strange and random happenstance

Did my Dad write this? No, seriously, did he? Because if he didn't it was written for him. Bucolic nostalgia for a young boy's formative years and first loves of a forgotten time narrated by Timothy Spall with evocative and precise language? That's what my Dad lives for. Sadly it's not quite what I live for. This had a very Lark Rise to Candleford meets Little Women vibe with young Laurie Lee growing up between the world wars and first seeing his older sister experience love and then experiencing it himself when he grows up. The problem I have is, that while it's nice to have this world captured before it disappeared forever, that just isn't enough. I wanted some sort of plot, something other than Laurie just growing up. Because of its brevity we have a very narrow window of time in which we see Laurie arrive in the Cotswolds and then depart it. Obviously he returns, because he's buried there, but at the close of this movie he hasn't found his calling, he's just a young man setting out not someone who has found his purpose and place in the world, much like Laura Timmins in Lark Rise to Candleford or Jo March in Little Women. Plus, one would assume that naming this series after an encounter with a girl named Rosie she would be the love of his life, but that isn't the case. She awakens something in him, but one day skiving off work and drinking cider under a hay wagon while making out doesn't seem that formative an experience for anyone. Especially when you find out after the fact that Rosie was his cousin. In fact for a show that is about love and relationships they are all kind of bleak and doomed. The worst being Laurie's mother Annie. Annie answered an advertisement in the paper to be a housekeeper to a widower, Reg, with three girls. She then went on to marry Reg and have four children with him. While pregnant with her last child they moved out of London and they never see Reg again. She occasionally goes up to visit him, such as when the war is over, but his job is "very important" and he has to stay in London for work. Sure. I actually wonder if he married her. He just found a gullible lovestruck young woman who would take care of his kids and sleep with him. Once he'd had enough, which was only four years mind you, he packed her off like some sort of secret, and never thought of her again. I'm pretty sure those telegrams were faked. This poor woman was with the man she loved for only four years and waited for him to return for the rest of her life. She raised his children, she sang his favorite song, all while her heart was breaking. The last time Laurie saw his father he was three. I wanted some kind of reckoning. I wanted hellfire. Sure, they didn't want for anything, but being supported and being cared for are two totally different things. How could you have an idyllic childhood with a mother who was always wearing a brave face to hide the fact that her heart was breaking? This show wants to be a feel good nostalgia trip, but for me, there's too much sadness, too many unanswered questions, too much bitter with the sweet. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bittersweet, Bucolic, Cider with Rosie, Cotswolds, Fifty-Five Years a Masterpiece, Jo March, Lark Rise to Candleford, Laura Timmins, Laurie Lee, Little Women, Narrator, Nostalgia, Samantha Morton, Timothy Spall, Writer, WWI, WWII

Leech by Hiron Ennes
Published by: Tordotcom
Publication Date: September 27th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Before the inhabitants of the chateau can send word to Inultus and the Institute that the Baron's doctor has died a new doctor has arrived, unexpectedly stepping down from the train in Verdira. The mystery though isn't how the Institute knew to send a new doctor the mystery is how the previous doctor died. The Institute's body is one, spread out all over the world. Their knowledge is shared, their knowledge is sole, therefore to not know something that happened to one of their own is truly a mystery. And they do not know how the doctor died at the chateau in the far north. They should have remembered the cause of death not just the death. The new doctor arrives and immediately starts to investigate. Trying to fill in the gaps in their memory. What could have killed this host? And there it is. The answer, waiting in their corpse for discovery; a competitor. Another parasite trying to take root. A parasite capable of killing. Because the Institute keeps their secrets to themselves the residents of the chateau do not realize they are dealing with someone who has walked their corridors for years. The Baron's son Didier, Didier's pregnant wife Helene, excluding their twins all believe that the doctor is a new entity and therefore are spending needless time introducing them to how life works at the chateau. While the doctor views this all as an inconvenience. The competition must be found, examined, studied, and then eliminated. Luckily dinner is the only time when the household assembles and no one has ever made it to dessert under the Baron's gimlet glare therefore there is plenty of time for hunting the parasite. But where could the previous body have encountered it? In a flash it comes to them, the mine. The chateau gets it's money from a wheatrock mine and there was a collapse. Something in the dark. They must return to the mine. They get the houseboy Émile to help, risking the wintry weather to find their enemy. But what if that is exactly what the enemy wants? What if returning to the mine brings the parasite back to the chateau? What if it is all happening again and there's no stopping another death and another? The Institute has bodies to spare, but does the Baron's doctor?

To have a gestalt entity be your narrator is a ballsy move. But Hiron Ennes makes it work because they have such a strong authorial voice. I often found myself questioning if someone capable of such confident worldbuilding was truly a first time author and then, when the book completely fell apart at the end, I found myself no longer asking that question. The problem is this book is dealing with big issues from bodily autonomy to class warfare to climate change on a more intimate scale. Yes we see the macro, but only filtered through the eyes of one part of the whole. And it's the continual narrowing of the vision which in the end is Leech's downfall. When the gestalt entity loses connection to the greater whole at first it's interesting. How can someone used to being something more thrive? The answer is they can't. Of course what's really happening is that the original personality is coming through. The parasitic infection is losing it's hold. And the original personality coming through is where everything falls apart. That and the fact that there really is no ending. But more on that later. Once the original personality is back in control there's a disconnect. You have forged such a connection to the gestalt entity that even though you are revolted by everything they stand for you're also somehow rooting for them. And the hints and flashes of the original personality coming through actually doesn't connect you to that character but seems to be used more to understand the world they are living in and how this entity got a foothold. The original personality should be who we are rooting for, but instead they are flat and lifeless. And that's why the last quarter of this book is such a disappointment. This world and the characters that people it are so interesting and unnerving. You feel restless and ill at ease reading Leech but at the same time you don't want to leave the Swiss Chateaux with all it's Gothic goodness and Frankensteinian vibes. But Hiron Ennes's "burn it all down" vibe that takes over the last quarter of the book while logical in the Mary Shelley sense just feels rushed. And our two protagonists riding a train off into the sunset? It somehow discounts all that came before. What is the message? That escaping from trauma is a victory even if your continued survival is questionable? And while that might be true in life this is fiction. There could have been more solidity and less ambiguity and it's only subpar Gothic literature that doesn't understand this imperative.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Chateau, Dystopian, Émile, For the Love of Book Clubs, Frankenstein, Gestalt, Gothic, Hiron Ennes, Inultus, Leech, Mary Shelley, Narrator, Parasite, Switzerland, The Baron, The Institute, Verdira, Wheatrock, Winter

Leech by Hiron Ennes
Published by: Tordotcom
Publication Date: September 27th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Before the inhabitants of the chateau can send word to Inultus and the Institute that the Baron's doctor has died a new doctor has arrived, unexpectedly stepping down from the train in Verdira. The mystery though isn't how the Institute knew to send a new doctor the mystery is how the previous doctor died. The Institute's body is one, spread out all over the world. Their knowledge is shared, their knowledge is sole, therefore to not know something that happened to one of their own is truly a mystery. And they do not know how the doctor died at the chateau in the far north. They should have remembered the cause of death not just the death. The new doctor arrives and immediately starts to investigate. Trying to fill in the gaps in their memory. What could have killed this host? And there it is. The answer, waiting in their corpse for discovery; a competitor. Another parasite trying to take root. A parasite capable of killing. Because the Institute keeps their secrets to themselves the residents of the chateau do not realize they are dealing with someone who has walked their corridors for years. The Baron's son Didier, Didier's pregnant wife Helene, excluding their twins all believe that the doctor is a new entity and therefore are spending needless time introducing them to how life works at the chateau. While the doctor views this all as an inconvenience. The competition must be found, examined, studied, and then eliminated. Luckily dinner is the only time when the household assembles and no one has ever made it to dessert under the Baron's gimlet glare therefore there is plenty of time for hunting the parasite. But where could the previous body have encountered it? In a flash it comes to them, the mine. The chateau gets it's money from a wheatrock mine and there was a collapse. Something in the dark. They must return to the mine. They get the houseboy Émile to help, risking the wintry weather to find their enemy. But what if that is exactly what the enemy wants? What if returning to the mine brings the parasite back to the chateau? What if it is all happening again and there's no stopping another death and another? The Institute has bodies to spare, but does the Baron's doctor?

To have a gestalt entity be your narrator is a ballsy move. But Hiron Ennes makes it work because they have such a strong authorial voice. I often found myself questioning if someone capable of such confident worldbuilding was truly a first time author and then, when the book completely fell apart at the end, I found myself no longer asking that question. The problem is this book is dealing with big issues from bodily autonomy to class warfare to climate change on a more intimate scale. Yes we see the macro, but only filtered through the eyes of one part of the whole. And it's the continual narrowing of the vision which in the end is Leech's downfall. When the gestalt entity loses connection to the greater whole at first it's interesting. How can someone used to being something more thrive? The answer is they can't. Of course what's really happening is that the original personality is coming through. The parasitic infection is losing it's hold. And the original personality coming through is where everything falls apart. That and the fact that there really is no ending. But more on that later. Once the original personality is back in control there's a disconnect. You have forged such a connection to the gestalt entity that even though you are revolted by everything they stand for you're also somehow rooting for them. And the hints and flashes of the original personality coming through actually doesn't connect you to that character but seems to be used more to understand the world they are living in and how this entity got a foothold. The original personality should be who we are rooting for, but instead they are flat and lifeless. And that's why the last quarter of this book is such a disappointment. This world and the characters that people it are so interesting and unnerving. You feel restless and ill at ease reading Leech but at the same time you don't want to leave the Swiss Chateaux with all it's Gothic goodness and Frankensteinian vibes. But Hiron Ennes's "burn it all down" vibe that takes over the last quarter of the book while logical in the Mary Shelley sense just feels rushed. And our two protagonists riding a train off into the sunset? It somehow discounts all that came before. What is the message? That escaping from trauma is a victory even if your continued survival is questionable? And while that might be true in life this is fiction. There could have been more solidity and less ambiguity and it's only subpar Gothic literature that doesn't understand this imperative.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Chateau, Dystopian, Émile, Frankenstein, Gestalt, Going Gothic, Gothic, Hiron Ennes, Inultus, Leech, Mary Shelley, Mine, Narrator, Parasite, Switzerland, The Baron, The Institute, Verdira, Wheatrock, Winter

Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
Published by: Public Domain Books
Publication Date: 1921
Format: Kindle, 438 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Andre-Louis Moreau "was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad." But all in all it's an uncomplicated life. So his godfather Quentin de Kercadiou is rumored by all in his small town of Gavrillac to actually be his real father, he has no complaints as that good man has educated him to be a lawyer and set him up nicely. But Andre-Louis's life is soon to change because of one man, the Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr. The people of Brittany are suffering at the hands of the aristocrats and Andre-Louis's good friend Philippe de Vilmorin plans to remonstrate the Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr for his latest crime, killing a poor man for poaching. Instead the Marquis tricks Vilmorin into a duel he will lose and lose he does. Vilmorin wasn't killed because of a dead poacher, he was killed because his views and his way with words was a threat to the Marquis's way of life. As Andre-Louis cradles his dead friend he vows to use himself to get Vilmorin's words to the masses. He might not be a revolutionary himself but he owes it to Vilmorin to fulfill that man's purpose on this earth which was cut short. In Rennes and Nantes he works the crowd up into such fury that he must go on the lam or risk the gallows. He falls in with an acting troupe that uses the old tradition of the commedia dell'arte lead by an M. Binet. Within days he's elevated himself to the role of Scaramouche, and not long after he's writing all their scenarios and is half owner in the troupe. That all comes crashing down in Nantes because of the Marquis. The Marquis is not only wooing Quentin de Kercadiou's niece Aline, but he has taken up with Andre-Louis's fiance, M. Binet's daughter Climene. In an attempt to destroy the Marquis he creates a riot at the theater the troupe is performing at and flees into the night, ending up reinventing himself as a fencing master in Paris. Because if there's one thing that is certain, Andre-Louis lands on his feet. What isn't so certain is if he will ever avenge Vilmorin's life. As the atmosphere in Paris reaches the boiling point Andre-Louis and the Marquis de la Trou d'Azyr will face each other for the last time.

There are some books that the pages just fly by. You can't believe it when you reach the end of a chapter so quickly or that you devoured the whole thing in record time. Scaramouche is not one of those books. While it took me a week to read this book it felt like a million years. I kept wondering at my lack of progress. Was this book secretly set in eight point type? I guess I will never know. I will also never know what makes so many people hold this book near and dear. I was expecting some swashbuckling epic and instead I don't even know how to quantify this book. The affectation of a detached narrator culling the best stories out of the life of Andre-Louis is too contrived. You either get pages of dialogue wherein the characters are posturing or you get the narrator droning on. But at least when it's Andre-Louis's voice speaking there is some connection between the reader and the book, when the narrator tries to tackle the start of the French Revolution in their ham-fisted attempt to distill large issues down to manageable insights you are just lost in a morass of verbiage. Though if you read a little between the lines you get this sinking feeling that Sabatini is really for the aristocrats. Yes, the book starts out trying to avenge Vilmorin by bringing down the class system that caused his death but by the end it's kind of, maybe we should have left things as they were. Yes, what happened in the French Revolution was horrific, but I don't think the system that was in place was sustainable. I just felt like Sabatini was talking too much as someone from the future knowing what the revolution became and not staying in the moment with his characters. There was too much foresight even for someone looking back on the life of Andre-Louis. And yet...I might have been able to forgive all these issues had I actually liked Andre-Louis. I didn't. He's not likable. His morals will shift to whatever suits him in the moment. He never has any true hardship. All call him heartless, and I agree. Not just because of how he behaves but because he lacks that breath of life that would make him someone I wanted to read about. And never forget his desire to avenge Vilmorin just comes and goes depending on how he's feeling that day. Why should I devote my time to someone who can't even fully commit to revenge?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 1 comments  

Labels: Andre-Louis Moreau, Brittany, Commedia Dell'Arte, Fencing, French Revolution, Heartless, Murder, Narrator, Paris, Rafael Sabatini, Regency Romp, Revenge, Scaramouche, Swashbuckling, The Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr