strange and random happenstance

The St. Ambrose School for Girls by Jessica Ward
Published by: Entangled: Gallery Books
Publication Date: July 11th, 2023
Format: Kindle, 368 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

St. Ambrose School for Girls has two types of girls, the ones who play sports, and the ones who dress like getting a date is their sport even though there are no boys around to compete over. Sarah Taylor's black wardrobe and matte dyed black hair are tailor made to repel either type of girl. It's better to be the one who shuts the door than the one who gets the door shut in their face. But that doesn't mean she won't be subjected to petty pranks inflicted for fun by Queen Bee Greta Stanhope and her backup band of suck-ups. What looks like minor injuries to others have the potential to be bombs that do structural damage, creating ragged gaps in Sarah's ability to function that she doesn't have the resources to patch. Because Sarah is walking a tightrope. She's on lithium to keep herself regulated, to make sure she doesn't try to eat an entire bottle of Tylenol again. She has been diagnosed as bipolar with mania and when she crashes she crashes hard. So while St. Ambrose might be a fresh start it is also a proving ground. Thankfully she has an ally, her roommate, Ellen "Strots" Strotsberry, a superstar athlete whose parents' funds the school will do anything to keep flowing, even looking the other way as Strots smokes in her room while extinguishing the butts in her soda bottles. While Strots might be sporty, the fact that she is a lesbian makes her an outsider. Her and Sarah are different, there is no place for them in this world and that means that they must band together. And Strots has had her run-ins with Greta. But Greta will soon will be dethroned as her battered body is found on school grounds. Everyone had a reason to want Greta gone, but soon the Hot RA, Nick Hollis, becomes the prime suspect. Nick has helped Sarah and she doesn't want to believe that he is capable of this crime so she starts digging. The danger though is that it brings out the worst in her, sleuthing is food for the caged beast of her illness, the possibilities and permutations nothing but raw meat dangled just outside of the bars, enticing and somewhat necessary for its survival. She has to trust her instincts but what happens when your illness has taken away all your credibility?

This is a different kind of dark academia. The St. Ambrose School for Girls is about the stifling and deadly environment of a girls boarding school. And for those who doubt just how dangerous teenage girls are, well, you obviously weren't raised a girl. There is no group crueler or more deadly. Doubt me, watch Yellowjackets sometime, it's more documentary than drama. And thrust into this hive is poor Sarah. Sarah is compelling on so many levels. I can see why some people didn't like this book, being in Sarah's head is a lot to handle. But at the same time it's fascinating, there are parts of her that are like any teenage girl, the rambling intrusive thoughts we all get, the loves and lusts. Who amongst us hasn't fallen for a teacher or TA or RA? As a young student it's usually a safe crush, because the majority of humans aren't creeps willing to exploit that. But this is dark academia... So of course the Hot RA is going to be a creep. She really should have guessed though with him letting her read his copy of American Psycho. I mean. I think that's a red flag. Though it's Sarah's thought processes surrounding Nick that I so relate to, how she wants Greta to want him and never have him. How Nick had become a talisman that recalibrated her life. Haven't you gotten to class early or stayed late just to see the object of your affection? And then, when reality reasserts itself and it's not the object of your affection that you miss but the fantasies as much as if you had had a relationship. What you ascribe to said crush versus what they really are. The scales fall from your eyes and you see the truth. But for Sarah truth is hard. It's not just that she's an unreliable narrator because she wants to deceive, she's an unreliable narrator because her brain chemistry makes her so. The meds that keep her functional also take away something from her. It's a balancing act to find the real her, the her she wants to be, and what her meds will let her be. And it's the meds actually that I find the most unrealistic sticking point. This takes place in the early nineties, so Sarah is about two years older than me. While I didn't go to a boarding school we did have two overnight school trips. I had allergy medicine that I had to take as we were at an outdoor education center. The meds were kept under such tight control they had to be kept in a locked drawer in a locked room and you're telling me that Sarah was allowed to monitor and keep lithium on her person!?! Yeah. I don't buy. That would have been given to her daily by the school nurse. I buy everything else, but this? Nope. It's too much of a liability for the school. Slightly more dangerous than an RA with previous form.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: American Psycho, Bipolar, Boarding School, Dark Academia, Greta Stanhope, Hot RA, Jessica Ward, Medication, Murder, Queen Bee, Sarah Taylor, Summer School, The St. Ambrose School for Girls, Unreliable Narrator, Yellowjackets

The Witch Elm by Tana French
Published by: Penguin Books
Publication Date: October 9th, 2018
Format: Paperback, 528 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Toby Hennessy is a golden child. Favored not just by his family but by the world. Nothing has ever stood in his way. Coddled in his privilege, that is what Toby is and assumes he will always be. But that is all about to change. There was a contretemps at work. He threw a colleague at the art gallery he does PR for under a bus in order to keep his job. Even though he himself was complicit. Such a victory deserves a celebration, a night out with the lads. A night that ends up with him being brutalized by burglars in a home invasion. He could have stayed in his room and called the cops. But he didn't. Because situations like this don't happen to people like him. People like him scare the burglars off, they don't end up forever changed, they don't end up with brain damage. His luck has finally run out. What's more, his family has been keeping secrets from him. The first of which is his beloved Uncle Hugo is dying of Cancer. Though this gives Toby an opportunity, to heal and help at the same time. Hugo has always lived in Ivy House. The home is the heart of the Hennessy family. Toby and his two cousins, Susanna and Leon, spent every summer there. There were perfect days and wonderful nights spent in the glorious garden out back under Hugo's benevolent eye. If anywhere can heal Toby it's Ivy House. He moves in with his girlfriend Melissa and for a short while it's perfect. Hugo spends his days working on genealogy with Toby's help and when Melissa get's home from work they spend the evening having a delicious meal in contented splendor. It almost seems as if this little bubble of calm and happiness with never burst. The attack is in the past and Hugo still seems his old self. But Susanna's son discovers a human skull in the wych elm and things start to fall apart. Ivy House is now a crime scene and the victim is Dominic Ganly. He was a classmate and friend of Toby's who supposedly committed suicide the summer before college. This is no suicide. This is murder. As Toby and Hugo both start to deteriorate, Toby is convinced that it was one his cousins who committed this crime. But obviously he would have helped them to take care of a bully and a pest, wouldn't he? He wishes he could remember. He wishes he knew the secrets. He should be careful what you wish for.

So far this is my favorite Tana French book after The Likeness. And I strongly suspect it's because of their similarities. They both are mysteries contained and concerning a home that is at once a safe haven and a crime scene. There's that bubble, that golden glow, that takes the characters out of time and they just live a small, circumscribed, but wonderfully content life. It's the day to day details, the joy taken in wandering from room to room and preparing a meal in the kitchen and strolling out into the garden that I just love. It's too bad that the story didn't stick to this cozy contained little world. And it's oddly not the murder or the secrets that implode this world, it's the fact that Toby is a privileged asshole. Yes he's an unreliable narrator, but you can love an unreliable narrator, you can't love Toby. What's the problem with Toby? Well, everything. He views that he's a good guy. He thinks he's always been a good guy. But, you know as well as I do, that golden boys aren't the good guys they appear to be. They have secrets, and if the worst of them is that they are oblivious to the plight of those around them, well, consider yourself lucky. So Toby could be worse, he just turned a blind eye to the torture of his cousins at the hands of Dominic, because Dominic was like him, he was his friend, and what his cousins said couldn't possibly be true. Here's the thing Toby. It's not how people treat their equals that matters but how they treat those who they view as their inferiors that does. And Dominic made Susanna and Leon's lives a living hell. And that's on you because you could have stopped it. And in your deluded PTSD brain you imagine that perhaps you did. Perhaps you helped them. You didn't. Your type never does. But that's not the main reason why I hate Toby. I hate Toby because he thinks doing a radical action will somehow free him, return him to his previous self. When Susanna and Leon did what they did to Dominic it released them from the horrors of their lives up until that point. Therefore Toby thinks that by doing a suitably grand gesture he too will be freed. There is no logic in Toby's thinking. He kills a cop who was simply doing his job, not a bully who was destroying lives, and he thinks, this will, what? Free him? That this will restore him? While I could just say two wrongs don't make a right, that's too trite. Too tidy. Instead I will say that Toby is a deluded narcissist who couldn't handle an imperfect life so decided to make it worse because there was no making it better or even sustainable. And this, this is why I hate him. You play the cards you are dealt, you don't shoot the dealer.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Art Gallery, Bullies, Burglary, Cancer, Cold Case, Dublin, Genealogy, Ivy House, Murder Most Foul, Privilege, PTSD, Secrets, Suicide, Tana French, The Likeness, The Witch Elm, Toby Hennessy, Unreliable Narrator

First impressions are important. Yes, you could get an inaccurate impression but only time will tell. My first impression of The Confessions of Frannie Langton sadly bore out. Because a show that starts with the year in a big large font, 1826 if you were interested, and then follows it up with all the characters wearing Empire waisted dresses, well, that's such a glaring inaccuracy that I just couldn't look beyond it. Every second a character was on screen I was aware that the costuming was entirely wrong. What's more there were flashbacks and they were wearing the same clothes! Fashion changes. You could make the argument that Frannie herself was poor so she would still be in older fashions, that doesn't apply to ANYONE ELSE. The Empire silhouette ended six years before this story starts. SIX YEARS. How can a costume designer get it this wrong? It's like the time I watched a documentary on the Adnrew Davis adaptation of Sense and Sensibility and the costume designer said they purposefully changed the style to add more color. And I'm still pissed about those costumes all these years later. That and David Morrissey's bad wig. But it's not like I'd actually recommend The Confessions of Frannie Langton to anyone so I guess it can go about being historically inaccurate all it wants behind everyone's back, except that there's me here stewing, I will NEVER let this go. I really want to know what was the point of making this other than to make us angry and depressed about the world we live in as well as pissing me off about costume design? We have slavery, we have implied vivisection, we have drug addiction, we have miscarriages, we have incest, we have prostitution, we have murder, and in the end, we bury our gays. Some reviewers have pointed out that the "unapologetic" nature of the love between Frannie and Marguerite somehow makes the story rise above the fact that they both die in the end. Were they watching the same show I was? Because their relationship is toxic, Marguerite turns Frannie into an addict and then cheats on her with her own "son." Oh and I totally forgot, that Marguerite then killed herself. Yeah, I'm spoiling it for you, but as I said, you shouldn't be watching this anyway. This was only four episodes long and that was four too many. There were so many good actors just doing bad material I just couldn't bear it. I was looking back at my notes from when I was watching this and I literally only like the cat. All the other characters were grasping, mean, evil, ruinous sorts. Maybe an author the likes of Dickens could have made these people interesting, but Sara Collins, adapting her own book, couldn't. And you know what, when her book came out I was excited to read it, and then excited that it was being adapted, but a dark tale told by an unreliable narrator done by incompetents wasn't what I was looking for. This was a tale dark in nature and just dark, as in the crew obviously didn't understand that lighting was needed for the viewers to see the characters and it was glaringly obvious they had never lite a dark skinned person in their lives. So all those people out there decrying that a show about lesbians is morally reprehensible, first off, I will never agree with you, but more importantly, if you watched this you'd have legitimate reasons to complain.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: And the Emmy Goes To, Andrew Davies, Charles Dickens, Costumes, Empire Silhouette, Lesbians, Murder, Sara Collins, Sense and Sensibility, Slavery, The Confessions of Frannie Langton, Toxic, Unreliable Narrator

In The Woods by Tana French
Published by: Penguin Books
Publication Date: May 17th, 2007
Format: Paperback, 429 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Knocknaree, 1984. A new housing development outside Dublin that strives to be something more. It will be something more shortly as it becomes the scene of a baffling crime. Three kids were playing in the woods that abutted the development. One night they never came home. Only one of the kids, Adam, was found. He has no idea what happened to his two friends. He was found clutching and clawing at a tree with his shirt torn and his shoes full of blood not his own. He couldn't stay in Knocknaree. He couldn't take the endless questions he could never answer. He left to go to boarding school, changed his name, adopted a new accent, and never looked back. Over twenty years later Adam, now going by the name Rob Ryan, is a rising star of Dublin's Murder Squad with his partner Cassie Maddox. They get things done at work and are rumored to get things done in private too. But the past is about to come back to haunt Rob as they are assigned to the murder of a twelve year old girl in Knocknaree. Cassie is one of a few who know's Rob's history and wonders if perhaps they shouldn't take the case because it might compromise the investigation. Rob bulldozes over Cassie's objections but he has some trepidation as he steps back into the woods and looks at the body of Katy Devlin, laid out on a sacrificial stone that is part of an archaeological dig that is about to be shut down because of a proposed motorway. Could Katy's death be related to the disappearances all those years ago? A clue at the crime scene does link them. And what of Katy's family? A wounded older sister, a non-communicative twin, a cipher of a mother, and a father with many enemies as he tries to stop the motorway. Or could her death have to do with the archaeological dig? One thing is clear, the answers won't be easy, and for Rob, they might be hard to accept. He's starting to piece together more of what happened in the past, but will he ever get any closure of his own? At least he can bring closure to the Devlins.

In The Woods was heralded as a new kind of mystery when it was released. It broke the mold and swept all the awards. The thing is, I don't see it. Instead of just having Rob be an unreliable narrator he's an asshole narrator who also happens to be unreliable. This is supposedly groundbreaking? Sometimes I just scratch my head in bafflement. Does no one remember Agatha Christie's Endless Night? Michael Rogers is a total dick first person narrator who is also completely unreliable because he's not just a dick he's a murderer. While Rob isn't a killer maybe it would have made him more interesting if he was? I just don't get how time and time again people who are reviewing or lauding books come across like they are doing so in a bubble. Yes, a book should be take on it's own merits but if you are trying to say that it's doing something that's never been done before, please just look to the precedence and see if this is actually the case. Because this was so not the case here. What annoyed me most about Rob is that he would listen to no one, take no advice, would do stupid things, and his own stupidity led to a killer walking free AND he broke Cassie's heart. Most of that I could forgive because he's a total feckin' eejit, but Cassie!?! I mean really, what was this book supposed to prove? That even if we think we're over the past it can still hurt us? That damage in our youth will continue to damage us if we don't face up to it? When I first picked up this book when I was out shopping with one of my friends she commented on how she really couldn't get into this book. I can see why. But at the same time I am grateful for this book, as strange as that may seem, because I adored the second book in this series, The Likeness. So, if I had to wade through the muck and despair and denial that is Rob Ryan's life to get to sublimity that is Cassie Maddox in The Likeness, I think it was worth it.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Agatha Christie, Asshole Narrator, Awards, Cassie Maddox, Disappearance, Dublin, Dublin Murder Squad, Endless Night, In the Woods, Knocknaree, Murder, Murder Most Foul, Rob Ryan, The Likeness, Unreliable Narrator

Survive the Night by Riley Sager
Published by: Dutton
Publication Date: June 29th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Charlie needs to get away from campus. She needs to flee to her grandmother's house. The fall semester has been a killer. Literally. Her unique and funny roommate Maddy was murdered by The Campus Killer. What's worse is that Charlie might have seen Maddy's killer. Only problem is, Charlie's memory isn't exactly reliable. Ever since her parents died she has taken refuge in old movies. Whenever the world gets to be too much she starts hallucinating. Her brain flips a switch and turns on a projector, making the world around her into a movie. These "movies in her mind" started at her parents funeral and happened again that fateful night when she was angry at Maddy and stormed off, turning back once to see someone lighting Maddy's cigarette. Someone she can't identify no matter how hard she tries. She has barely been able to leave the dorm room she shared with Maddy since then. As the Thanksgiving holiday nears Charlie has decided to head home. To leave New Jersey, and her boyfriend, possibly forever. She can't think that far ahead, to the end of the semester, all she can think of is to flee. This is 1991. There aren't many options for her to get back to Ohio aside from the campus rideshare board. There she meets Josh. Josh looks just like the kind of upright college student whom you could trust to get you home. And despite everything that has happened to her Charlie is willing to trust Josh with her life. Her boyfriend Robbie tells her that if at anytime something feels wrong or off to call him and tell him that "things took a detour." Charlie likes that, it's very Hollywood. Plus, if things feel off she doesn't even have to get in Josh's car. But when he pulls up she does. She puts on Maddy's red coat and gets in the car and before they even reach the interstate she's wondering if she's made a mistake. Things just seem off about Josh. He doesn't know campus landmarks despite claiming to work there. But Charlie knows her own mind isn't to be trusted. She lapses into movie memories and montages all the time. Though wouldn't a clever killer use her illness to trap her? Are they even heading to Ohio or was that just a convenient lie to get her in the car? So the question becomes, is she safe anywhere when her own mind is playing tricks on her? Or did things just take a detour?

Every once in awhile there's a book you just can't wait to get your hands on. For me there's just a handful of authors that I adore but I am usually able to wangle an advance reading copy because of my blog. Note, I set up my blog to get free books, now I get free books, blog's purpose justified! The problem with a Riley Sager book is that keeping a tight lid on spoilers is the number one priority of the publishers so... despite Dutton loving me in the past I had to wait like all the other plebs. AND face rejection on a handful of e-galley sites. Such. False. Hope. Which meant my expectations kept getting higher and higher. There was even a few minutes when I thought of buying Survive the Night for my Kindle because I couldn't wait for my physical copy to arrive! But I patiently waited, and the more I waited, the less likely the book was going to live up to my expectations if I'm honest. And the thing I kept seeing and hearing again and again without even looking for spoilers was that you would either love or loath the twist. Now I'm one of those people who assume everything will have a twist, but I don't want to be told because then I'm hyper aware. I'm like Roy on the cannibalism episode of The IT Crowd "Moss and the German," I do not want to be guessing when and what the twist is. I remember going to see The Village and because M. Night Shyamalan was the twist king, well, my friend Matt and I made a game of it and started correctly guessing the twists long before they happened. That wasn't a fun trip to the movies in regards to enjoying the movie. So Survive the Night came and I read it in virtually one sitting, which is surprising for me as I read at a speaking pace. Yes, I saw the twist coming, and honestly, I don't think it deserved the moniker if I'm honest. This is a thriller that's twisting constantly, like a tooth about to be pulled out. It's a ride that you're waiting to end because you want to know what happens and because, if I'm honest, Charlie is kind of an annoying unreliable narrator. So yes, there are lots of tropes and twists but it's more the movie references that are at the heart of this book. If you're a film geek like me, well, it comes together in a nice bow at the end and you kind of forget the bumps in the road along the way. If you don't like films... well, you might be in for a bumpy ride.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: ARCs, Dutton, Films, Going Gothic, Hollywood, M. Night Shyamalan, Murder, Rideshare, Riley Sager, Serial Killer, Survive the Night, The Campus Killer, The IT Crowd, The Village, Tropes, Twist, Unreliable Narrator

Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Based on the book by Agatha Christie
Starring: David Suchet, Roger Frost, Oliver Ford Davies, Malcolm Terris, Nigel Cooke, Jamie Bamber, Rosalind Bailey, Gregor Truter, Clive Brunt, Selina Cadell, Daisy Beaumont, Flora Montgomery, Vivien Heilbron, and Philip Jackson
Release Date: January 2nd, 2000
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Poirot arrives at a bank. He carefully removes a waterlogged journal from a safety deposit box. He sits himself down and reviews the journal of a depraved mind. A mind for murder. The events of which happened when Poirot retired to King's Abbot to grow mallows. On the day that Mrs. Ferrars was to kill herself Dr. Sheppard accompanied Roger Ackroyd's butler over to his neighbor Poirot's house. Poirot was attempting to successfully cultivate mallows with the loving care only an obsessive compulsive could lavish on the vegetables and yet he does not succeed. Thankfully Parker has come at the request of his employer to ask if Poirot's tour of the factory could be moved forward an hour, to which Poirot is glad to accede, the mallows will only frustrate him more. Years earlier Poirot lent his friend Roger Ackroyd startup capital and he has turned it into an empire. An empire with many pieces and many players, some of whom aren't happy. Before the tour concludes, Poirot will see Roger's unhappy secretary, Geoffrey Raymond, and Roger's distraught stepson, Ralph Paton, who is begging his father to not announce his engagement to Flora Ackroyd, Roger's niece, in this coming Sunday's paper, as well as a frantic phone call from Mrs. Ferrars. That night Mrs. Ferrars takes her own life and the next morning Roger asks Poirot to stop by his house. Poirot is disturbed to learn that Mrs. Ferrars was being blackmailed, though she refused to say who the culprit was. Poirot leaves as a dinner party arrives at Roger's house and he goes home to ruminate. Something isn't sitting right with him and he's worried for his friend. He has every reason to be worried because by the time Poirot returns to Roger's house later that evening Roger is dead, in a locked room. The sequence of events seems to be simple enough and Ralph Paton seems to be the culprit, but Poirot isn't so sure. He is reluctant to return to detection but to avenge his friend he must! And when another old friend arrives to help solve the crime it's like old times. Too bad it's old times that drove Poirot to the mallows.    

I went into this episode of Poirot expecting many changes from the source material. There are some things unique to literature that can not be replicated in a visual medium. A story narrated by the killer whilst simultaneously concealing their guilt from the reader, a trope that Christie used several times, would be virtually impossible to pull off for television, so in swoops the dramatist, Clive Exton, who restructures the story to a more traditional Poirot story. He takes Poirot, who was more a spectator, an outsider in the original story and puts him in the thick of it while bringing Chief Inspector Japp along for the ride, as we have seen in countless previous adventures. And that's what I missed most about The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, I missed how unique and original it was within Poirot's cannon. I missed this different kind of story that could have been told, instead we are given a framing device of the journal of the killer, which when you read the book is actually the book you are reading. What's more Exton upped the vitriol of our killer who is woefully miscast resulting in the denouement being totally unsatisfactory. Yet, despite all this it isn't a "bad" episode, it just could have been so much more, but it is thankfully saved because of the charm of Suchet and Jackson. The nuanced humor these two actors have developed over the years of working together brings joy to the screen because you can see how much fun they are having. What's more, Suchet is so effortlessly Poirot that he brings humor and pathos to the role in even the quietest of moments. My favorite scene is at the very beginning when Dr. Sheppard and Parker come over to Poirot's house. In the book I always thought it was odd that Poirot would retire to the country in order to raise mallows. Well, here we see a far more honest depiction of how that might have gone. His exasperation with his garden given with a sigh, a grunt, a flung vegetable, and a raised eyebrow are sheer perfection. In fact I couldn't help but think his babying of his garden combined with his frustration is something all of those who have taken to our gardens during quarantine are feeling. There's a little bit of Poirot in us all I think. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Agatha Christie, Clive Exton, David Suchet, Gardening, Jamie Bamber, Mallows, OCD, Philip Jackson, Poirot, Quarantine, Roaring Back to Reading, Suicide, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Unreliable Narrator

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
Published by: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers
Publication Date: June, 1926
Format: Hardcover, 288 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Dr. James Sheppard has just been attending to the suicide of one of his patients, a Mrs. Ferrars. This tragedy effects another patient, and friend, Roger Ackroyd, who invites Dr. Sheppard to dinner with his family and other house guests at Fernly Park that night. The dinner isn't the most congenial of affairs, the other guests include Roger's sister-in-law and her daughter Flora, who announces her engagement to Roger's stepson Ralph Patton, Major Blunt, a big game hunter, and Geoffrey Raymond, Roger's personal secretary. The guests wouldn't be that important if it wasn't for what happened after. Roger reveals to Dr. Sheppard that his fiance, the widow Mrs. Ferrars, killed herself because she was being blackmailed! She apparently killed her first husband and the blackmailer knew it! Before the two get into too great a discussion about what all this could mean a letter from the late Mrs. Ferrars arrives and Roger asks the good doctor to leave. Dr. Sheppard though is soon called back to Fernly Park as Roger Ackroyd has been found murdered! The police suspect Ralph Patton, but nothing adds up. The room was locked, the letter from Mrs. Ferrars is missing, the call Dr. Sheppard received telling him of the death can't be traced, a chair has been moved at the scene of the crime, what does it all mean? It means Poirot is needed and Flora calls him in. As luck would have it he has retired to King's Abbot to grow vegetable marrows and is now living next door to Dr. Sheppard. Poirot is glad to come out of retirement because Roger Ackroyd was his friend. Dr. Sheppard, being such an important witness to the crime, becomes Poirot's Watson; leading him through the events as they happened and writing down the case for posterity. What an honor to work with the great Poirot! What an honor to see if the great detective's little grey cells are still up to the task of catching a criminal or are only good for cultivating vegetable marrows.

Sometimes you just need a really good whodunit. I was reading a list of the greatest locked room mysteries and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd topped the list. Now I loved a good locked room mystery, and while I still think that technically A.A. Milne's The Red House Mystery might be the more locked of the rooms due to a window that the generators of this list seem to have overlooked, I will say that this Poirot outing was fun and unexpected in many ways. What I found most fascinating about The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is that this is only Poirot's third book, his forth if you count the short story collection, and Agatha Christie already has him retired to the countryside to raise marrows! If you're wondering what a marrow is it's a vegetable similar to zucchini, and yes, leave it to Poirot to grow something that the majority of modern readers have to look up because they are no longer fashionable. Though I think even contemporary American readers would probably have had to look it up as well... or at least that's my hope in a desperate plea to not feel totally ignorant about vegetables. Given that Poirot is the star of 50 short stories, 33 novels, and 2 plays, I was thrown that we see Poirot pleasantly ensconced in retirement. Of course it doesn't last, but the fact that Christie was willing to toy with the idea of retiring her greatest detective so early as a sort of red herring goes to show how she revolutionized the detective genre by continually playing with the medium and not hesitating to take a risk. And in another unexpected twist we aren't seeing Poirot through the hero-worshiping eyes of Hastings! We get an entirely new view of Poirot through the eyes of our unreliable narrator Dr. Sheppard. Which then makes one think if we can even trust Hastings' narration in his stories. There are just so many implications to everything here that it makes one dizzy. In fact I'd say Christie subverting the detective genre's and her own most common tropes versus solving the murder brings more joy to the reader; but that just might be me.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A. A. Milne, Agatha Christie, Hastings, Locked Room, Marrows, Mystery, Poirot, Roaring Back to Reading, Subverting, Suicide, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Red House Mystery, Unreliable Narrator, Watson

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Published by: Penguin
Publication Date: 1925
Format: Hardcover, 198 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Nick Carraway has moved east to sell bonds in New York City. Because that's what young men do to make money right? Move east and sell bonds. But living out on Long Island he has an advantage across the bay. His wealthy former classmate from Yale, Tom Buchanan, lives in a luxurious house with his wife Daisy, who just happens to be Nick's cousin. At Nick's first dinner at their home he meets Jordan Baker, a rather infamous golfer, and gets ringside seats to the drama of the Buchanan household. There's trouble in paradise as Tom's mistress has the gall to call during the dinner hour! Of course, being old classmates, Nick is drawn into Tom's extramarital activities, and it isn't long before Nick is partying in the couple's love nest in the city where Myrtle's sister is insisting to Nick that Tom and Myrtle are miserable in their marriages and if it wasn't for Daisy being a Catholic there'd be two divorces and one marriage faster than you can blink. Nick can't be sure of this assertion and soon his life is about to be complicated by even more intrigue. He's going to be brought into Jay Gatsby's orbit. Jay Gatsby is Nick's infamous neighbor. Infamous for his parties and his secretive past. Everyone comes to his parties and yet no one ever sees him. Nick is about to see a lot of him as he brings Nick into his world and into his greatest regret, losing Daisy, the love of his life. He asks Nick to be a go-between. Of course fearing rejection he uses his own go-between, Jordan Baker. The request is simple enough, can Nick invite Daisy to his humble abode, only to have Gatsby swing in and take them to his manse next door? Nick is glad to help, especially as it's Jordan asking, and soon, like Daisy, he is under Gatsby's spell. But as Gatsby and Daisy's courtship from before the war proves, love and wooing never go smooth. Soon Tom realizes what is happening and there is a great reckoning that not everyone survives. That is the price of wealth and woo.

The Great Gatsby is light on plot with little depth and an unreliable narrator and for those very reasons it has become a classic. Other than a distinct "Americanness" and much rumination on the American Dream, everything is open to interpretation. Can we believe a word Nick says? Probably not. Can we blame Gatsby for how he made his fortune in order to woo the woman he loves? Depends on how he really got his money... which the characters themselves like to discuss ad nauseam. Can the valley of ashes be real or is it just a metaphor? You can literally read anything you want into this book. I was strongly reminded in the laborious and best skipped introduction of certain friends of mine who can talk for hours on end about the color symbolism in 2001: A Space Odyssey. What red means in one shot, followed by the blue of another. If they had a desire to, which I'm sure they don't, they could go into the symbolism of color that larders the pages of this book. The green light at the end of Daisy's dock, the golden sheen coming off Gatsby, all of it can be taken as something or nothing. The green could be tied to Daisy and how her voice is full of money. The green could be her openness to Gatsby's return. His golden sheen could be an outward aura of his wealth or a reference to the golden calf from the Bible and all the symbolism that weights him down because of that. In fact, though I never took a high school class that actually read The Great Gatsby, I can see why it's a popular one to teach. There is so much that can be drawn out of this book literally anything any student says is a possible interpretation. There is no wrong answer where it comes to The Great Gatsby! In fact, here's my weird little interpretation. I think The Great Gatsby is the inspiration for the TV series Remington Steele. Now prove me wrong! You literally can't. Steele is a man of infinite style whose past is dubious and who embodies the American Dream. He may or may not have tragedy in his past and as for that past, it shifts and changes with each retelling. Who knows, he might also have medals for heroic service as well as the known warrants for his arrest. This is how much this one book has become a part of the American consciousness that a popular TV show from the 80s could draw meaning form it for a modern audience and make it continually relevant. The Great Gatsby is a book for the ages.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 1920s, 2001, American Dream, Daisy Buchanan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby, High School, Nick Carraway, Remington Steele, Roaring Back to Reading, Symbolism, The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, Unreliable Narrator

Thornhill by Pam Smy
Published by: Roaring Brook Press
Publication Date: August 29th, 2017
Format: Hardcover, 544 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Ella Clarke is unpacking her possessions and placing them about her new bedroom. She places her favorite books on her new bookshelf, Jane Eyre and Rebecca being among them. She carefully hangs a poster for Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black on the slopping wall. But it is the picture of her deceased mother that has pride of place. With her father always away for work she is truly alone and her attention is drawn to the abandoned building outside her window, The Thornhill Institute, which was built as an orphanage for girls in the 1830s. One April day, a month after moving in, Ella thinks she sees a young girl in the yard of this derelict home and she goes to investigate, working her way past the "keep out" signs and the barbed wire. There she finds a broken doll's head. She painstakingly repairs the doll and returns it to where she found it. As she makes to leave she finds another broken doll and takes it home to repair. Whomever this girl is who is leaving these broken dolls is also alone and looking for some kind of connection and has found a kindred spirit in Ella. The local paper is the first to offer a clue as to who this mysterious girl is. Mary Baines died tragically at Thornhill after it was sold for development in 1982, thirty-five years earlier. Work on the development has been suspended ever since. Ella becomes drawn into Mary’s world which becomes more real to her than her own. One day when she finds a key in the garden she is lead to Mary’s diary and learns all about the horrors that were inflicted on her; the bully constantly banging on her door, the indifferent care of Mrs. Davies, Jane, and Pete. The cook, Kathleen, who was her only friend. The Doctor, Creane, whom she thought was a friend. The dolls and puppets who were her only solace, as was her favorite book, The Secret Garden. Ella relates and wants to be friends with Mary. When they finally meet the house goes up in flames and Thornill claims another victim, but will she be the last?

Thornhill is an odd book alternating between the present and the past, with Ella's story being told through pictures and Mary's story being told through diary entries. The alternating narrative technique isn't what's odd, what's odd is that I'm unsure what Smy's point was in writing this book. She brings up so many different emotions throughout the narrative, hitting the empathy card heavily, and then destroys any sympathy, any moral, with a big sweeping conflagration. This is a book that could have been sweet and redemptive, but instead is dark and disturbing, and totally telegraphed. Because here's the thing, the bleak ending of Mary leading Ella to her death so that they can be friends forever is obvious from that first illustration of Ella in her bedroom. The heavy-handed foreshadowing was laughable. I mean, maybe you can trick the targeted teen audience because they might be unfamiliar with the staples of Gothic literature, but that's weak storytelling, hoping your audience is oblivious versus actually crafting something of value. So if I haven't completely spoiled the book for you by now and for some daft reason you still want to read it look away now because I'm laying all Smy's cards on the table. So what do Ella's two favorite books, Rebecca and Jane Eyre have in common? Could it be a big massive fire like the one that kills Ella and destroys Thornhill? If you said yes, you are correct! And what can we learn from The Woman in Black? We can learn that ghosts are evil remorseless killing machines that can not be satisfied. Therefore what can we learn about Mary? You may think she deserves your sympathy but you'd be wrong, because, SHE KILLS ELLA! AKA, Mary is a remorseless killing machine. This point is further driven home by the young boy, Jacob, who moves into Ella's old room and sees Mary and Ella in the garden. Mary wanted a family and just one friend isn't enough. She's an evil evil ghost and she will kill you. Jacob, watch your back! 

Smy has a very odd moralistic code in this book, I mean just look to Mary killing Ella to prove my point. Back in 1982 Mary is driven beyond endurance and kills herself because of a bully and yet the message seems to say that the bully deserved copious chances at forgiveness because they were in the same isolated boat? Um... no. Here's the thing, bullies don't deserve forgiveness. Ever. Because if you forgive them they'll just think they can get away with it again and again. It's an abusive cycle that is very rarely broken. So while I initially really felt for Mary I could never fully get behind her reasoning because I would never give a bully a second chance. As it turns out I'm glad I never fully connected to Mary because she was crazy and a manipulator in her own right. So maybe Smy's actually against forgiving bullies? Because if we can't trust Mary's thinking then we know we can't trust her reasoning and therefore we can't trust all the chances she gave that little torturing bitch. Because there needs to be a zero tolerance policy when it comes to bullies. They need to be reported, they need to be smacked down, they need to be stopped. When I was younger I was bullied, in particular by one classmate who loved to call me names as original as whale and blubber. Thankfully he transferred to another school after sixth grade so I didn't have to deal anymore with his verbal abuse. In high school he returned. But the bullying didn't, because I would not let him back into my world. My best friend at the time encouraged me to be nice to him because "he had changed." Well, if he had he would have started with an apology. He forever remains on my list of people who if bad things were to befall them I wouldn't be heartbroken. Yes. I have a list. You're probably thinking that this is a bleak way to look at things. That yes, people should be allowed to change, given the chance at forgiveness. But I have had too many instances when this has bitten me in the ass. Therefore I now only forgive people who have wronged me because I know it will really piss them off. Seriously, try it sometime.    

Moving on from bullies, because seriously, nothing annoys them more than their irrelevance, this book is a combination of narration styles so I would be remiss if I didn't move beyond the narrative and talk about the art. Talk about that cover which totally drew me in. That bleak, looming house in darkness with the one illuminated window. That cover has an amazing graphic quality that doesn't jive with any of the interior art. Smy's work feels out of touch with what is happening in art today. Not the concept of two different narrative styles, that's very one point, but just the look of her work. I really don't know how to get across this feeling that the art looks dated. OK, so when I was a kid I had this picture book about people and animals. I can't remember the name, but if you saw it you would easily place it as something from the seventies. The art was well done, but at the same time a jumble. Everything was on top of each other and the muted and limited color palette just didn't work. As a small child I kept thinking, this book's style is dated. And it wasn't that old a book! Smy's drawing style reminded me of that book. It felt too retro, too of my childhood, but not in a good and nostalgic way, in a way that made me think she was out of touch. Now you might be saying, "hang on a minute part of this book takes place in 1982 when you were only four!" First I'd say it's creepy that you know exactly how old I was in 1982, but I'd also point out four year old me thought the book this reminds me of was dated, so in doesn't bring to mind the time period, it brings to mind how much I didn't like that art, and anyhow, the illustrated section is the current timeline NOT the eighties timeline. Which indicates, that yes, I was a critic from a very early age, but more, I know what I like and I know what I don't like and just because someone might think this illustration style is classic, I just say dated. I've never followed the band, I don't believe a classic is a classic because everyone says so, I've never liked The Giving Tree, a detail I don't know why I feel I need to reveal here, but if you want to read a book the lets bullies win with meh art, go for it! You're forewarned.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 80s, Bullies, Fire, Forgiveness, Going Gothic, Gothic, Graphic Novel, Illustration, Jane Eyre, Pam Smy, Rebecca, Susan Hill, The Giving Tree, The Secret Garden, The Woman in Black, Thornhill, Unreliable Narrator

Angelica by Arthur Phillips
Published by: Penguin Books
Publication Date: April 3rd, 2007
Format: Paperback, 331 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

The Barton household is about to be violently upset. Whether it's of a supernatural nature or a more prosaic nature is dependent on who you are listening to. The simple facts are these. Constance Barton and her husband Joseph had a hard time having a child. Two painful miscarriages and finally Angelica was born. In an attempt to thwart her husband's sexual advantages Angelica has been living in their bedroom for four years. Constance couldn't handle more disappointments and Angelica is enough for her. Angelica is her everything. But things are changing and Joseph finally imposes his will, which is a rare occurrence, and Angelica is removed to her nursery and the master bedroom is once more home to the martial bed. That is when the trouble starts. Constance views it as a haunting. There are smells and spectres and while Joseph points out that it could all be due to her high strung nature, she is convinced something more is at play; and is Angelica playing along? Could the child actually be scared or is she feeding off her mother's emotions? When Joseph claims his martial rights with Constance the spectre takes on physical form and something must be done. The maid Nora has heard of a spiritualist who specializes in cleansing houses, Anne Montague, a failed actress who is supplementing her income via overwrought housewives. But Anne sees something in the Barton household to change her mind about her "calling" and helps Constance. As for Joseph, he is easily taken care of... and as for Angelica? It turns out this is her story in more ways than one.    

If you're looking for a book strewn with contradictory stories and lack of resolution, than this here is the book for you! If instead you're looking for a psychological thriller that has supernatural elements, then I'd suggest you walk away. Or at the very least only read Constance's viewpoint, because the only thing going for this book was, aside from Phillips's ability to capture the language of the time period heavily reminiscent of Lewis Carroll, the first section with it's paranormal activities. Because this book isn't about the supernatural it's about unreliable narrators and the fallibility of memory and how each and every person sees the world differently. Which is all fine and good, it's just not the book I thought I was signing up to read and therefore I was a very dissatisfied reader. But more on my complete dissatisfaction later, with spoilers aplenty, so you've been warned. The problem with having four distinct perspectives is that they will never agree, add to this that Angelica is technically the vehicle for the other three narrators, and it's a jumbled mess. Yes, it's interesting to see the different interpretations of the same events, but overall it needed some grounding. There needed to be some character that you could connect to over the others, someone needed to be a little more believable so that you could take that away as what you believe is the truth. Instead, by not having this element the inconclusive ending makes for dissatisfied reading.

Seeing the story in order from the POVs of Constance, Anne, Joseph, and finally Angelica, who we've really been hearing from all along because this is her therapy session, Phillips seemed to want to discount the previous POV. Yes, everyone sees the world in their own unique way, but he seems determined to lessen the book in each section by paving over what came before and making it unbelievable. Therefore instead of being able to pick apart the POVs and find some thread of truth, we have each subsequent narrator totally disproving what came before. With Constance it's a ghost, but then Anne comes along and it's not a ghost it's sexual abuse, though she still lets Constance think it's a ghost. Then along comes Joseph and it's not sexual abuse it's that women be crazy yo. As for Angelica... she confirms nor denies any of these stories. So all is plausible. Say what!?! All is true and nothing is true? I know you can mimic the writing of Carroll, but please, no. Phillips you are no Carroll when it comes to nonsense and riddles. Unreliable narrators are really popular at the moment from Gone Girl to The Girl on the Train, heck this book technically has the ever popular "girl" in the title with Angelica's name, but these books succeed, and I really can't believe I'm saying there's something successful in Gone Girl, but they succeed because you get closure, not some supposedly deep yet ultimately aggravating non-ending.   

But then again, this is a book that basically writes itself off in the end. In fact, rarely have I hated a book so much in it's last few sentences that I grew to despise it and wanted to throw it more than anything."Flames, on the side of my face, breathing-breathl- heaving breaths. Heaving breaths... Heathing..." So let's break down that ending. At the conclusion of the book Angelica, the gimmicky narrator/manipulative bitch we've been hearing from tells her therapist to just ignore everything she's said, he will never understand her and he should just bring on the next "pretty hysteric." Now I've had long talks with one of my friends over this abrupt ending, seeing as we read this book for book club. Her conclusion, in as simplified a manner as I can make it, is that Angelica realizes that the therapist will never understand her, a complex modern woman, and the slight is to the therapist. Whereas I think it's the exact opposite. I think it's the author not bothering to understand women but just flipping them off at the end. They're women, they aren't worth figuring out because this wasn't Angelica's story it was Joseph's story all along. And why do I think this? Because Phillips, while writing so much about women here can't help that he is a male and as evidenced strongly in Joseph's section all his sympathies are with the male of the species so he's just writing from his entitled white male POV. Yeah, so let's throw this book out a window shall we?  

Going back to Joseph's section, not only does it discount everything that Constance and Anne have said, it makes Joseph this tragic figure who isn't understood at work or at home and he just has no friends and blah blah blah blah. I'm sorry your wife doesn't want to sleep with you, could it be because there is no birth control and she doesn't want to almost die having a stillborn child again? Every aspect of Constance's life is put under the microscope, every thing she does, says, feels, is up for debate, whereas Joseph, well, it's just poor Joseph don't pick on him, he's having a bad day, so let's let him be. Why not scrutinize Joseph? Put him under the harsh lights he uses in experimenting on animals, a job that is noble and not at all amoral! The true theme of this book isn't about memory and differing POVs, in Joseph's section we see Phillips's true motive, everything comes down to "poor men." Because obviously, like the recent Portlandia sketch, men have been pushed aside and marginalized too long. All women want from them is to trick them into marriage so they can have babies. Yeah, that's right. This very modern and topical view that women are out there to trick men into baby making is thrust into this Victorian period piece. I just kept thinking, yes, things are cyclical and men could have felt that way then, but more I kept thinking, is the author's girlfriend trying to get him to put a ring on it and a bun in the oven?

So as you can imagine by this point, I'd sworn off the book. Whatever good had happened with Constance and Anne, all was washed away by the modern hypocrisy just screaming at me from these pages that made up Joseph's section. Was there hope that Angelica could redeem the book? As you've read already. No. There wasn't. In fact Angelica's section is so slight it barely deserves a mention, except for one point; Constance and Anne hooking up. This is an issue I have with many male authors, they think that women will just randomly be lesbians if it suits the needs of the men. George R. R. Martin might be the worst, but can't they get that people are born who they are and that's that? You can see why Constance and Anne might be drawn to each other, Constance hasn't fared well at the hands of men, especially in regard to reproduction, and Anne is a wonderful protector and provider. But like the male entitlement that just oozed off the pages earlier, this just seems to be another nail in the coffin of women as manipulators. They got the child they wanted, killed Joseph, and now can live happily ever after. Or you could look at it as Constance doesn't like Joseph or his attentions so therefore she must be gay. In other words, everything in this book is seen through male entitlement glasses, I wouldn't say they're rose colored, they're more shit colored, because what makes you think that it's OK to think like this? Women are people too. I know many men are trying to change this, and reading a book that thinks that way... it just enrages me.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Abuse, Angelica, Arthur Phillips, George R. R . Martin, Ghosts, Going Gothic, Gone Girl, Lesbian, Lewis Carroll, Male Entitlement, Portlandia, POV, The Girl on the Train, Unreliable Narrator