress. J.J.'s books have Dorothy Parker not just as a writer during the Golden Age of Crime Detection, though she didn't write in that genre, but doing the crime detection herself in the most wonderfully witty way. I'm so happy to welcome J.J. back and if I haven't already convinced you to read his books from all my promoting, what do I need to do? Throw a party with a bathtub full of booze? Because, just FYI, my house that I live in actually had a gin still in the basement during prohibition, so I think I could maybe get something going here...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Algonquin Round Table, Dorothy Parker, Gin, Golden Summer, J.J. Murphy, Jazz, Josephine Tey, Lemony Snicket, Roaring 20s, The Algonquin Round Table