strange and random happenstance

The Serpent Dance by Sofia Slater
Published by: Swift Press
Publication Date: June 6th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 214 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Audrey and Noah are coming up on their one year anniversary. The only problem is that it happens to coincide with a big launch at Noah's art gallery. So instead of waiting they decide to celebrate on their ten month anniversary. In retrospect, this could have been inviting bad luck. Audrey is convinced that Noah has taken her copious hints and that they are going to Paris. Instead of working on the illustrations to the followup of her children's compendium of extinct animals which The Times called "equal parts urgency and enchantment" she has spent the last few weeks creating itineraries for Paris while obsessively checking that her passport is still valid and ignoring her looming deadline. The day of their getaway arrives and they head west to Paddignton, not north to St. Pancras. They are going to Cornwall. And maybe things would have worked out had she not thought they were going to Paris, but it's like Noah doesn't even know her and has some notion of recapturing the memories of a favorite childhood vacation of his instead of celebrating their relationship. Audrey spends the train journey to Trevennick for the midsummer festival mentally cataloging how her life has gone wrong. She wanted to be an artist, but was pushed by her parents to take the more sensible route and study graphic design. Her relationship with Noah was meant to open the door for her into the art world, instead he's constantly closing it. And now he's taking her to the country. She hates the country. She hates the dark. Does she secretly hate Noah? When they arrive they are taken up to the big house through the village with disturbing statues made of withies in the shape of amorphous animals being assembled on the green. Luckily their hostess is able to fill them in on these obby osses because she is none other than Stella Penrose, a tellie historian, who will be staying in her home with them. A home that is completely made of glass. They can literally see everything. This isn't the romantic weekend Audrey planned as she spends dinner getting drunk while Stella shamelessly flirts with Noah. Audrey goes to bed early and is wakened by Noah. He thinks something bad has happened. And he's right. Stella is dead. In a locked room in a completely glass house. But suicide doesn't sit right with the police or Audrey. And when Noah is arrested, perhaps this is the sign she needed that they are officially over. But the killer isn't. The town is backwards in more ways than one and the river will have its due.

The Wicker Man is one of the movies that will forever be a classic. It's camp, it's creepy, and it taps into our communal love of folk horror that we as viewers, and readers, can't get enough of. I love me some folk horror. But not Midsommar. Never that. Having discovered Sofia Slater when I read Auld Acquaintance I couldn't wait for this book being touted as folk horror with wicker man vibes to be released stateside and ordered it from England. It would be the book to usher in summer 2025. And, while yes, the obby osses bring a nice Summerisle vibe to Trevennick, that isn't what makes the book work. In fact I wouldn't even label it as folk horror, it's just a good old fashioned murder mystery with the trappings you might see on an episode of Midsomer Murders. In fact I'm thinking of the one where Nicholas Rowe is killed by an arrow while attempting a rite that would allow him to sleep with his sister/wife. But enough about my love for Nicholas Rowe, what makes this book work is that Sofia Slater is a writer that just makes her people and locations come alive. They are fully three-dimensional. I can picture myself going to Trevennick and walking into the Sacacren's Head and being served by the Kingcups. I am there. I am a part of this ill-fated getaway. But most importantly, it's the journey of Audrey that draws you in. She's on a legit heroine's journey. She is confronting the dark abuses of her past in a similar milieu which she has been forced into. This is full immersion therapy and I am here for it. She's figuring out who she is and what she wants and confronting how her expectations don't meet reality and it's a struggle so many of us have to face, thankfully without usually having to endure a trial by literal fire. When she tells Morwenna Kingcup things she hasn't even told Noah, you know this place is literally healing her. It also allows her to open up artistically. What starts at first as a way to make sense of the crime as well as appease her editor, she draws the crime scene and her surroundings in detail. Just remove a dead body here and add a cute bunny there, and her sequel about vanishing Britain is almost done! But the fact that what she uses for therapy helps to reveal the truth is delicious. Her artist's eye catches something that the normal person wouldn't notice and this thrills me as an artist. I am always looking at things differently, and when I go on walks with my Dad I'm pointing out all the ways to look at the world and this artistic sensibility is what saves the day. To me, as an artist, I can't explain my glee. But also, the fact that she releases her inhibitions and Noah finally see's in her art something worth exhibiting proves that our demons, our outlets, our deliverance, brings us to our true selves and only then can we achieve our goals.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Artist, Auld Acquaintance, Cornwall, Graphic Designer, Locked Room, Midsomer Murders, Midsommar, Murder, Murder Most Foul, Nicholas Rowe, Paris, Sofia Slater, The Serpent Dance, The Wicker Man, Vacation

Auld Acquaintance by Sofia Slater
Published by: Swift Press
Publication Date: November 3rd, 2022
Format: Kindle, 229 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Millie Partridge just can't catch a break. Going into the holidays single and unemployed makes her do something reckless. When her ex Nick sends her an invitation to a luxurious New Year's Eve party at a Downtonesque manor in the Outer Hebrides, Fairweather House, she uses the last of her money to get there. She is desperate for her life to turn around and this might be just what she needs, to ring in the New Year with an auld acquaintance that shouldn't be forgot. Though if she were looking for an omen, the scene of the fatal car crash she passes on the way to the ferry should have made her reconsider her plans. The island is so remote that the ferry only stops by when it feels like it and there's a storm moving in off the Atlantic, so the guests for the party are either on board with her or already ensconced in holiday merrymaking on the island. Which means Nick must have got there ahead of her. When she finally arrives at the supposedly stately home it's nothing like she imagined. This is more haunted house than manor house. And then there's Mrs. Flyte. The chatelaine who won't answer questions. Even the person who booked the venue is verboten. And as for the guests? Millie is crestfallen that despite inviting her Nick is nowhere to be seen. And what's more, these can't be his friends can they? There's an off-putting and enigmatic lawyer, Winston, a rather glamorous influencer Bella, and her partner Ravi, and James. James seems too normal to be there and like Millie he is rather out of place, which is making Millie ill at ease. Like she's fallen into a trap. But the biggest shock is that there is a guest that Millie does know. A person she hoped to never see again, her ex-colleague, Penny Maybury. What happened between them at their previous place of employment should never be thought of and Penny being here in the middle of nowhere is an unwelcome reminder. And if Millie thought that the party was off to a rocky start, well, it's nothing to what's in store. As they sit down for dinner it is revealed that the final two guests that were expected were none other than her and Penny's ex-employer and his wife and they were the fatalities in the crash that Millie passed that morning. This is a shock to the system. But not the first and certainly not the last. Come morning Penny is missing. Her coat out on the cliffedge the only sign of her. Was this deliberate or an accident? They have no way to call for help and soon it becomes all to apparent that this was no accident. Nothing was. They've all be brought here and not all will leave.

You can't talk about Auld Acquaintance without talking about And Then There Were None. And Then There Were None is the bestselling mystery of all time, which, OK, maybe that did surprise me, but at the same time, I get it. And it did bring us Aidan Turner in a towel. Of course this means that there have been many adaptations and reinterpretations, hello Aidan! Hell, even Agatha Christie changed the ending of her book for theatregoers thinking that her original ending was a little too bleak, which personally is why I like it. Auld Acquaintance is a retelling of this tale, and sadly a lot of people seem to hold that against it. Firstly, while Agatha Christie might be the best in the business, that doesn't mean that she somehow has the right to hold all the intellectual property rights over people going to an island and being killed off one by one. Yes, she did it spectacularly, but that doesn't mean that no one else can now use that trope in perpetuity. Because I personally found Auld Acquaintance to a complete and utter delight. Yes, it's derivative, but guess what? It has fun with the trope. This book brought me nothing but glee. Because while it takes from And Then There Were None it also takes from The Haunting of Hill House, making it this wonderfully Gothic melange that kept you guessing and wondering if, in fact, we did indeed possibly have something supernaturally Scotch. The "attacks" on the residents of Fairweather House really had the Shirley Jackson vibe of questioning your reality that I just can't seem to get enough of. And yes, even if you do figure out what is going on, which I did, it was still fun. This was the first book I read in 2024, in fact I started it on New Year's Eve 2023, and I would encourage everyone to do so. In fact I'm kind of wondering why I didn't reread it to ring in 2025... Because it is literally that fun. For me, the holidays mean murder, and if it can have a dash of Gothic dread, that just makes it all the more enjoyable. But most importantly, for me this book has given me a new author to look out for. While Sofia Slater's second book, The Serpent Dance, isn't available stateside yet, I couldn't wait to read it being as it sounds like it's heavily influenced by The Wicker Man and so I ordered it from Waterstones. Because once you find an author you love, you can never get enough.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Agatha Christie, Aidan Turner, And Then There Were None, Auld Acquaintance, Gothic, Murder Most Foul, New Year's Eve, Shirley Jackson, Sofia Slater, The Haunting of Hill House, The Serpent Dance, The Wicker Man

Auld Acquaintance by Sofia Slater
Published by: Swift Press
Publication Date: November 3rd, 2022
Format: Kindle, 229 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Millie Partridge just can't catch a break. Going into the holidays single and unemployed makes her do something reckless. When her ex Nick sends her an invitation to a luxurious New Year's Eve party at a Downtonesque manor in the Outer Hebrides, Fairweather House, she uses the last of her money to get there. She is desperate for her life to turn around and this might be just what she needs, to ring in the New Year with an auld acquaintance that shouldn't be forgot. Though if she were looking for an omen, the scene of the fatal car crash she passes on the way to the ferry should have made her reconsider her plans. The island is so remote that the ferry only stops by when it feels like it and there's a storm moving in off the Atlantic, so the guests for the party are either on board with her or already ensconced in holiday merrymaking on the island. Which means Nick must have got there ahead of her. When she finally arrives at the supposedly stately home it's nothing like she imagined. This is more haunted house than manor house. And then there's Mrs. Flyte. The chatelaine who won't answer questions. Even the person who booked the venue is verboten. And as for the guests? Millie is crestfallen that despite inviting her Nick is nowhere to be seen. And what's more, these can't be his friends can they? There's an off-putting and enigmatic lawyer, Winston, a rather glamorous influencer Bella, and her partner Ravi, and James. James seems too normal to be there and like Millie he is rather out of place, which is making Millie ill at ease. Like she's fallen into a trap. But the biggest shock is that there is a guest that Millie does know. A person she hoped to never see again, her ex-colleague, Penny Maybury. What happened between them at their previous place of employment should never be thought of and Penny being here in the middle of nowhere is an unwelcome reminder. And if Millie thought that the party was off to a rocky start, well, it's nothing to what's in store. As they sit down for dinner it is revealed that the final two guests that were expected were none other than her and Penny's ex-employer and his wife and they were the fatalities in the crash that Millie passed that morning. This is a shock to the system. But not the first and certainly not the last. Come morning Penny is missing. Her coat out on the cliffedge the only sign of her. Was this deliberate or an accident? They have no way to call for help and soon it becomes all to apparent that this was no accident. Nothing was. They've all be brought here and not all will leave.

You can't talk about Auld Acquaintance without talking about And Then There Were None. And Then There Were None is the bestselling mystery of all time, which, OK, maybe that did surprise me, but at the same time, I get it. And it did bring us Aidan Turner in a towel. Of course this means that there have been many adaptations and reinterpretations, hello Aidan! Hell, even Agatha Christie changed the ending of her book for theatregoers thinking that her original ending was a little too bleak, which personally is why I like it. Auld Acquaintance is a retelling of this tale, and sadly a lot of people seem to hold that against it. Firstly, while Agatha Christie might be the best in the business, that doesn't mean that she somehow has the right to hold all the intellectual property rights over people going to an island and being killed off one by one. Yes, she did it spectacularly, but that doesn't mean that no one else can now use that trope in perpetuity. Because I personally found Auld Acquaintance to a complete and utter delight. Yes, it's derivative, but guess what? It has fun with the trope. This book brought me nothing but glee. Because while it takes from And Then There Were None it also takes from The Haunting of Hill House, making it this wonderfully Gothic melange that kept you guessing and wondering if, in fact, we did indeed possibly have something supernaturally Scotch. The "attacks" on the residents of Fairweather House really had the Shirley Jackson vibe of questioning your reality that I just can't seem to get enough of. And yes, even if you do figure out what is going on, which I did, it was still fun. This was the first book I read in 2024, in fact I started it on New Year's Eve 2023, and I would encourage everyone to do so. In fact I'm kind of wondering why I didn't reread it to ring in 2025... Because it is literally that fun. For me, the holidays mean murder, and if it can have a dash of Gothic dread, that just makes it all the more enjoyable. But most importantly, for me this book has given me a new author to look out for. While Sofia Slater's second book, The Serpent Dance, isn't available stateside yet, I couldn't wait to read it being as it sounds like it's heavily influenced by The Wicker Man and so I ordered it from Waterstones. Because once you find an author you love, you can never get enough.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Agatha Christie, Aidan Turner, And Then There Were None, Auld Acquaintance, Gothic, New Year's Eve, Retelling, Shirley Jackson, Sofia Slater, The Haunting of Hill House, The Serpent Dance, The Wicker Man

Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand
Published by: Open Road Media Sci-Fi and Fantasy
Publication Date: July 14th, 2015
Format: Kindle, 148 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Julian Blake was a temperamental genius. His manager knew that if Julian stayed in his bedsit in London all summer he'd get no work done and mourn the death of his girlfriend Arianna who committed suicide. So Wylding Hall was let. Julian's British acid-folk band Windhollow Faire would secret themselves in the country for the month of August to work and reconnect. It was a summer that would produce an album named after the grand estate they stayed at that would be under everybody's Christmas Tree that December but would also lead to the disappearance of Julian Blake. A disappearance linked to a white haired girl who mysteriously appeared on the cover of the album whom no one remembered seeing. But then a lot of mysterious things happened that summer. Weird hallways and chambers that went on forever. A library that only two people ever found. A room with hundreds and hundreds of dead birds. A tune in the air that Julian couldn't help humming. And the walks in the woods that the locals warned them never to take. Yet the band and the other people who came in and out of their lives back in that summer in the seventies never compared notes, until now. Now there's a documentary being done about the album, inspired by construction that has unearthed discoveries at the house, and secrets are being revealed. The shape of things is starting to come into focus, but it doesn't seem possible. In the end it comes down to a photo in the local pub, a song Julian unearthed, and a half-naked girl with feathers on her feet.

Sometimes there's a confluence of events that come together just right that elevates an experience to another level. This occurrence started at a joint birthday party where fate decided the next book club selection would be Wylding Hall and ended in an extremely rare consensus that we all liked the book while we dunked fruit into delectable chocolate. But we all agreed, it wasn't just the book, it was something in the air. It's almost as if we were haunted and the book manifested itself for our entertainment. The waning days of summer had set in, mirroring the time frame of the events that happened to the members of Windhollow Faire as August drew to a close and their lease on the hall was up. Despite reality versus fiction and the present versus the past there was this connection that made the book almost real. It's such a short read, a mere 148 pages, and yet I just wanted their summer to be endless and for me to be able to live in this spooky yet somehow homey world. What aided the book so well was the suspension of disbelief was possible through Elizabeth Hand grounding the book in the real world. If she hadn't got the music scene of the time just right nothing else could have fallen into place, and yet she did it. Making this story of the real world yet somehow not quite of it, like the characters had walked through a fairy ring and everything was just slightly distorted. Like when Sergeant Howie ventures to Summerisle in The Wicker Man, the townspeople seem a little off, a little unwilling to talk, and pictures that might illuminate events are quickly hidden away. The balance between believability and the unknown is perfectly struck here.

Yet the way Elizabeth Hand chose to tell the story was an interesting one, yet it did present problems. She goes the route of many a documentary with each of the characters telling their part of the story, therefore capturing that feeling of reality, we've all seen this before. We could be watching a VH1 Behind the Music special about Windhollow Faire after all. Yet given the brevity of the book I had issues with the dramatis personae, it took awhile for their character traits to come through and in the interim I was lost. They were written too similarly and what was odd in my mind, there wasn't a hint of unreliability and their stories all synced up. Maybe I'm just too used to unreliable narrators and Agatha Christie trying to pull one over on me. There was just a sameness to them as Elizabeth Hand quickly cut from one POV to another. It took me quite awhile to realize that Lesley was a female, and seriously, can authors NOT use two too similarly named characters, like Jonathan and Julian? I'm not proud of this but I totally stereotyped the characters to remember who they were, the folklorist, the girlfriend, the dead guy, you get my drift... and not all of them were flattering monikers, just something so I could quickly tell who was who. A really good writer is able to distinguish the different characters enough with their voices that this shortcut of mine wouldn't be a necessity. I felt like it lowered the book. But you could argue that Elizabeth Hand wanted to sew confusion from the start. That she wanted her readers to not get a firm grip on anything. If that was the case? Good on her! See, I'm totally willing to see the other side of things because books are fluid, what the writer intended and what the reader gets could be different, but that doesn't mean both aren't true at the same time.

Though what enchanted me most was the era. Ghost stories just seem to work better when set in a time before technology ran rampant. But I've come to realize that for a ghost story or supernatural spookfest to really catch me there has to be something I connect to. More and more this isn't character driven Victorian stories but more modern pieces set in the not-too-distant past. Like the 70s and 80s. There's a reason why The Conjuring series is doing so well and has so many spinoffs and why so many people have embraced Stranger Things. These are eras that have a distinct look and feel, a time when to get a hold of your friends you had to hope they got your message left with a family member on the one phone in their house or you'd just show up and pray their parents knew where they were. A time when plans couldn't be easily changed. A time when I was innocent and to see that innocence turn malevolent, there's something supercharged about that. Here it's the 70s, and it's perfect. Not just for the distant haze that memory has given me about the decade in which I was born, but because of this insidious supernatural phenomena creeping around the familiar. We have the isolated house, one lone phone, and this kind of golden haze and heat hanging over the events. Therefore when there are clouds or cold, you know something is going to go wrong. There's strange things happening in the house, it's rambling and easy to get lost in. A library that almost no one has found. Yet all of it could be explained away. Everything could be just too much indulgence, until there's proof that this isn't the case. Proof that comes almost at the very end.

Yet that ending is really abrupt. The whole book is kind of a summer idyll interspersed with supernatural phenomena. There's a laziness to it, not in that it's badly written, but in the luxurious pacing. You just want to inhabit the story but then they leave the house, put out the album, and then this interview happens years later... and as for Julian's fate... well, we aren't given anything concrete, we aren't given anything really. That throwaway line about one of the band members maybe seeing him years later doesn't count in my mind. I became invested in these characters lives and I didn't just want the story about THAT summer and their one "hit" album, I wanted to know what came after. How did Lesley become a star? How did Nancy, the girlfriend, end up a professional psychic in Florida? But more importantly, these interviews are all happening not just because of some anniversary for an album that achieved cult status but because there is work being done at the house. Work that uncovers artifacts of archaeological as well as personal interest to our characters. There seems to be a momentum throughout the book that they will all reunite and return to Wylding Hall and yet that never happens. It felt as though right when Elizabeth Hand was about to bring all the different threads together she decided instead she'd finished and just cut the work off prematurely. This is a three-quarters finished story. There is no final act. And THIS was the only bone of contention me and my fellow book clubbers had. Where is the resolution? Where is the final chord?

Because if we are to compare this to a song, they all have a beginning, a middle, and an end. All stories do too. But this one apparently won't. Yes, I have to accept this. I have to concentrate on that which worked so well. What I'm talking about is the purpose of fables and myths and epic songs, all that which goes into folk music. All these tales were told not because they were used as entertainment, but to impart warnings. "These are songs that have been around for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. They existed for centuries before any kind of recording was possible, even before people could write, for god's sake! So the only way those songs lived and got passed on was by singers." These songs were things that needed to be remembered. Things that needed to be known so that danger wasn't stumbled into blindly. While the Brothers Grimm might have gone a little too far with the moralizing, all tales that are passed down are done so with intent. There's a reason the locals get their backs up when these musicians come in asking about what shouldn't be talked of. Though logically IF the locals wanted them to behave perhaps some truth about the village and it's local legends could have warned them off. But that's not the purpose of villagers in these stories, their purpose is to see the strangers blithely walking into danger and keep their mouths shut. The danger that lies in the woods and lures Julian away with the fairies. It's this root of what folk music and folklore is that grounds the entire book in the human experience of tradition. So while it may falter, it still resonates.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 70s, Agatha Christie, Behind the Music, Brothers Grimm, Elizabeth Hand, Folk, Going Gothic, Gothic, POV, Resolution, Stranger Things, Summerisle, The Conjuring, The Wicker Man, Windhollow Faire, Wylding Hall

Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand
Published by: Open Road Media Sci-Fi and Fantasy
Publication Date: July 14th, 2015
Format: Kindle, 148 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Julian Blake was a temperamental genius. His manager knew that if Julian stayed in his bedsit in London all summer he'd get no work done and mourn the death of his girlfriend Arianna who committed suicide. So Wylding Hall was let. Julian's British acid-folk band Windhollow Faire would secret themselves in the country for the month of August to work and reconnect. It was a summer that would produce an album named after the grand estate they stayed at that would be under everybody's Christmas Tree that December but would also lead to the disappearance of Julian Blake. A disappearance linked to a white haired girl who mysteriously appeared on the cover of the album whom no one remembered seeing. But then a lot of mysterious things happened that summer. Weird hallways and chambers that went on forever. A library that only two people ever found. A room with hundreds and hundreds of dead birds. A tune in the air that Julian couldn't help humming. And the walks in the woods that the locals warned them never to take. Yet the band and the other people who came in and out of their lives back in that summer in the seventies never compared notes, until now. Now there's a documentary being done about the album, inspired by construction that has unearthed discoveries at the house, and secrets are being revealed. The shape of things is starting to come into focus, but it doesn't seem possible. In the end it comes down to a photo in the local pub, a song Julian unearthed, and a half-naked girl with feathers on her feet.

Sometimes there's a confluence of events that come together just right that elevates an experience to another level. This occurrence started at a joint birthday party where fate decided the next book club selection would be Wylding Hall and ended in an extremely rare consensus that we all liked the book while we dunked fruit into delectable chocolate. But we all agreed, it wasn't just the book, it was something in the air. It's almost as if we were haunted and the book manifested itself for our entertainment. The waning days of summer had set in, mirroring the time frame of the events that happened to the members of Windhollow Faire as August drew to a close and their lease on the hall was up. Despite reality versus fiction and the present versus the past there was this connection that made the book almost real. It's such a short read, a mere 148 pages, and yet I just wanted their summer to be endless and for me to be able to live in this spooky yet somehow homey world. What aided the book so well was the suspension of disbelief was possible through Elizabeth Hand grounding the book in the real world. If she hadn't got the music scene of the time just right nothing else could have fallen into place, and yet she did it. Making this story of the real world yet somehow not quite of it, like the characters had walked through a fairy ring and everything was just slightly distorted. Like when Sergeant Howie ventures to Summerisle in The Wicker Man, the townspeople seem a little off, a little unwilling to talk, and pictures that might illuminate events are quickly hidden away. The balance between believability and the unknown is perfectly struck here.

Yet the way Elizabeth Hand chose to tell the story was an interesting one, yet it did present problems. She goes the route of many a documentary with each of the characters telling their part of the story, therefore capturing that feeling of reality, we've all seen this before. We could be watching a VH1 Behind the Music special about Windhollow Faire after all. Yet given the brevity of the book I had issues with the dramatis personae, it took awhile for their character traits to come through and in the interim I was lost. They were written too similarly and what was odd in my mind, there wasn't a hint of unreliability and their stories all synced up. Maybe I'm just too used to unreliable narrators and Agatha Christie trying to pull one over on me. There was just a sameness to them as Elizabeth Hand quickly cut from one POV to another. It took me quite awhile to realize that Lesley was a female, and seriously, can authors NOT use two too similarly named characters, like Jonathan and Julian? I'm not proud of this but I totally stereotyped the characters to remember who they were, the folklorist, the girlfriend, the dead guy, you get my drift... and not all of them were flattering monikers, just something so I could quickly tell who was who. A really good writer is able to distinguish the different characters enough with their voices that this shortcut of mine wouldn't be a necessity. I felt like it lowered the book. But you could argue that Elizabeth Hand wanted to sew confusion from the start. That she wanted her readers to not get a firm grip on anything. If that was the case? Good on her! See, I'm totally willing to see the other side of things because books are fluid, what the writer intended and what the reader gets could be different, but that doesn't mean both aren't true at the same time.

Though what enchanted me most was the era. Ghost stories just seem to work better when set in a time before technology ran rampant. But I've come to realize that for a ghost story or supernatural spookfest to really catch me there has to be something I connect to. More and more this isn't character driven Victorian stories but more modern pieces set in the not-too-distant past. Like the 70s and 80s. There's a reason why The Conjuring series is doing so well and has so many spinoffs and why so many people have embraced Stranger Things. These are eras that have a distinct look and feel, a time when to get a hold of your friends you had to hope they got your message left with a family member on the one phone in their house or you'd just show up and pray their parents knew where they were. A time when plans couldn't be easily changed. A time when I was innocent and to see that innocence turn malevolent, there's something supercharged about that. Here it's the 70s, and it's perfect. Not just for the distant haze that memory has given me about the decade in which I was born, but because of this insidious supernatural phenomena creeping around the familiar. We have the isolated house, one lone phone, and this kind of golden haze and heat hanging over the events. Therefore when there are clouds or cold, you know something is going to go wrong. There's strange things happening in the house, it's rambling and easy to get lost in. A library that almost no one has found. Yet all of it could be explained away. Everything could be just too much indulgence, until there's proof that this isn't the case. Proof that comes almost at the very end.

Yet that ending is really abrupt. The whole book is kind of a summer idyll interspersed with supernatural phenomena. There's a laziness to it, not in that it's badly written, but in the luxurious pacing. You just want to inhabit the story but then they leave the house, put out the album, and then this interview happens years later... and as for Julian's fate... well, we aren't given anything concrete, we aren't given anything really. That throwaway line about one of the band members maybe seeing him years later doesn't count in my mind. I became invested in these characters lives and I didn't just want the story about THAT summer and their one "hit" album, I wanted to know what came after. How did Lesley become a star? How did Nancy, the girlfriend, end up a professional psychic in Florida? But more importantly, these interviews are all happening not just because of some anniversary for an album that achieved cult status but because there is work being done at the house. Work that uncovers artifacts of archaeological as well as personal interest to our characters. There seems to be a momentum throughout the book that they will all reunite and return to Wylding Hall and yet that never happens. It felt as though right when Elizabeth Hand was about to bring all the different threads together she decided instead she'd finished and just cut the work off prematurely. This is a three-quarters finished story. There is no final act. And THIS was the only bone of contention me and my fellow book clubbers had. Where is the resolution? Where is the final chord?

Because if we are to compare this to a song, they all have a beginning, a middle, and an end. All stories do too. But this one apparently won't. Yes, I have to accept this. I have to concentrate on that which worked so well. What I'm talking about is the purpose of fables and myths and epic songs, all that which goes into folk music. All these tales were told not because they were used as entertainment, but to impart warnings. "These are songs that have been around for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. They existed for centuries before any kind of recording was possible, even before people could write, for god's sake! So the only way those songs lived and got passed on was by singers." These songs were things that needed to be remembered. Things that needed to be known so that danger wasn't stumbled into blindly. While the Brothers Grimm might have gone a little too far with the moralizing, all tales that are passed down are done so with intent. There's a reason the locals get their backs up when these musicians come in asking about what shouldn't be talked of. Though logically IF the locals wanted them to behave perhaps some truth about the village and it's local legends could have warned them off. But that's not the purpose of villagers in these stories, their purpose is to see the strangers blithely walking into danger and keep their mouths shut. The danger that lies in the woods and lures Julian away with the fairies. It's this root of what folk music and folklore is that grounds the entire book in the human experience of tradition. So while it may falter, it still resonates.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 70s, Agatha Christie, Behind the Music, Brothers Grimm, Elizabeth Hand, Folk, Going Gothic, Gothic, POV, Resolution, Stranger Things, Summerisle, The Conjuring, The Wicker Man, Windhollow Faire, Wylding Hall