strange and random happenstance

By the end of Game of Thrones I was suffering from whatever the equivalent of superhero fatigue is in Westeros. I watched eight seasons of a show that, looking back on, I only enjoyed the first season of. So I hope I can be forgiven if I forget that most of the cast of that show can act. Because by the end, I think they were just phoning it is as they dragged themselves to the lackluster finale. Have you seen the pictures from the final table read? They weren't any happier than their audience was at the end. So Joan was a revelation because while I was turning in for the eighties glamour I was pleasantly surprised to be reminded what a good actor Sophie Turner is. In fact I think I might have only seen her in The Thirteenth Tale prior to this and I have to say, after the first few minutes of thinking of Joan as Sansa Stark I believed she was Joan Hannington. The hair, the clothes, the look, but most importantly that accent and the way she carried herself, she became Joan for me. She was a scheming and conniving woman who not only wanted it all, wanted it all with sparkles. She loved gems, she loved the con, she knew what she wanted and went for it. Of course this series focused more on how all of this was to facilitate the return of her daughter whom she had placed into care when she was at her lowest. It's all about Kelly. But the problem I had with this supposed love of her daughter is that she didn't know her daughter at all. She treated her daughter like a possession, like a diamond that she must have. When Kelly's foster mom invites Joan to a birthday party for Kelly, Joan brings her this elaborate jewelry box. You can she that Kelly isn't interested in it at all. Because this is the present that Joan would have wanted as a kid, not what Kelly would want. And this angers Joan. The foster mother got Kelly a present she actually wanted and Joan repays this kind woman by plotting to kidnap Kelly. Of course this doesn't go to plan and her lover ends up dead and she ends up in prison. Which is all well and good except that this didn't happen. This is billed as the life of Joan Hannington and while in an interview the real life Joan is still alive and well and highly approving of this adaptation saying that it felt like her life, it wasn't really her life. She never got "Kelly" back and, maybe I'm projecting here, but I felt like that aspect, which is central to the show, was more important to Sophie Turner due to what was going on with the disillusion of her marriage. The actors' not the subjects' life informing the art. And that isn't even the craziest thing they changed. While yes, Joan did make her fortune swallowing diamonds, the love of her life, Boise, he didn't die dramtically in a job gone wrong. He died in a fire he set himself for the insurance money years later. So while I enjoyed this show and this look into the seedy underbelly of eighties London and the glamour these people strived for, I felt the series as a whole was disingenuous. And I can suspend disbelief but I'm not going to be a stooge.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: And the Emmy Goes To, Boise Hannington, Daughter, Diamonds, Divorce, Eighties, Foster System, Frank Dillane, Furs, Game of Thrones, Jewel Thief, Joan Harrington, Prison, Sansa Stark, Sophie Turner, The Thirteenth Tale, Westeros

Affinity by Sarah Waters
Published by: Riverhead
Publication Date: June 5th, 2000
Format: Paperback, 352 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

There are secrets in everyone's lives. Everyone knows that Margaret Prior hasn't been the same since the death of her father. Only a few know that she tried to kill herself. And only one other knows that the death of her father was only the first domino to fall. His death confined Margaret to Cheyne Walk. Her dreams of Italy and a life with Helen were crushed. Helen subsequently married Margaret's brother and bore him a child. Helen, Italy, her father, all of it lost forever. Her future being nothing more than her mother's dogsbody will eventually break her. But first a kind friend of her father's tries to help. Mr. Shillitoe has asked Margaret if she would be interested in becoming a "Lady Visitor" to Millbank Prison. The scheme is that Margaret, being from a well-respected upper-class family, will be a good influence on the female prisoners. Her manners and comportment will encourage the women to emulate her. During her first visit she's uncertain if she will ever return. The despair and drudgery. The claustrophobic air. Everything combines to sap the will to live out of you. But then she sees one prisoner remarkably holding a flower. In this is a place where nothing grows. It is a mystery. One that will take over Margaret's life. Because the prisoner is none other than the famous, some may say infamous, medium Selina Dawes. Selina is in prison because her patroness died after Selina conducted a private session with a young American, Miss Madeleine Silvester, who went into a fit after Selina's spirit guide, Peter Quick, manifested himself and was rough with the her. All of this Margaret learns over time. Some from her too short visits with Selina, some from the matrons, and some from the outside world. Because that's what has happened to Margaret. She believes that her world is the prison. That she is there with Selina. And yet she cannot show how desperate she is to see Selina. Her mother has already threatened to stop her visiting the prisoners. She thinks Margaret just gets too worked up. Also Margaret cannot let the matrons suspect her partiality for the medium or they too could stop her visits. She must spread her "good work" to other inmates, hiding her true feelings and desires. But Selina understands all. Selina has manifested miracles for Margaret, flowers in the bleakest of nights. Now it is up to Margaret to get ready for another miracle, Selina's escape. The two of them will forge a new life together. The spirits just have to be willing.

Until now I didn't know that Sarah Waters had reached her full potential and written a perfect book. I should have known given how beloved she is, but of her six books I've only read half of them so I only had half the picture. I felt that The Little Stranger left much to be desired despite having a lasting influence on me and Fingersmith overstayed its welcome. So much like Goldilocks it took until I read Affinity to find something just right. The problems I had with Fingersmith in particular highlight why this book is perfection. With the story of Sue Trinder and Maud Lilly we essentially had two novels. The first half was Sue's story and the second half was Maud's story, or, if I'm being honest, just the entire story of Sue rehashed once the "twist" was revealed. The book should have ended at the twist. Leave your audience wanting more with shock and awe, with a visceral gut punch that they will never recover from. Which, ironically, is exactly what Sarah Waters did with Affinity, the book she wrote before Fingersmith. I wonder if it's because this book left questions and in some places was open to interpretation that there were critics out there who said she should work on that and then she did and it made her work less than. I would rather be left wanting more than grow to dislike a novel. Sarah Waters does an amazing job with worldbuilding. People have rightfully compared her to Dickens. She brings Victorian London to life. You feel the oppression of the air on your skin, the din of the streets in your ears. But what I found astonishing here is that she brought an overlooked part of Victorian London to life in Margaret's visits to Millbank Prison. I felt like I was there, in Millbank. The chalky walls, the confining routines, the itchy clothes, the loneliness, the dark, I was there. I was a prisoner in Millbank. And oh how it mirrors the prison of Margaret's own life. She has her own jailor in the form of her mother, her own torment in seeing her lover married to her brother, her prison is just far more luxurious. And every time I picked up this book I was taken away from my world and lived in theirs. I was there with Margaret, I was there with Selina. I WAS THERE. For a little less than a week I lived in another world. A world where a skilled Spiritualist made a desperate and lonely woman believe in supernatural powers. Believe that there was a life they could make together. A world that was someone else's. And I so believed. As George R.R. Martin said "[a] reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." But not every book gives you that lived in experience. Affinity did. Sarah Waters let me live another life. A truly unforgettable one.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Affinity, Charles Dickens, Fingersmith, Gothic, Lady Visitor, Margaret Prior, Mediums, Millbank Prison, Peter Quick, Prison, Sarah Waters, Selina Dawes, Spiritualism, Suicide, The Little Stranger, Victorian London

Can I just start this with a totally random aside? Ewan McGregor could totally be Tom Selleck's doppelganger circa peak Magnum, P.I. fame in this series. That stache, that hair... Damn. It's uncanny. Moving on from my random Thomas Magnum obsession, which is hard to move on from while watching this show... A Gentleman in Moscow... This limited series is a love letter to a bygone era of class and elegance. Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is sentenced to house arrest by the Bolsheviks. It just so happens that his "home" is the Hotel Metropol Moscow. There the lives of the patrons and workers of the hotel become his entire world. He is living the Eloise dream! The dream I held for many years as a kid. We'd go down to Chicago often and stay at The Drake Hotel. I loved that hotel so much. Everything about it, the lush carpeting, the flower arrangements taller than I was. I wanted to live there and when I found out that people actually did live there, it became a secret dream of mine. A dream that Count Rostov lives. If in an involuntary manner. Though this is set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution and the elegance and wealth of the upper class was being continually chipped away. So we see him thrown from his palatial rooms with the precious relics of his old life taken from him and banished to the attics. He moves from patron to prisoner to proletarian. All the while trying to find the silver lining in a very bleak world. And sometimes it's up to outside forces to give him the will to go on. Sometimes it's the bees. If there's one country in the world that faced the greatest upheaval in the 20th century it was Russia. This is a paean to that upheaval, that drastic change, through the eyes of someone who had the most to lose and in the end gained the most. Count Rostov, if the revolution hadn't come about, would have lived a life of idolatry and dissipation. Travelling throughout Europe from one luxury hotel to another like Maxim de Winter. And like Maxim he had a tragic death of a woman he loved in his past. Count Rostov would have been more concerned with manners and keeping up appearances than noticing the plight of those around. He knew the waiters and the workers on a superficial level, but his new circumstances give him a depth. He becomes someone to count on, someone who is entrusted with the life of a young girl who becomes his daughter, whom he would willingly give up his life for. He finds a family. But all the while the horrors of the present are banging on the doors of the hotel. Friends disappear. Friends die. The cultural shift becomes more and more dangerous. While this change takes place over decades we can't help but feel a connection to the times becoming more and more dangerous and strong men in power posing a threat. Now is the time for this show because it resonates. We must stand up to the evil, we must make our plans, and we must risk everything for freedom for those we love, even if we will not live to see that day. And while this show has big themes, it's just like a Fabergé egg, small bejeweled perfection that can be held carefully in the hand. As carefully as every human life.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Gentleman in Moscow, And the Emmy Goes To, Bolsheviks, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, Eloise, Ewan McGregor, Hotel Metropol Moscow, Magnum P.I., Maxim de Winter, Prison, Revolution, Russian, Tom Selleck

Newlywed Brits move to New York for husband's job. Husband cheats with coworker. Husband lies and says it was a one time thing. Wife finds out it wasn't. They go on vacation. The trip of a lifetime. Wife doesn't want to repeat the patterns she saw with her parents so decides her husband needs to have an accident. But fate intervenes. They run into the mistress and her boyfriend and the mistress is killed. Things get even messier. The police get involved. Mistress's boyfriend is arrested. Mistress's boyfriend is released. Wife kills mistress's boyfriend. Husband has another mistress. Husband doesn't have a clue. Wife frames him for the murder she herself committed. Wife presumably gets the divorce she wanted all along. Wife writes book. Hopefully it's a bestseller. There's nothing that complicated about this series. It's a simple tale of revenge. But it's the class of acting and the way that Jenna Coleman makes you root for Liv the entire time that make it worth watching. You feel how she has reached her last straw and so want her to kill her husband. As the six episodes unfold you keep having delayed satisfaction. The husband didn't die, but the mistress did. The husband didn't die, but the mistress's boyfriend did. Finally tying it all up by the husband going to prison for the crime the wife committed was such poetic justice. Now some people might say, it was kind of cruel to kill the mistress, as it was really the husband at fault. Well, not in my book. First, it takes two to cheat. Second, yes, I know he was emotionally manipulating her and giving her false hope but again, it takes two to cheat. Third, and most important, when the mistress meets the wife they have a moment of catharsis, a moment where they bond, and after that, like almost right after that, she tries to convince the husband to run away with her. She befriended Liv and then betrayed her, death is her sentence. As for the boyfriend? He deserved to die because he's Eric Balfour. I have hated him since the moment I set eyes on him. I actually would have been fine with him being imprisoned, he could have rotted in jail with his friend Danny Masterson, but he died, and that brings me joy. So much joy. I should maybe make Liv caving in his skull a screensaver... As for framing her husband for the mistress's murder? Well, that's just the cherry on top of the cake. And personally, I'm kind of surprised she got away with it. No one on this show has the bare minimum of knowledge about digital forensics and the omnipresence of cameras. I mean, seriously, what century do you live in? Plus you're from England, which has one of the most monitored cities in the world. But I take solace in the knowledge that if the cops actually were able to access deleted emails on the company's servers they would just implicate the husband more. But it's the final message that is the most important. Liv built her life around a man, she put her life in his hands, and his actions made her a desperate creature. He did make her do this, to an extent. But what is under that is this world women live in, a world where we are constantly in danger, where we have to think about our safety at all times, and enough is enough. Her husband thought she'd wait for him, her husband is one of the many faces of the problem women live with daily. We aren't going to take shit anymore. No more dishonesty, no more danger, we all, like Liv, have no more fucks to give.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: And the Emmy Goes To, Ashley Benson, B.E Jones, Claire Rushbrook, Danny Masterson, Eric Balfour, Infidelity, Jenna Coleman, Murder, New York, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Prison, Revenge, Road Trip, Wilderness, Women

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson
Published by: Doubleday
Publication Date: September 27th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 416 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

Ma Coker is being released from prison. Detective Inspector John Frobisher sits in his car watching the spectacle of her release. Her children crowd around her for the camera. The notorious Queen of Clubs got locked up for a minor infraction, but Frobisher knows that she is rotten and he will make it his life's work to see her back behind bars for good. His job is to root out corruption and catch the bad guys, even if they're coppers. Because to have avoided prison for so long Ma Coker has to have someone on the inside and Frobisher is seconded to the Bow Street police station to find out just who that is. Which is how he met Gwendolyn Kelling. Miss Kelling is a mild mannered librarian from York. After the death of her mother she has surprisingly come into quite a bit of money. Two girls from York have gone missing; Freda Murgatroyd and Florence Ingram. Miss Kelling is friends with Freda's half-sister Cissy and Gwendolyn agrees to go to London to look for them. Freda is a silly girl with dreams of being an actress and she obviously just dragged Florence along for company. But these kind of girls can get chewed up and spit out by London and they often end up working in Ma Coker's clubs. So when Miss Kelling shows up at the police station asking for help Frobisher is entranced by the young woman. She's so forthright, so put together, unlike his wife, that he will think up any reason to see more of her. Therefore he says he'll get his men looking into the girls disappearance, but that she might want to check out the clubs, and if she's going to go there she could help him. Miss Kelling is up for the challenge. She walks into the Amethyst, the crown jewel of Ma Coker's clubs, on the arm of an undercover cop, and ends up helping out a gang member who's been shot. This brings Miss Kelling to the attention of Ma Coker. She could use someone like Gwendolyn. Someone able to stand her ground and have a cool head in a crisis. Therefore she asks the librarian from York if she wouldn't mind running a night club. It even comes with it's own apartment. Miss Kelling jumps at the opportunity. She claims for DI Frobisher it's so she can help him from the inside, but maybe, just maybe, it's because she's drawn to Ma's oldest son, Niven. There's something about him that is intriguing. With all the clubs and all the people and the seething vast metropolis, anything is possible, but one thing is certain, at this moment in time London revolves around Ma Coker. But with an enemy list as long as hers how long will this last?

Over the past few years historical fiction set during the roaring twenties has undergone a seismic shift. Books about the "bright young things" are no longer the rage, instead the focus has shifted to those of a lower economic class. The shift started by first embracing an Upstairs, Downstairs vibe, the we're all in this together and together we can get through this. But the world has changed, a pandemic, poverty, and political upheaval has worn us all down. The best example to hand is Downton Abbey. When the first movie arrived on screens in 2019 I adored it, the cast of characters pulling together for King and Country. When Downton Abbey: A New Era arrived in 2022 with the characters flaunting their wealth and vacationing on the Riviera, I couldn't help thinking, perhaps Julian Fellowes should have read the room. This wasn't the escape I was personally looking for after two years of hell. In fact it made me hate all the Crawley family for their excesses. How dare they behave this way? And I wasn't the only one who felt this way, the fact the film made $100 million less kind of speaks for itself. Which is why readers are right pointing out that this is the book that speaks to us now, there's pain and suffering after the end of the first world war and we're focusing on the lower classes who are fleecing the parasitic bright young things. Criminals are the new heroes, I mean just look how many books have been written about Alice Diamond in the past few years and you can see the trend that Julian Fellowes was blind to. And Kate Atkinson has a way with creating memorable characters. This book might be said to have a somewhat bloated cast, one of my friends thinks there were twenty-six "main" characters, but when I started to add it up I think it was higher. Because there is no such thing as a minor character in this book. Everyone gets a backstory, everyone has their lives lovingly told in beautiful language right up until the moment Kate Atkinson got bored with them all. That is the only way I can explain how this book ended. She wrote these complex, if very self-centered characters and then just stopped. Did she hit her allotted word count? Because she kills off DI Frobisher in a death that is almost stupider than Dan Stevens's on Downton Abbey and it opened up of the floodgates; jumping all the over twentieth century clinically listing when and how the characters died, but stoutly refusing to solve Florence's disappearance or Vivian Quinn's murder. Though what made me furious with this book, beyond all the unresolved plotlines, is that Gwendolyn and Niven's future and romantic fate is "suspended between coming and going forever." That is where she left the main narrative? Now that is a hanging offense.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: DI John Frobisher, Downton Abbey, For the Love of Book Clubs, Gwendolyn Kelling, Julian Fellowes, Kate Atkinson, Ma Coker, Nightclubs, Niven Coker, Prison, Shrines of Gaiety, Soho, Unresolved, Upstairs Downstairs

The Poison Thread by Laura Purcell
Published by: Penguin Books
Publication Date: June 18th, 2019
Format: Paperback, 368 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Dorothea Truelove is a wealthy young woman. And wealthy young women need something to occupy themselves. Yes, she could marry, but her father would never approve of the policeman who has stolen her heart so she has turned to charitable works. And while visiting female prison inmates might be considered a normal outlet for someone of her class, her reasoning is more unnatural. She has taken up an interest in phrenology and wants to study the head of a murderer. Which is how she comes across Ruth Butterham at Oakgate Prison. The young seamstress doesn't deny she's a murderer, she just claims that her method of delivery is unintentional and otherworldly. She believes the items she sews are imbued with her emotions and that those emotions go on to kill those who wear her wares. She begs Dorothea to listen so that she will see she isn't insane. Her tale is a dark one. Her mother was from affluence and ran away with her father, a painter. But as time wore on they fell farther and farther down the social ladder. Ruth helped her mother with sewing she took in and it turned out she had an aptitude for it. After her father died they could no longer go on as they were and Ruth was indentured to a Mrs. Metyard. Ruth might have been better off on the streets with her mother the way she is treated by Mrs. Metyard and her daughter. The punishments were brutal and deadly. But Ruth had noticed something. Anyone whose clothes she had worked on had an ill will befall them. Little accidents and injuries. So she started to put her grievances into her labors and then there was a death. One of her classmates from her old life. They believe it was the dye from the fabric, a beautiful arsenic green. But Ruth knows better. Because this wasn't the only death. Dorothea doesn't believe Ruth's story. Besides being beyond the pale, she doesn't have the right shape of skull to be a killer. But then Ruth is forced to do some mending for the prison and illness breaks out. Could she really be telling the truth? Or is this just a poor misguided young girl whose life was stolen by circumstance?

The Poison Thread threads the needle (see what I did there) between the plausible and the supernatural, which is what Laura Purcell specializes in. Having only read The Silent Companions when I picked up this book I was slightly bemused and baffled that it handled the ending in such a similar manner. Through the whole book Purcell never spells it out if there is actually supernatural elements at play until the last few pages where the supernatural is confirmed and the book just ends. So ended The Silent Companions so ended The Poison Thread. I was worried that all her books would end in this kind of cliched manner. It almost feels like a cop out. Because admitting the existence of the supernatural and then not leaving room to explain how after all the why leading up to it makes the book somehow less than. But thankfully she has seemed to grow out of this from my further reading. And the truth is, this abrupt ending doesn't take away from this book the way it did in The Silent Companions. It just is. Or perhaps I was just prepared if it happened again... What set this book apart from other Victorian female prison fare, and yes, there are others, I'm looking at you Affinity, is the craft of Ruth Butterham. Ruth believes she has the supernatural ability to kill with her sewing. That her emotions transfer to the clothes she is working on. I totally buy this. Why you might ask? Well, as a maker, from artwork to theatre productions to clothing, I look at something I've made and I'm travelling into my past. My old work effects me when I see it, emotions, thoughts, what was happening in my life comes back to me, and I have wondered, what if that was visible to others? What if what I put in actually remains and then that would effect someone else? Could they feel the late night struggle on a seam? Could the joy I felt at burning something be tangible to another? That what if is what drives Ruth's belief. And maybe that is why I was fine with the ending, because I bought into the premise. I had wondered about my own work so it would obviously be possible for another artist to feel the same. It's logical, not necessarily supernatural.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Affinity, Arsenic, Artwork, Dorothea Truelove, Going Gothic, Laura Purcell, Maker, Mrs. Metyard, Murder, Phrenology, Prison, Ruth Butterham, Sewing, Supernatural, The Poison Thread, The Silent Companions, Victorian