strange and random happenstance

The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict
Published by: Poisoned Pen Press
Publication Date: September 30th, 2021
Format: Kindle, 322 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

When Lily Armitage was growing up the whole family would gather at Endgame House for Christmas and the annual Christmas Game. She and her cousins would solve elaborate riddles and clues to find their cache of Christmas presents. But since her mother died on the grounds twenty-one years ago Lily hasn't returned. She was raised by her Aunt Liliana so of course it's because of Liliana that she's returning. Liliana's dying wish was that Lily would return for the final Christmas Game. Over the twelve days of Christmas Lily and her cousins will vie with or against each other to find twelve keys with the prize being the deeds to Endgame House. Lily doesn't want Endgame House, what she wants is answers, and that's the reason she agrees to return. Liliana has promised that the clues will reveal who killed Lily's mother. Wearing her own designer couture that is concealing a secret Lily returns to Yorkshire. There she is reunited with relatives and retainers. Liliana's children, Sara and Gray are there, as are Uncle Edward's, Tom, Rachel, and Ronnie, with Rachel's spouse Holly, and Ronnie's spouse Phillipa. Housekeeper Mrs. Castle is on hand to take care of them and provide the daily clues while Liliana's solicitor and Lily's former crush, Isabelle Sterling, is on hand to dot the i's and cross the t's. While Lily is shocked how happy she is to see all these people the warning from her aunt is clear in her mind, don't trust anyone. Because it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye, or as happens here, Ronnie ends up dead. He might be the first but he won't be the last. Because when the first corpse appears they realize that they are trapped in Endgame House with a killer. The snow is piled high and there's a tree down across the drive. And then the car batteries go missing. Someone wants them to stay and play the game and Lily is ready to play. She came to find out who killed her mother and she is not about to die like she did.

A book claiming to be Clue at Christmas that happens to be loosely a golden age locked room mystery is a must read for me. The problem is that's not what this book is, this book is more Game of Thrones murder mystery though with even more animosity, hate, and incest. I truthfully can say not only did I dislike every single character in this book I hated them. They are all horrible horrible people who I would not like to spend one single second in the presence of. And that's not the main problem of this book! The main problem is there is no motive for the deaths. We are supposed to buy into the fact that obviously anyone would want to inherit a Manor House in Yorkshire. Yet Manor Houses aren't cash cows, this one was run as a business center for years that seemed to just barely be in the black, and everyone has horrible memories of the place, yet they want it? Even if their future plans are solid the horrible memories should make them rethink their plans. But then again, they are all either sociopaths or psychopaths, throw a dart and it's one or the other. So maybe the bad memories don't bother them? Whatever way you look at it the truth is that all these relatives go to Yorkshire to slaughter each other. And Liliana had to know what she was doing. After all her own brother killed her sister! This isn't generational trauma, this is generational homicide. The only answer I have is that they are evil. Evil evil evil. Yes, I love a Christmas murder mystery, I don't want Christmas slaughter. This book has literally one and only one thing going for it, it flips the script on the bury your gays trope. The whole idea that gay characters are expendable or deserve to die is so outdated it's shocking how many people still use it. The Christmas Murder Game was the exact opposite, and for that it should be cheered. Any character who was alive at the start of the book who identifies as queer, gay or bisexual, is alive at the end. And only they are alive at the end. All the straight characters are cleared from the board. So at least that was refreshing. About as refreshing as a snowball in your face, but you take what wins you can sometimes.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alexandra Benedict, Bury Your Gays, Clue, Endgame House, Game of Thrones, Incest, Inheritance, LGBTQ, Lily Armitage, Locked Room, Manor House, Motive, Murder, Pride, The Christmas Murder Game, Tropes, Yorkshire

The Marvels by Brian Selznick
Published by: Scholastic Press
Publication Date: September 15th, 2015
Format: Hardcover, 640 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

In 1766 there were many hurricanes. Billy Marvel and his beloved dog are the sole survivors of the sinking of the Kraken which was hit by this force of nature. Billy even lost his beloved brother Marcus in the wreck. When Billy gets to London he is drawn to the construction site of the Royal Theatre and is mesmerized by the painting of the ceiling. There he is recognized as the sole survivor of the wreck, as his picture is on the cover of every newspaper, and he enthralls the crew with his tales of the hurricane and of his brother Marcus. The painter hired to do the ceiling is so moved by the tale he paints Marcus as an angel looking down over the audience. This serendipitous meeting is the beginning of the Marvel theatre dynasty. Billy works as a stagehand and set designer, and soon he has a son, and then there is a marriage. Down the generations until their dynasty ends in 1900. In 1990 Joseph Jervis has run away from school. His parents are abroad so he decides that he will go to his uncle's house in London. He has only the faintest notion of where Albert Nightingale lives, but cold and ill he arrives on his uncle's doorstep thinking that he might just have seen a horse and carriage. Inside the house is even odder. It feels trapped not just in another time, but at a specific time. A dinner is on the table, but a dinner that was interrupted. A napkin lays askew, and it must always lay askew. Albert reluctantly lets his nephew stay in the dream world he has created in this house in Spitalfields. But Joseph must behave. But Joseph is a curious child and from artifacts around the house he starts to learn about the Marvel theatre dynasty. The more he learns, the more he hopes that he is related to them. Yet what he knows of his own family's history doesn't add up with the Marvels. So in this house of make-believe Joseph must distinguish fact from fiction and then decide which is the better way to live?

It's hard to pick a favorite Brian Selznick book in that he is the master of his niche of storytelling. His style of art combined with his prose never fails to entertain, inspire, and uplift. Here though he's tweaked his winning style by having almost four hundred uninterrupted pages of illustration followed by two hundred pages of prose with a coda, another fifty pages of illustration. There was just something about this twist that made me fall even deeper into it than I did with The Invention of Hugo Cabret or Wonderstruck. The Marvels might just be my favorite Brian Selznick book yet! The four hundred pages of illustrations sped by as I was swept away by the history of the Marvel theatre dynasty. By the time you hit the prose section you're so invested in the story that I don't get those who felt the shift in style and tone betrayed them and made them dismiss the book out of hand. Thankfully I believe these to be a minority, because the twist to the story, the way art mimics reality and the artifice of theatre just made me love this book even more. In fact I was sorely compelled to re-read the first four hundred pages a second time after finishing the prose so I could come to terms with the awe I felt with how everything tied together so perfectly. But I was so overcome with tears streaming down my face that actually trying to read or look at a book would have been impossible due to the deluge of tears. What makes this book even more special I feel is that it's loosely based on a real location and person, Dennis Severs' House. One of my friends went to this museum that Dennis Severs created, a place where you can journey back in time with his staged "still-life drama." This is immersive history in the extreme. Oh how I want to go there. But reading this book is literally the next best thing and “you either see it, or you don’t.”

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Billy Marvel, Brian Selznick, Dennis Severs, Dennis Severs' House, History, Hurricane, Illustration, Immersive, LGBTQ, Museum, Pride, Shipwreck, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, The Marvels, Theatre, Wonderstruck

Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Published by: Harper Perennial
Publication Date: 1978
Format: Paperback, 371 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Mary Ann Singleton went to San Francisco on vacation and realized she was home. Nothing her parents said could lure her back to Cleveland. Her life was finally beginning, as soon as she moves out of Connie's place, which has more kitsch than Mary Ann can stand. Connie and her were high school acquaintances and Connie happens to be the only person Mary Ann knows in San Francisco. But that won't be for long once she is embraced by 28 Barbary Lane and it's eccentric landlady Mrs. Madrigal. As Mrs. Madrigal is fond of saying, she doesn't pick her tenants, the house does. But she is responsible for the welcome joint taped to the door, and you're welcome. Across the hall from Mary Ann is oversexed Brian Hawkins, who likes being one of the only straight men in the city and views Mary Ann as a challenge. Downstairs is Mona Ramsey, Mrs. Madrigal's favorite. Upstairs, well, Mary Ann didn't even realize there was an upstairs. And in random twists of fate and happenstance that is part of the magic that is San Francisco, all their lives start to weave together and overlap and conjoin in the most interesting ways. Mona's best friend Michael "Mouse" Tolliver moves in when he and his boyfriend breakup, a boyfriend who Mary Ann happened to give a hollandaise recipe to while prowling the Safeway Marina with Connie. Brian has an affairette with Connie. Mrs. Madrigal takes up with Mona's boss Edgar Halcyon while Mary Ann falls for his son-in-law Beauchamp Day whose flirtatious ways might be hiding something deeper. The connections and relationships they forge all swirl around Barbary Lane and at the heart of it all is the benevolent and mysterious Mrs. Madrigal. Because she does have a secret, but so does everyone. Only hers might be a doozy. One people are willing to die for.

Tales of the City was originally a column in the San Francisco Chronicle leading it to be compared to Dickens and other Victorian authors whose work was serialized. Which is valid, but those authors didn't have the limitations of writing by the column inch. Each "chapter" is more a chapterette. Which makes it easier to indulge in just "one more chapter" much like DeDe Halcyon Day scarfing down a whole bag of chips in the doctor's waiting room you WILL sacrifice sleep as you devour this series. And that's the hard thing about writing a review for this book because it's more an epic soap opera stretched out over nine volumes that span forty years without real arcs, it's more episodic. In fact I couldn't remember what big moments capped this volume and I was surprised that we actually learn so little, but then again, Maupin was in it for the long game, one major plot point wasn't resolved until Mary Ann in Autumn in 2010. And I can tell you, if I didn't have, you know, a life and obligations, I'd be tearing through the remaining eight volumes at breakneck speed. Because the thing about Tales of the City is that these characters are more than friends they are family, chosen family. They can annoy you and do stupid things, you can be yelling at them hoping they can hear you, but at the end of the day there's no line they can cross that will make you cut them out of your life. In fact, when I first read this series I strongly related to Mary Ann, she's from the Midwest and naive and a bit uptight, check, check, and check, but what she does to Brian in Babycakes, I was so pissed at her, because it was something I would never do. And yes, I realize I am not the character, but this gave me many feelings rereading this book. I no longer related to Mary Ann but I understood her, she was still a part of me. This whole series is a part of me. From watching the adaptations with the dreadful Mona late at night to making ramen with my cat in the kitchen trying to get in one more chapter before the water boiled. This series is in my bones as I'm sure it is in many peoples. Now if I can just find some time to reread the next eight volumes. Who am I kidding, I'll sacrifice sleep.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 28 Barbary Lane, Anna Madrigal, Armistead Maupin, Brian Hawkins, Charles Dickens, LGBTQIA+, Mary Ann in Autumn, Michael Tolliver, Mona Ramsey, Pride, San Francisco, Serialized, Soap Opera, Tales of the City

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
Published by: Dutton Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: January 19th, 2021
Format: Kindle, 415 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Lily Hu knows she's different than other girls. It's not just that she's smarter and likes math it's that, unlike her best friend Shirley, she really doesn't have any interest in boys. Lily can use her parents' strictures as the reason why she doesn't date, but the real reason is she doesn't want to. Boys don't stir anything in her like they do Shirley. But then, one day helping out at Shirley's parents restaurant, Lily sees an ad in the paper that stirs something in her. It's for Tommy Andrews, a male impersonator at the Telegraph Club. She furtively rips the ad out and it becomes a talisman for her. A dangerous talisman. One day it slips out of it's hiding spot and her fellow classmate Kathleen Miller picks it up. Kathleen and Lily are the only two girls in the advanced math class, both with dreams in the heavens, and it turns out they have more in common than Lily thought as Kathleen says that she has been to see Tommy at the Telegraph Club. Her friend Jean took her and Kath will take Lily if she wishes. It is Lily's greatest wish to go, but the experience is more unnerving than she thought it would be. It's not lying to her parents and risking their safety, or even being in a bar with so many women free to be themselves, it's the fact that the Tommy of her imagination was a matinee idol yet the real Tommy is flesh and blood and female. How she's feeling inside is no longer hypothetical, it has shape and form, and that form is looking more and more like Kath. But there are consequences to Lily's actions, Shirley has warned her about Kathleen and in particular Kathleen's friend Jean who was thrown out of school when she was found with another girl in the band room. When she first heard the story Lily couldn't understand what could drive someone to do something so risky. Now she's endangering herself every minute with her thoughts and actions. But love, true love, is worth all the consequences.

When Last Night at the Telegraph Club was released to such acclaim, topping best of lists left and right, I thought it sounded like a rich historical fiction novel about the LGBTQ experience in 1950s San Francisco. And it is that, don't get me wrong, I just didn't think it would be so YA. And Last Night at the Telegraph Club is epicly YA in all the good and bad ways. YA, even YA done right, has a certain cringe factor, you're looking back at your teen years and you feel all the feels all over again. The sweats breaking out when you see your crush, the itch on your skin as they draw near, the horrible replay of how your tongue fumbled to form coherent words around them. It's all here. Even the horrible betrayal of a former best friend. Everyone's teenage years seem to distill down to the same level of hormonal tension and Malinda Lo has captured that universality for good and for ill. But she has also captured the deeper identity struggle that happens when you realize you're not like everyone else. I was also forcefully reminded of a situation I was in in college. One of my friends started dating a guy. She was Vietnamese and he was white. She knew her parents wouldn't approve so one day when they were on a date she told her mother she was with me. I was not informed that I was her alibi and called her house. Her cover was blown and thereafter she created a fake girl who she was hanging out with when she was really with her boyfriend. I commented that it was lucky she wasn't gay because otherwise her mom would be suspicious of this new girl friend. Her response was that "that wouldn't happen." Reading Lily's mom say there "are no homosexuals in this family" brought that moment back to me after twenty years. To have someone who you love so much deny who you are, I just don't get how anyone could be so cruel. Love is love. I'm just lucky enough to have been raised in a family that believes this.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 1950s, Communism, Drag King, Historical Fiction, Kathleen Miller, Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Lesbian, LGBTQ, Lily Hu, Love, Malinda Lo, Pride, San Francisco, Science Fiction, Shirley Lum, Tommy Andrews, YA

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith
Published by: Dover Publications
Publication Date: 1952
Format: Kindle, 260 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Therese Belivet moved to New York in the hopes of being a set designer. But waiting and hoping and making models doesn't pay the bills so she is working at Frankenberg's department store during the holiday season. She's in the toy section selling dolls and is oppressed by the noise of the toy train by the elevators, the din of the customers, and the general chaos that working in retail entails. Her life is a grind, a depressing mix of cafeteria meals and hoping her boyfriend Richard comes through with a job opportunity for her in the theater after Christmas. All this changes when she sees Carol. Carol Aird comes into Frankenberg's to buy a doll for her daughter. The doll is to be sent to Carol's home in New Jersey and the address is emblazoned on Therese's heart. She doesn't know what possesses her but after Carol leaves she rushes to send her a card. Carol calls the store, intrigued by being sent a card from an employee of Frankenberg's. She wonders if this is common practice but learns that it, and the girl who sent it, are not in the least common. Carol is going through a divorce and is separated from her daughter Rindy for the holiday season so she takes in Therese like a stray. They drive around together, sit for hours doing nothing, listening to music, having dinners out, even getting a Christmas tree for which Therese makes all the decorations. They are fast friends. As Therese muses, "It would be almost like love, what she felt for Carol, except that Carol was a woman." But women can love. And that's one of the reasons that Carol is being kept away from Rindy. The divorce isn't going well because of something that happened in her past with her friend Abby. But what Therese feels, Abby could never have felt. As Carol and Therese take to the open road the future is wide open but their past is closing in.

The Price of Salt is a classic of lesbian fiction and it's easy to see why; two women fall in love and are given a chance at a happily ever after. This was something unheard of in literature of the time as it defied all tropes of the genre. Which makes it an important book even if it's a very flawed book. The problem is that both characters are enigmas. They are ciphers. Neither really shows themself to the other fully. We have full insight into Therese's fractured and half finished thoughts as the story is from her point of view but Carol is a conundrum. Yes, I know that they are two people dancing around a taboo subject and it isn't until their trip that they take the risk to finally put their feelings into words and actions, but this makes most of the book an almost excruciating read. It isn't just a "will they won't they" situation it's a Waiting for Godot level situation. And if you're not in the mood for that level of interminable fatalism, well, then this book might not be for you. For the most part it wasn't for me until it was. Because buried among all the things not done and said all of a sudden there's this heart of gold. Yes, I'm saying The Price of Salt should have been a road trip novella. Therese and Carol finally being a couple, just touring the country, oddly skipping Wisconsin on the way from Rockford to Minneapolis, I mean, who seriously goes via Iowa, is a delight. They take pictures and do things normal couples do, they talk, they love, and we learn more about them in these few chapters than in the whole rest of the book. Plus Highsmith, with her accomplished crime fiction background, has this delicious foreboding building. Could they be being followed? Has Carol's husband given her enough rope to hang herself? All the while there's that gun in Carol's suitcase and you can't help but wonder, will it be used? Could Highsmith be going for a dark ending for our lovers? Because literature of the day demands it. When she taps the breaks, that's when you realize what a genius she is. Just not a genius at editing.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Carol, Carol Aird, Christmas, Crime Fiction, Divorce, Frankenberg's, HEA, Lesbian, LGBTQIA+, Love, Novella, Patricia Highsmith, Pride, Set Design, The Price of Salt, Theater, Therese Belivet, Tropes, Waiting for Godot

Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk
Published by: Tordotcom
Publication Date: November 8th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 144 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Helen Brandt would do anything for those she loves. She literally gave her soul and lost the life she knew to save her brother. Now her time is up. Ten years for a life doesn't seem like too bad a deal until those ten years are up. She never knew she'd forge a new life in Chicago as a private detective and part-time diviner. She never knew Edith would walk into her life and make every second precious. And as Helen sets about doing a job for Marlowe at twice her usual fee she can't help but think she'd rather be home with Edith. Though Marlowe is the perfect client, always knows what she wants, always knows how to intrigue Helen, always pays on time though heaven knows where her money comes from, as she is always living in the lap of luxury at the Palmer House hotel. And she has one hell of a job for Helen. The photos and augury in the alleyway keeping her away from Edith was just to wet Helen's appetite. The girl murdered there, Kelly McIntyre, is just the latest victim of the murderer dubbed the White City Vampire and Marlowe wants that killer brought to her. But Helen's time left on Earth is short so she turns down the job. Which is when Marlowe throws a wrench in Helen's carefully orchestrated death; what if she could get Helen her soul back? All Helen has to do is uncover the killer and she can live out her long life with Edith. The deal seems too good to be true. Which it probably is. But it's not like Helen has anything left to lose except a lifetime with Edith. But Marlowe did warn her it would be dangerous, and soon the divine and the damned are after her as she becomes the target of the White City Vampire. How could they know she's on the case? What's more the Brotherhood who excommunicated her for bringing back her brother are on the case too. If only she had an ace up her sleeve... But sadly she doesn't, but Edith might...

If I had to choose between noir and fantasy, I'll be honest, I'd most likely choose fantasy. And yet noir and fantasy merge together beautifully. I often try to think about what makes certain genres mesh together well, certain time periods just beg to have that little something more. They're usually times of great change and upheaval when you can see the cracks in the world and out of those cracks comes something magical, something different. The forties are one such time. World War II changed everything and it makes sense that along with the evil that was stirred up, so were other forces both demonic and angelic. And with the heavenly hosts I couldn't help think about how much I love the television show Lucifer. While the main framing device is the devil does a procedural, the show did so much more, especially during the noir episode "It Never Ends Well for the Chicken." This episode showed these two genres perfectly blending together and I never thought I would see that again, and then I picked up Even Though I Knew the End. I adore this world that C.L. Polk has created. There's this wonderful merging of noir and a unique magical system that is somehow, at it's bones, just so Chicago. As someone who has spent a fair amount of my life visiting Chicago they perfectly captured that sense of place. I was in a place I loved but in an era that my grandparents would have known. And don't get me started on the crime scene photography with magic aspect, that was a bullseye. This is so unique and original but at the same time it was reminiscent of things I'd forgotten I'd loved, from Who Framed Roger Rabbit to The Exorcist to H.H. Holmes, immortalized in Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City. And while this book is wonderful and perfect and complete, I want more stories set in this world! A world that is made all the more perfect by Helen and Edith's love. Helen really would do anything for those she loves and that just about breaks my heart.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 1940s, C.L. Polk, Chicago, Divination, Even Though I Knew the End, Fantasy, H.H. Holmes, Helen Brandt, Lesbian, Lucifer, Noir, Pride, Private Eyes, The Devil in the White City, The Exorcist, Who Framed Roger Rabbit

A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske
Published by: Tordotcom
Publication Date: November 2nd, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Robin Blyth's life changes in an instant because of a bureaucratic error. Despite being of the landed gentry the baronet has to take a job because of his recently deceased impecunious parents. He has an estate to oversee, a sister to shepherd through the world, and all of it needs money. Therefore he takes a job in the civil service. And that's where the error happens. He is mistakenly appointed to the Office of Special Domestic Affairs and Complaints. The mistake is that Robin, unlike his predecessor who mysteriously disappeared, doesn't know that magic exists. Therefore it is left up to his new colleague, Edwin Courcey, the liaison to the Chief Minister of the Magical Assembly, to "unbushell" him. Edwin figures it's the safest course for the time being to let Robin see a bit of this secret world, after the administrative error is corrected Edwin will administer Robin Lethe-mint and Robin won't remember a thing. But there's a time limit to Lethe-mint and the longer it is not administered the more likely it won't work. On his way home from his eye opening first day of work Robin is attacked. The thugs are magicians and curse Robin agreeing to remove the curse only if he hands over a powerful magical object that his predecessor has hidden. Seeing as Robin didn't even know of magic twenty-four hours previously it's unlikely he would know where the magical object is secreted, so he turns to Edwin. They scour the office but find nothing. What's more the curse is violently attacking Robin. He has severe attacks of pain accompanied by visions of the future. And it's spreading. This is serious. Which makes Edwin take a course of action he usually avoids. He goes home to his family estate. There the family has a massive library that might contain a clue as to how to help Robin. But there there is also family. A family that treats him as their whipping boy. While the little bit of magic Edwin has performed for Robin is amazing in his eyes, Edwin knows the truth. He barely has any magic. A fact his family likes to remind him of. And he's walking into the belly of the beast for a stranger. But their battle against curses, thugs, and family brings them closer than either of them could have thought of in their most detailed fantasies.

Touted as "Red White and Royal Blue meets Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell...featuring an Edwardian England full of magic, contracts, and conspiracies"A Marvellous Light was my most anticipated read in November of 2021. After reading it I have to say it's blasphemy that they invoked Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell to try to sell this dreck that everyone else seems to love. I just don't get it. What is so great about this book? Yes we get copious amounts of gay sex, but that needs to be balanced by the narrative, for example actually bothering to define the magical system in the world this book is set in instead of having people say it's similar to The Magicians. No. Bad Freya. You need to have your own unique magical system that is well defined. I repeat, WELL DEFINED! I should not know more about Robin's cock than I do about how the magical system works! A BALANCED NARRATIVE. That shouldn't be too much to ask for in this day and age now should it? Apparently it is as everyone just loves this book. OK, how about I attack the writing style, would that help? Well, it would help me, because I'm still pissed this book didn't deliver. The writing style is not polished, confusing, and at times so elliptical that I would have to re-read whole sections to try to get the gist of what the author was attempting to say. Also while the book is seen through both Robin and Edwin's eyes sometimes the transition from one to the other is fumbled and it's really confusing for awhile until you realize whose POV you're reading. In other words, this book is in dire need of an editor. I find it hard to believe that Tor actually published a book that is more fanfic than it is literary endeavor and really pushed out the boat to promote it too. And I want to make it clear, it's not the explicit gay sex that is what I object to, it's that the book needs to have an explicit magical system to balance it and overall it just needs to be better written. I don't even buy Robin and Edwin as a couple. They are two gay men who a thrown together in a life and death situation who learn each other's secret and therefore decide to have lots of steamy sex. And I'm not buying the whole "opposites attract" theory either. In the normal course of things neither would have considered the other as a romantic partner, and what they've been through doesn't make them bound together, it just makes them need an outlet. And that's not really romantic at all.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Marvellous Light, Baronet, Curse, Editor, Edwin Courcery, Fanfiction, Freya Marske, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Magic, Pride, Red White and Royal Blue, Robin Blyth, Sex, The Magicians, Worldbuilding

Maurice by E.M. Forster
Published by: Book-of-the-Month Club
Publication Date: 1971
Format: Hardcover, 319 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Maurice Hall leads an unexceptional life. He is neither brilliant nor dense. He is comfortably middle of the road. But ever since his teacher took him aside one day when he was fourteen to tell him about the facts of life, due to Maurice's father being dead, Maurice has known he was different. He felt removed from marriage as being life's goal. He spent years lost in the fog of puberty and adolescence to one day find a hand reaching out of the mist to him making everything clear. That hand belonged to Clive Durham, and Maurice thought that Clive would be the love of his life. Because that is how Maurice is different, he has always been attracted to men, but never known the truth of himself till Clive. They were together throughout their years at Cambridge, Clive introducing him to the world of the Greeks. In fact Clive and Maurice spend several happy years together until one day Clive says that after his recent illness he is no longer attracted to men and now wants to marry and settle down with the woman of his dreams. Maurice doesn't know how to handle this new information. How does going to Rome turn you heterosexual? He is at sea and can only see two ways out, he shall either kill himself or cure himself. Perhaps hypnotism is the answer? A doctor whom he visits says he has a fifty percent success rate. Though it's clear that Maurice can not cure who he is. Yet little does he realize that perhaps Clive wasn't the love of his life. Perhaps life can go on without Clive. Biting the bullet and visiting Clive and his new wife at the ancestral pile, Penge, Maurice meets an insolent young under-gamekeeper, Alec Scudder, who answers Maurice's cry of need in the night. But does Alec spell ruin or redemption for Maurice? Either way, it spells the end of the comfortable suburban life he has been living till now. Because who knows if homosexual relationships, true human nature, will ever be accepted in England.

Maurice was written right before the outbreak of WWI yet was never published during Forster's lifetime. A select group of friends read it and passed it around between them but Forster didn't seem to think that it was worth it to publish the book during his lifetime. This is of course due to the public perception of homosexuality combined with his book having a happy ending. It would have been obscene libel and might have gone the way of Lady Chatterley's Lover. But there's a part of me that really wishes he had published it. To have an established author release a book that was a homosexual love story might have shaken up the society of the time and deservedly so. It shows two different, yet loving, homosexual relationships between consenting adults. I can't help but wonder if Maurice was published earlier, if more authors of the time showed that this is just human nature, that maybe, just maybe, acceptance would be more prolific. And perhaps it wouldn't have taken until 1967 to decriminalise homosexual acts in private between consenting adults. The publication of Maurice being delayed made it an odd duck. It felt like it's time had already been and gone, missing the boat completely. Not to mention that the execution is lackluster with Maurice almost being a caricature. And yet it was so refreshing to find characters who just accepted who they were. Clive Durham never denied that he preferred men. Never. From his youngest yearnings he was honest with himself and his honesty let Maurice realize his own truth, that he too had always been only attracted to men. But was Forster really advocating for being openly in love? Maurice tells Alec that two against the world can do anything. Well, to me, that means to live in defiance of society, to take on the world. To Maurice it means to retire from society and hide in the greenwood like actual fairies. WHAT!?! I thought two against the world can do anything? So true love is acceptable only by complete removal from the society that is trying to conform them? The choice offered here isn't really a choice. You can make yourself an outcast, and let society win, or conform with society and let society win. Don't you get it? Love wins!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alec Scudder, Cambridge, Clive Durham, E.M. Forster, Homosexuality, Human Nature, Hypnotism, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Love, Maurice, Maurice Hall, Obscene Libel, Posthumous, Pride, Rome, Sexual Offences Act 1967, WWI

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Published by: Riverhead
Publication Date: October 1st, 2002
Format: Paperback, 548 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Sue Trinder has grown up in Lant Street. She has never left this slummy Borough of London and has never wanted to. She has lived her entire life in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, who makes her living farming babies. But Sue was the only baby that ever mattered to Mrs. Sucksby. They live with Mr. Ibbs, who makes his living in the roundabout manner of taking in dubious goods through the back door and sending it out the front in a slightly different "legitimate" form. The rest of the household is made up of Mr. Ibbs's invalid sister and John Vroom, a man with a love for dog skins, and his simple girl Dainty. This is Sue's world and they are as dear to her as family. One day an acquaintance, known to all as Gentleman, arrives with a plan to make all their fortunes using Sue. Mrs. Sucksby has always told Sue that she would be the making of them all and now Sue has her chance. Gentleman has been posing as an artist, a Mr. Rivers, for a Mr. Lilly, who lives out west in the Thames Valley. Mr. Lilly has a niece, Maud. Maud is where their fortune will be found. Gentleman has been seducing this isolated girl in hopes of getting at her fortune through marrying her but has hit a brick wall; Maud's maid. Maud's maid was their chaperon and has taken ill and now Maud isn't allowed in the presence of Gentleman. Gentleman has decided to fix that. By installing not only a new chaperon, but one that will help him pursue his interests with Maud. With Sue on the inside it is a win win situation. They will compromise Maud, throw her in an insane asylum, and split her vast fortune and live like toffs. What could possibly go wrong? In a world where there are plots within plots, games within games, and you don't know who's playing who, there are a lot of ways this could play out...and perhaps it won't be to everyone's liking.

Fingersmith is an amazing book if you were to redact the final two-thirds of the book. There's only so many times you can see the same events through the eyes of different characters before you start to tune out. But this is a very Victorian trope, like Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, it overstays it's welcome by several sections. Yet while The Woman in White might have overstayed it's welcome it was always moving forward not dwelling on the same events over and over again. Though this book can't be discounted just for falling prey to the tropes Waters is emulating. She does an amazing job of capturing the seamy side of Victorian London. Sometimes you're reading about other times and think, now that would be a nice place to visit. Not here, not this world. And I think that's what makes the world of the book so real. You feel as if this is probably the most accurate depiction you've ever read of this time period. It's filthy and dirty, it's creaking corset stays on a large woman who never washes herself and the secrets she hides within her bodice. Maud's penchant for gloves, though not of her own doing, at least is some kind of barrier to the grotesques that are discussed. But even they are tainted. The only bright spot is the friendship and love that develops between Sue and Maud. Fingersmith is perhaps most famous because it continues in Waters tradition of depicting lesbianism in different eras. Sapphic love has been around as long as there have been humans, yet it wouldn't have been openly discussed in Victorian times, despite it existing. Here Waters is breaking down another door, going all out with what would be a taboo subject and making it believable and compelling. For all the repetition and all the tropes she falls victim to in her writing of this story there is the other side of the coin. All that she does right. A more accurate depiction of the times, relationships that are real, making us readers see that this world of times gone by was just as real as the "now." Because more than anything, that is what this book does, make Victorian England real.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Confidence Trick, England, Fingersmith, Gentleman, Historical Fiction, Lesbian, Maud Lilly, Mrs. Sucksby, POV, Pride, Sarah Waters, Sue Trinder, The Woman in White, Tropes, Victorian London, Wilkie Collins

I have so many ideas for theme months that only a fraction of them make it to fruition. That being said I feel that there are some that are so important that no matter what I have to do them; and that's how it is with Pride. I've been wanting to do this for so long and looking at the world today, at all the hate against the LGBTQIA+ community, I knew that this June, no matter what, I would celebrate pride with inclusive books; books that a lot of people would like you to not read. So with more bans and more just bullshit I wanted you all to know that I am an ally. Love is love and I love you and we all love books. So let's celebrate Pride together, and you know, if people start getting us down, throw a riot or two, because it's no longer the time for hollow gestures, it's the time for action.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Ally, Asexual, Bisexual, Gay, Intersex, June, Lesbian, LGBTQ, LGBTQIA+, Pride, Queer, Questioning, Stonewall Riots, Theme Month, Trans, Transgender