Horror – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.18 NIGHT FILM by Marisha Pessl /2014/night-film-by-marisha-pessl/ Sat, 11 Jan 2014 18:00:56 +0000 /?p=25001 Book Quote:

“Everyone has a Cordova story, whether they like it or not.

Maybe your next-door neighbor found one of his movies in an old box in her attic and never entered a dark room alone again.  Or, your boyfriend bragged he’d discovered a contraband copy of At Night All Birds Are Black on the Internet and after watching, refused to speak of it, as if it were a horrific ordeal he’d barely survived.  

Whatever your opinion of Cordova, however obsessed with his work or indifferent—-he’s there to react against.  He’s a crevice, a black hole, an unspecified danger, a relentless outbreak of the unknown in our overexposed world.  He’s underground, looming unseen in the corners of the dark.  He’s down under the railway bridge in the river with all the missing evidence, and the answers that will never see the light of day. 

He’s a myth, a monster, and a mortal man.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (JAN 11, 2014)

This psychological, genre-bursting/ busting literary thriller took me on a high-speed chase into a Byzantine rabbit hole into the quirkiest, eeriest, darkest parts of the soul. Investigative reporter Scott McGrath is on a quest to exhume the facts of a young piano prodigy’s tragic end. Ashley Cordova, 24, daughter of cult-horror film director, Stanislav Cordova, was found dead–allegedly a suicide. The now reclusive director (30 years isolated from known whereabouts) is the reason for McGrath’s ruined reputation five years ago, and Scott is hungry to turn things around, upside down, and inside out to pursue Cordova again and save himself. And to disinter the “truth,” which itself can be an illusory concept in this cat and mouse thriller.

Along the way, McGrath assembles a motley group of two with their own agendas for chasing after the true story of Ashley’s death. It’s almost unbelievable that Scott would let these potential loose cannons join up with him, a virtual loner, but Pessl gives it cred by keeping the reader in an ever-tunneling and tumbling maze of intellectual, emotional, and horror-filled murk. Whatever mental notes you take as the narrative builds, the ever-widening cast and real, random, red herring, or suspect clues keep you from perseverating too long on the questionable partnerships. Each untangled knot corkscrews around to create ropier more entangled ones.

Mind games and magic, or mind games vs magic, is explored in a way that transports you to the most subterranean reaches of the human psyche. Pessl’s penetrating use of symbolism, allegory, literary allusion, and metaphor saturates the story with a weighty unease and anxiety that reflect her incomparable understanding of the human condition–(not to mention a rarefied channeling of hallucinogenic experiences). In Night Film, mind over matter is a daring question with a dangerous reckoning.

Pessl is obviously familiar with Hitchcock’s work, as well as the films of David Lynch and Stanley Kubrik. Additionally, the iconic 40’s noir films infuse Night Film with oblique shadows and moral ambiguity and imbue it with mixed media from the Internet age. Throw in a little Stephen King to the mix, too. However, Pessl’s use of pastiche is brushed and buffed into her own variegated style, with a voice that is strikingly poetic. She winks at and pays homage more than she mimics.

The gritty and shadowy streets, railway tracks, bridges, and warehouses of New York; the dark silhouette of the Adirondacks against a night sky; mansions sitting like a pit bull on a bluff; the mist obscuring the hand or a face or the gnarled limb of a tree–all Pessl’s ethereal images suffuse the story with an almost sepulchral ambiance. There were times I jumped while reading, certain I heard a cup rattling on a shelf, or saw a light flickering behind a curtain. At other times, my heart melted, especially when Scott would successfully enlist his five-year-old daughter to help his investigation. She was uncannily guileless but aware and persuasive.

The overriding theme can be found in the first lines of the book, a quote from Stanislav Cordova that begins the prologue:

“Mortal fear is as crucial a thing to our lives as love. It cuts to the core of our being and shows us what we are. Will you step back and cover your eyes? Or will you have the strength to walk to the precipice and look out?”

What happens when we break through our cocoon and walk to the edge and back? Are we blinding ourselves to our true nature, and to the nature of others, when we attempt to hold desperately onto those we love?

“Life was a freight train barreling toward just one stop, our loved ones streaking past our windows in blurs of color and light. There was no holding on to any of it, and no slowing down.”

This is at turns comical, disturbing, terrifying, tragic, tender, and spiritually poetic. The pace is breakneck and pitch-perfect electric, despite its florid and exuberant sentences, and the prose is evocative, aphoristic, savvy. It’s relentless and addictive, no time to catch your breath before you are falling through another black hole.

If you prefer a straight-up horror or crime-solving genre, this may not please you. Pessl breaks the rules and the mold, and the narrative is as much philosophy and metaphysics as it is mystery and mysticism. I was chasing shadows and rainbows in equal measure.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 562 readers
PUBLISHER: Random House (August 20, 2013)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Marisha Pessl
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> THE SLEEP ROOM by F. R. Tallis /2013/the-sleep-room-by-f-r-tallis/ Sun, 15 Dec 2013 20:00:12 +0000 /?p=23611 Book Quote:

“Physical pain, no matter how bad, was never the equal of mental pain.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (DEC 15, 2013)

The Sleep Room, by F. R. Tallis, is set in England in the 1950s. Dr. James Richardson is offered an opportunity to work with Hugh Maitland, a well-known scholar and “the most influential psychiatrist of his generation.” After he is hired, James travels to Wyldehope Hall, in rural Suffolk, a hospital with twenty-four beds and a narcosis room. Severely disturbed patients are given drugs to induce sleep for twenty-one hours a day. Nurses monitor the patients’ vital signs and rouse them at regular intervals for meals, bathing, and sessions of electroconvulsive therapy. James observes that the sleep room is run like a “factory production line;” the patients, who wear white gowns, resemble “compliant ghosts.”

Most of the story is narrated by Richardson, an insecure and intense young man who interacts with nurses and the occasional doctor, but spends much of his time alone or with his sleeping patients. It is unsurprising that his imagination soon starts playing tricks on him. He has upsetting dreams, hears strange noises, and notices that objects are disappearing or disturbed. Is there a supernatural explanation for these peculiar phenomena? We sympathize with the increasingly anxious Richardson as he grows ever more uncertain about the efficacy of narcosis and the wisdom of his remaining at Wyldehope. Fortunately, James finds much-needed solace in the arms of Jane Turner, a lovely nurse to whom he is deeply attracted.

Frank Tallis is a talented writer — his Max Liebermann series of historical mysteries is outstanding — who foreshadows the spine-chilling events to come by creating a creepy and sinister mood and setting his novel in a remote and forbidding locale. Tallis, an experienced clinical psychologist and an expert in the history of his field, educates us about bizarre and frightening treatments that were once routinely administered by respected medical practitioners. The conclusion is sure to generate controversy. Some will pronounce it clever; others (myself included) may find it gimmicky and contrived. Nevertheless, The Sleep Room is a compelling exploration of the nature of reality, the fragility of the human mind, and the arrogance of power-hungry physicians who cruelly exploit the men and women in their care.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-0from 7 readers
PUBLISHER: Pegasus (October 1, 2013)
REVIEWER: Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Frank Tallis
EXTRAS: Writing The Sleep Room
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

The Liebermann Papers:

Writing as F. R. Tallis

Nonfiction:

]]> THE NIGHT STRANGERS by Chris Bohjalian /2011/the-night-strangers-by-chris-bohjalian/ Sat, 08 Oct 2011 13:39:18 +0000 /?p=21444 Book Quote:

“My mother used to talk about passages and, once in a while, about ordeals. We all have them; we are all shaped by them. She thought the key was to find the healing in the hurt.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (OCT 8, 2011)

In Chris Bohjalian’s The Night Strangers, Chip Linton is a forty-year-old commercial airline pilot who is traumatized when, through no fault of his own, one of his regional planes goes down in Lake Champlain. In the aftermath of the accident, Chip, Emily, and their ten-year-old twin daughters, Hallie and Garnet, move from Pennsylvania to an isolated three-story Victorian near Bethel, New Hampshire, in the scenic White Mountains. Emily resumes her career as a lawyer, the kids enroll in the local school, and Chip becomes a do-it-yourselfer, replacing wallpaper, painting, and doing carpentry around the rickety old house.

Unfortunately, Chip is an emotional wreck who sees a psychiatrist to treat his depression, guilt, and anxiety. He has upsetting flashbacks and vivid nightmares and knows that his career in aviation is most likely over. Although Chip adores Emily and his daughters, they are not enough for him. He cannot help but mourn the loss of his livelihood.

The Lintons soon have concrete reasons to regret their move to Northern New England. There is something creepy going on in this town. The place is filled with greenhouses. Various herbalists and botanists grow exotic plants, talk like aging hippies, and constantly bring over homemade food that they foist on the Linton family. In addition, it is possible that the Linton house, which was once the scene of an untimely and unnatural death, may be haunted. If Chip was teetering on the brink of madness before he moved to New Hampshire, living here may very well push him over the edge. The Night Strangers is a tale of psychological horror in which Chip and Emily gradually suspect that when they relocated, they may have jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Chip starts having visions and hearing voices; his family is also under threat from others who are up to no good. How will the Lintons cope with the various forces threatening to tear them apart?

Chris Bohjalian has always been an outstanding descriptive writer who uses setting brilliantly. He has a gift for creating sympathetic characters with whom the reader can readily identify. This time, alas, he may have bitten off more than he can chew. Chris’s mental deterioration alone would have been a strong enough centerpiece to this book. Even adding a haunted house into the mix might work. However, Bohjalian overreaches when he veers too far into Stephen King and Ira Levin territory. He concocts an outlandish (yet oddly predictable) plot that throws the book seriously out of balance. What should have been a compelling narrative about the demons that inhabit our minds becomes, quite literally, a story about evil incarnate. Still, Bohjalian creates readable dialogue, brings Chip, Emily, and their girls to life, and engages our interest in the fate of his protagonists. In spite of ourselves, we hold our breaths, wondering whether this horribly tormented husband, wife, and two children will ever reacquire the peace of mind that they once took for granted.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-0from 252 readers
PUBLISHER: Crown (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER: Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Chris Bohjalian
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Bibliography:

Other:

Movies from books:

]]> THE WHITE DEVIL by Justin Evans /2011/the-white-devil-by-justin-evans/ Sat, 01 Oct 2011 14:05:38 +0000 /?p=21233 The White Devil, his latest thriller/horror novel that sheds light on the bullying and other nastiness that can go on at boarding schools past and present.]]> Book Quote:

“The eye sockets were sunken; the eyes protruded, a vivid blue; his flesh was a morbid gray. Long blond hair—almost white, albino-looking—hung over his eyes. Once he was forced to break from his labor to cough—and Andrew recognized the noise that had drawn him. The cough combined the bark of a sick animal with a wet, slapping sound. The skeletal man drew his hand across his mouth. Then he looked up. He locked eyes with Andrew.”

Book Review:

Review by Katherine Petersen  (OCT 1, 2011)

Kicked out of his last American boarding school for drugs, Andrew Taylor’s father has sent him to England’s Harrow Academy to redo his senior year. It’s his last chance, and Andrew tries hard to follow the rules and not bring attention to himself. But author Justin Evans has other plans for Andrew in The White Devil, his latest thriller/horror novel that sheds light on the bullying and other nastiness that can go on at boarding schools past and present.

Andrew witnesses the murder of his friend, Theo, on a path near the school’s graveyard, but he can’t give all the details to the police. No one would ever believe that a ghost, for that is all Andrew can come up with for an explanation of the albino-type figure that killed his friend and then vanished.

Rumors abound of the Lot Ghost, a ghost that haunts the house-turned-dorm in which Andrew lives. But there’s much more to this mystery that’s gradually revealed. Andrew bears a strong resemblance to Byron and is cast as the lead in the school play about the Harrow alumnus, written and directed by Piers Fawkes, a poet and master at Lot. Andrew’s other confidante and love interest is Persephone, the only girl at Harrow, the daughter of the school’s headmaster. What Andrew can piece together is that his friends’ lives are in danger, and if he can’t find out the mystery with Lord Byron at its center, he may die as well.

Life at Harrow lies at the center of Evans’s tale. He combines the bullying and torrid relationships of the past with the goings-on in the present, moving easily between the two. Our hero, Andrew, with his resemblance to Byron, links the two eras together. There’s a chance he can solve the mystery of who the ghost is and why people are dying with the help of Fawkes, Persephone and a library researcher, but time may run out on him.

My only pet peeve with this book is that the author tries to do too much. Add in Fawkes problem with alcohol, a speech Andrew has planned for speech day and some of the story threads get dropped without becoming fully developed. That said, Evans does a nice job of pulling the reader into the story and maintaining enough tension and hints to keep one’s focus.

I have a penchant for books with boarding schools at their center as well as those with historical settings in part or in whole, so I enjoyed the story immensely. Part horror and part thriller, there are enough creepy, very realistic moments in the story to give out shivers. Evans has a talent for vivid descriptions too, and some weren’t so pretty. While I don’t think the novel has any profound messages to pass along, fans of historical settings, Lord Byron or boarding schools should give it a whirl. Just don’t turn out the lights if it’s late.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 44 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper (May 10, 2011)
REVIEWER: Katherine Petersen
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Justin Evans
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> WITCHES ON THE ROAD TONIGHT by Sheri Holman /2011/witches-on-the-road-tonight-by-sheri-holman/ Thu, 03 Mar 2011 14:22:53 +0000 /?p=16526 Book Quote:

“… What happened? He thinks, and marvels that he can recall human speech. With great effort, Tucker draws himself onto his hands and knees and crawls down the breezeway to her shut bedroom door. He puts his eye against her keyhole.

There, Cora Alley, freshly dismounted, is wriggling back into the soft folds of empty arms and legs; she, too, returning to her human skin.”

Book Review:

Review by Bill Brody  (MAR 3, 2011)

Witches on the Road Tonight by Sheri Holman is a tale of intergenerational witches that takes place in four different time frames between the 1930’s and the present. The plot moves back and forth between generations and characters. This requires a bit of concentration, but is well worth the effort. It has something of the fears that rise from ghost stories told around a campfire.

The novel begins with Eddie lying down prepared to die. He is in the casket he inherited from his mother, Cora Alley. Eddie has cancer and has taken an overdose of pills. He has left a message for his daughter, Wallis, to call him. For twenty years Eddie was Captain Casket, campy horror show host, and this is the casket from which he would rise during his TV show.

When Eddie was young, a couple came through his home community of Panther Gap in Appalachia to document rural life for the WPA. The two are Tucker, a writer and Sophie, a photographer. Tucker injures Eddie when Eddie runs without warning in front of the car. Tucker and Sophie take the injured Eddie home to recover, but no one is there when they arrive. While waiting for Eddie’s mother, Cora, to come home Tucker shows Eddie an antique horror movie. Just then Cora comes home from a day collecting ginseng roots. Cora’s impact on Tucker is profound.

Cora is a mountain witch, someone who crawls out of her skin at night and then rides men like they were horses. She rides them to exhaustion. If she fancies a man, she will ride him over and over until he is not much good to anyone else; not his wife; not his employer. Cora rides Tucker on successive nights. He is sexually stimulated, humiliated and completely exhausted. He asks Eddie how to avoid being kept in a witch’s power. Eddie tells Tucker never to loan anything to a witch or you are hers forever, but Tucker loans the movie to Cora. The next thing we see is Tucker running through the woods shedding clothing as some creature, we presume the panther of Panther Gap, devours him.

Wallis is Eddie’s daughter, the granddaughter of Cora and is also a witch. Like Cora, she harnesses a powerful sexual appetite. Near the end of Eddie’s career as Captain Casket and when Wallis was on the verge of adolescence, Eddie and his wife take in Jasper, a homeless young man. Jasper has been hanging around the TV station where Eddie works, and Eddie has become fond of the young man. Jasper’s intrusion into the family is a burden to twelve-year-old Wallis. She is constantly provoked by Jasper for whom she develops a powerful sexual attraction. The day after Eddie’s twenty-year reign as a horror show host is over, Eddie, Jasper and Wallis leave town and travel to Panther Gap to Cora’s home in the mountains. While they are there the ghost-story atmosphere intensifies. Jasper, Wallis and Eddie find the remnants of Tucker’s clothing confirming the tale Eddie told Jasper of Cora’s role in Tucker’s disappearance.

Wallis is currently an anchorwoman. The dying Eddie left her a phone message while she was on the air. You get the sense that Wallis is annoyed with Eddie. In the afterglow of her show she has not checked her messages, going instead, as she does regularly, to have a sexual fling with Jeff, one of the crew. Jeff’s come-on to Wallis is the revelation that the Jeff was a card-carrying fan of Captain Casket. Wallis has her fling and then tries to get a ride home, but it is late and the car doesn’t come. Dogs howl in the night and she is afraid. She remembers what happened at Panther Gap and what happened to Jasper in the aftermath. Then she listens to Eddie’s phone massage, a slurred reference to going on a ginseng hunt, their code for an adventure. Jasper, too, went on a ginseng hunt; so did Tucker. Wallis screams and Jeff takes her back into his apartment to comfort her. She feels compelled to tell the ghost story about the visit to Panther Gap by Wallis, Eddie and Jasper.

Being witches, Wallis and Cora bend men to their wills often to tragic ends. Witchcraft can be seen in light of the war between the sexes. A witch is the embodiment of women’s powers and their sexuality. For men, a witch is to be feared and desired. For women such as Wallis, a witch is what you become when the power of your magical thinking comes to pass. In some ways Witches on the Road Tonight reinforces a masculine objectification of powerful women as witches. The female protagonists are all powerful women; they all manipulate their men.

I really enjoyed the book and recommend it highly. It is an extremely well-written and pleasantly complex adult ghost story.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 6 readers
PUBLISHER: Atlantic Monthly Press (March 1, 2011)
REVIEWER: Bill Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Sheri Holman
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More mountain magic:

Bloodroot by Amy Green

Bibliography:

For Kids:

]]> GIVE ME YOUR HEART by Joyce Carol Oates /2011/give-me-your-heart-by-joyce-carol-oates/ /2011/give-me-your-heart-by-joyce-carol-oates/#comments Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:36:39 +0000 /?p=15466 Book Quote:

“He had appealed to the officer who had discharged him. Don’t send me back to them. I am not ready to return to them yet. I can’t live with civilians. I am afraid that I will hurt civilians. The Lance Corporal was asked why would he hurt civilians of his own kind who loved him and the Lance Corporal said Because that is the only way to stop them loving me sir.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (JAN 17, 2011)

Give Me Your Heart, the newest collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates, shimmers with violence, actual or imagined. Reading these stories is like hearing footsteps in your home when you know you’re the only one there. They’re like seeing something impossible out of the corner of your eye and being sure that you’ve seen it no matter what your rational self tells you. The stories make your heart race and your eyes open wide in horror. They do not come to us gently. Joyce Carol Oates grabs the reader and pulls him into her unique vision where fear, panic, tension, death, love and murder prevail, often simultaneously. These are horror stories without any element of the super-natural. She’s the real McCoy of this genre.

This collection contains ten stories, many of them about the dark side of needing love. In “Give Me Your Heart,” we hear an ex-lover rant about wanting her lover’s heart – actually and metaphorically. We listen to her as she goes more and more around the bend. In “Split/Brain,” Trudy Gould has been caretaker for her ill husband day and night, spending all her time at the hospital. One day, he demands that she return home to get a journal that he forgot. When she arrives at her home, she recognizes her sister’s car parked there and imagines her troubled, drug-addled and violent nephew in her house. She plays out this scenario in head: she either enters the house and is killed by her nephew or she turns and leaves. What will her choice be?

Some of these stories deal with the obsessive character of love or the feeling that you don’t really know the person you love. In “The First Husband,” a married man stumbles across photos of his wife with her first husband. He can’t get over his jealousy and believes that his wife is hiding something from him. He becomes obsessed with her first husband and this leads to tragic consequences.

The theme that love is dangerous is apparent in almost every story. In “Strip Poker,” a group of older men in their twenties get a fourteen year-old girl to go with them to their lake cabin. They get her drunk and play strip poker with her. The game is tense and on the verge of becoming dangerous. How the girl turns events to her favor is a joy to behold in all its poignancy. In “Smothered,” a troubled woman with a history of drug addiction and rootlessness has recovered memories of her parents smothering and killing a baby girl. This memory is part of a sensational murder case that occurred in 1974. The smothered child was never identified and the murderer was never found. When the police come to question the woman’s mother, she is shocked. The memory appears to be part of a drug-addled incident in the daughter’s teen-aged years. However, the mother feels torn and betrayed as this is just another way her estranged daughter has turned against her.

Sometimes, the most dangerous person is the one that is closest to you. In “The Spill,” John Henry is what we’d now call developmentally disabled or chronically mentally ill. When he is an adolescent, he is brought to live at his uncle’s home as his mother can no longer handle him. It is 1951 and there is no such thing as special education in the rural Adirondacks where this story takes place. John Henry, after repeating fourth grade, is told he can’t return to school. His uncle has him doing difficult farm chores all day. His aunt Lizabeta has a special connection with John Henry while also being very leery of him with her own children. Her emotions start to get twisted up inside her.

“Bleed” is my favorite story in the collection. A boy evolves from closeness with his parents to distance. He leaves his childhood behind him. This is due to two distinct incidents, both involving child abductions and rapes. His parents question him about these incidents, of which he has no knowledge. However, these images continue to haunt him and, as a young man, he finds himself caught up in a nightmare situation consisting of rape and abduction.

These are not stories for the fragile or weak-hearted among us. They are all scary and they all play on our visceral fears and nightmares. Joyce Carol Oates is a master of this. She understands those things we all fear, the nightmares that are common to us all. That these stories do not contain elements of the super-natural is not comforting. It makes them all the more frightening.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 26 readers
PUBLISHER: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (January 7, 2011)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Joyce Carol Oates
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read reviews of more Joyce Carol Oates books:

Bibliography:

Tales:

Stories:

Written as Lauren Kelly:

Written as Rosamond Smith:

Younger Readers:

Nonfiction:

]]> /2011/give-me-your-heart-by-joyce-carol-oates/feed/ 2 I’D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE by Laura Lippman /2010/id-know-you-anywhere-by-laura-lippman/ Tue, 17 Aug 2010 19:30:13 +0000 /?p=11446 Book Quote:

“Dear Elizabeth,
I’m sure this is a shock, although that’s not my intention, to shock you. Up until a few weeks ago, I never thought I would have any communication with you at all and accepted that as fair. That’s how it’s been for more than twenty years now. But it’s hard to ignore signs when they are right there in front of your face, and there was your photo in Washingtonian magazine, not the usual thing I read, but you’d be surprised by my choice of reading material these days. Of course, you are older, a woman now. You’ve been a woman for a while, obviously. Still, I’d know you anywhere.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (AUG 17, 2010)

Laura Lippman knows how to write about terror, both the subtle, covert, shadow type and the more acute, stomach-wrenching, in-your-face type. This is a book about acts of terror, specifically kidnapping and rape. It is primarily about the kidnapping and rape of 13 year-old Elizabeth Lerner in 1985 and the 39 days she spent at the hands of her kidnapper and rapist, William Bowman, a serial killer.

Eliza Bennett is currently living the life of a suburban mother in an upper middle-class area near D.C. She has recently returned to the states after 6 years in Great Britain, following her husband, Peter’s, job opportunities. She has two children, Iso (Isobel) 13, and Albie, 8. She and Peter, along with her immediate family members, are the only ones privy to the secret that Eliza Bennett is really Elizabeth Lerner. After the kidnapping, Elizabeth shortened her name to Eliza and when she married Peter, she took his last name. There is no reason that people should suspect Eliza Bennett and Elizabeth Lerner are one and the same.

The book goes back and forth in time from the present to the time of the kidnapping. It very subtly divulges more and more information about Elizabeth, Walter, and the other girls that Walter kidnapped. The novel shows what Elizabeth felt like in Walter’s hands. Her fear was primal and she felt that to stay alive she needed to obey Walter’s every wish. She not only obeyed him, but she always told him the truth, often entertaining him in a Scheherazade-like manner. In fact, she is the only one of Walter’s victims who has lived to tell about it. Elizabeth was the star witness in the trial whereby Walter Bowman was given the death sentence by the State of Virginia. As the book opens, Walter sits on death row.

Eliza is a good mother, but reticent to make friends and prone to nightmares about the other “ghost children” that Walter kidnapped. She knows that life is not safe and that trust is a false god. One day, out of the blue, she receives a letter from Walter, through an intermediary, that has an enclosed picture of Eliza and Peter at a gala. The letter says, “I’d know you anywhere.” So begins Eliza’s nightmares once again. Walter wants to be in phone contact with her and Eliza knows from experience that Walter is not happy if he does not get what he wants. It is here in the novel that I had trouble suspending belief in order to enjoy the rest of the book, for what Eliza does is get a phone just for the purpose of receiving Walter’s collect calls. She decides that it’s better to do what Walter wants than to get him angry. I can think of many other alternatives at this point but Eliza could not.

The story progresses and the reader gets to know Walter and Eliza very well. I was even able to suspend belief later in the book as I felt more compassion for Eliza and could empathize with her character differently and more fully. Knowing her better helped me understand her reasons for talking to Walter.

Laura Lippman is a master at keeping suspense up and of keeping the reader enthralled. Her writing is intelligent and emotive. She does terror so well that I had to put the book down at times because it was too much. However, that never stopped me from picking it up again.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 212 readers
PUBLISHER: William Morrow (August 17, 2010)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Laura Lippman
EXTRAS:
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

And these featuring P.I. Tess Monaghan:

Bibliography:

Tess Monaghan series:

Standalone Novels:

]]> THE PASSAGE by Justin Cronin /2010/the-passage-by-justin-cronin/ Tue, 08 Jun 2010 03:41:08 +0000 /?p=9973 Book Quote:

“The Army needed between ten and twenty death-row inmates to serve in the third-stage trials of an experimental drug therapy, codenamed Project Noah.   In exchange for their consent, these men would have their sentences commuted to life without parole.  It would be Wolgast’s job to obtain the signatures of these men, nothing more.  Everything had been legally vetted, but because the project was a matter of national security, all of these men would be declared legally dead.  Thereafter, they would spend the rest of their lives in the care of the federal penal system, a white-collar prison camp, under assumed identities.  The men would be chosen based upon a number of factors, but all would be men between the ages of twenty and thirty-five with no living first-degree relatives.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn (JUN 7, 2010)

In this staggering book of speculative fiction, Cronin has proven that he can transcend genre and, with his power of language, create a distant world that feels close and credible. This is not your typical zombie or vampire novel; it isn’t cheesy or reductive. It shares some characteristics with its progenitor, The Stand, and fans of King’s work will be arguably riveted by this (more updated) novel. But there are as many differences as there are similarities, and Cronin’s ambitions are ultimately more complex and expansive. Cronin covers a longer period of time and delves more densely and philosophically into the dark and grey areas of the human psyche. Also, his poetic and luminous language and metaphysical subtext eclipses, in my opinion, King’s earlier work.

The story is teased out gradually, moving back and forth from places as far and deep as a Bolivian jungle, to the deserts and mountains of the west and southwest, to the concrete jungle of Houston, Texas, and many stops throughout. The disparate narrative threads converge to a point after the first 250 pages, and then we are thrust into a new world order at a place called The Colony. Some readers feel that this middle section is rather slow, but it is actually where Cronin shines. He introduces new characters that are likely to stay the course of the trilogy, and he is more meditative and succulent in his prose. The final 250 pages illuminate ambiguities that may still be humming and create a climax that heads toward a continuation.

There is a lot more than good and evil at play here, although the moral heft is evident, as human forces must combat malevolent viral creatures. But the incipience, growth, and psychology of these viral entities is not so simple. The relationship between the survivors and the creatures is more like a Venn diagram than a dualistic paradigm. Moreover, the human condition is explored in different states of wakefulness and sleep, in a myriad of conscious states, and connects all beings, whether viral or human. It also raises the question of, “who are the monsters?”

Divided into eleven sections, (with numerous chapters), the novel covers approximately one hundred years, starting circa 2014. However, there are three time periods that are pertinent to the story, two that are covered in detail. Each new section is headed by a short verse of Shakespeare from a play or sonnet, or else a poem by Shelley or other poet that has a poignant significance to the narrative. For instance, this verse by Henry Vaughan, from “The World:”

I saw eternity the other night
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm as it was bright,
And round beneath it time in hours, days, years,
Driven by the spheres,
Like a vast shadow moved in which the world
And all her train were hurled.

Cronin’s sense of place; of time; of timelessness; and his magnificent explorations of memories; of memories folded and unfolded and twisted in time; and of the self and the Shadow self, are examples of his bridges from genre to literature. He balances intellectual and action narrative with enough gusto to keep all audiences satisfied. The plot and story have a solid pace, although he takes his time to develop his characters and illuminate the back-stories. Additionally, as in his superb novel, The Summer Guest, Cronin’s prose glitters with moving beauty. “…while you sank into the dreamy softness of your seat and sipped ginger ale from a can and watched the world float in magical silence past your window, the tallest buildings of the city in the crisp autumn light and then the backs of the houses with laundry flapping and a crossing with gates where a boy was waving from his bicycle, and then the woods and fields and a single cow eating grass.”

There are, occasionally, some minor snags in the construction. A few devices are employed at intervals, and there are times when a character is improbably saved from the clutches of disaster. Yet, the author does it with panache, in dramatic scenes portrayed with a soulful and melancholy elegance. He avoids melodrama. He gets inside the head of his characters, and they are made of flesh and bone, not straw. It is also satisfying to see that this is a very diverse cast of multi-ethnicities. The landscape of people is naturally rendered, not making a statement but rather reflecting a realistic ethnic pool of combinations.

The Passage is the first of an ambitious trilogy. The journeys on foot or by hoof, by machine or by dream, are full of serrated adventure. And it immerses you in all strains of love–sibling, maternal, paternal, friendship, romantic, and a crushing one of cross-purposes. And it has stars, the moon, bones, and blades, guns and garrisons, trees and cliffs. And did I say stars? A-

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 2,381 readers
PUBLISHER: Ballantine Books (June 8, 2010)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Justin Cronin
EXTRAS: Excerpt and Web Site
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More Post-Apocalyptic:

Bibliography:

The Passage Trilogy:
]]> THE LITTLE STRANGER by Sarah Waters /2009/little-stranger-by-sarah-waters/ Sat, 19 Dec 2009 16:30:11 +0000 /?p=6887 Book Quote:

“Is that so surprising, with things for that family so bleak? The subliminal mind has many dark, unhappy corners, after all. Imagine something loosening itself from one of these corners. Let’s call it a – a germ. And let’s say conditions prove right for that germ to develop – to grow, like a child in the womb. What would this ‘little stranger’ grow into? A sort of shadow self, perhaps: a Caliban, a Mr. Hyde. A creature motivated by all the nasty impulses and hungers the conscious mind had hoped to keep hidden away: things like envy, malice, and frustration….”

Book Review:

Review by Jana L. Perskie (DEC 19, 2009)

With The Little Stranger author Sarah Waters departs from the settings, characters and style of her first three historical novels, Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, and Fingersmith, all set in Victorian England. Nor is this book like her more recent The Night Watch, a sensitive and passionate love story set in wartime England. The Little Stranger is a sinister, Hitchcockian-like tale of a haunted house, ghosts and madness. It provides a most chilling, unputdownable read.

It was the summer of 1919, almost a year after the end of World War I, when the boy, (Faraday, our narrator), first saw Hundreds Hall, the Ayres’ family estate in Warwickshire, England. His mother used to work at the Hall as a servant. The event that brought him there was an “Empire Day fete.” He and other local children made the Boy Scout salute, received commemorative medals and had tea. Although no one was allowed inside the main house, an impressive building of the Georgian period, his mother still had connections with the servants, so mother and son quietly entered by a side door. The boy was awed by all he saw. Such riches! To him this was a magnificent mansion, owned for generations by people way above his social class. Years later, he was to remember the building’s elegantly aging beauty, the “worn red brick, the cockled windows, the weathered sandstone edgings,” and the extraordinary gardens, the like of which he had never seen or experienced outside of churches. He was thrilled by the polished wooden floors, “the patina on the wooden chairs and cabinets, the bevel of a looking glass, the scroll of frame.” Hundreds Hall is to play as big a role in this novel as any living character.

Young Faraday was an obedient boy, however he suddenly did something totally out of character. He was fascinated by one of the white walls “which had a decorative plaster border – a representation of acorns and leaves.” He took out his pocket knife and pried one of the acorns loose. It really wasn’t an act of vandalism, although others might think so. He merely wanted to possess a piece of such grandeur.

The Ayres family was, by no means, part of the blue-blooded nobility….just moneyed country squires, to the manor bred. At this time, Mrs. Ayres was in her early twenties and quite lovely. Her husband was just a few years older. The couple had a little girl, six year-old Susan, upon whom they doted. Their happiness was not to last.

Post WWII England was a time of great economic and social change. Clement Richard Attlee, a British Labour Party politician, had been in office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for just about one year – not long enough yet to impact the country’s flailing economy – the UK’s most significant problem at the time. The war effort had left Britain nearly bankrupt. WWII had cost the country about a quarter of its national wealth. This meant that strict rationing of food and other essential goods were continued in the post war period. Many families of the nobility and upper classes found themselves with their fortunes greatly diminished by two world wars, and, unable to afford all the servants it took to maintain their estates, rooms were closed off. Mansions crumbled. As the middle class grew, the opulent lifestyles of the rich and famous decreased. Hundreds Hall, and its gradual decline, seem to parallel the country’s reduced circumstances. An entire British way of life that had lasted for centuries was dying.

Almost thirty years after that first visit, the boy, now a country doctor and a very lonely, disappointed man, returns to Hundreds Hall. He is called to the mansion by members of the Ayres family to treat a sick maid. Dr. Faraday is struck dumb as he drives up to the house. His memory of its former grandeur clash with the reality of its present degeneration, which horrifies him. The mansion and grounds have been left to rot and molder, the once beautiful gardens are unkempt and filled with weeds and dried ivy. The family is selling off enormous land holdings in order to keep their home. They subsist on the meager income of the remaining dairy farm.

The family has changed as significantly as their mansion, and are, perhaps, in even worse condition. The husband/father died at a relatively young age, and the beloved Susan died of diphtheria while still a child. Mrs. Ayres has never gotten over her terrible grief at the loss of her daughter – her “one true love.” It is unclear if she is even capable of loving her other children, born after Susan’s death. The Ayres son, Roderick, has been left mentally and physically damaged by the war. Caroline, the plain and eccentric daughter, with her stocky build and hairy legs, seems to be the most mentally stable person in the family. She has long accepted the fact that she will remain a spinster….for who would marry a plain, penniless woman?

There is something oddly unnatural about Hundreds Hall. Faraday first hears of the haunting when he initially visits to treat the maid. She complains that this “isn’t like a proper house at all. Its too big and so quiet it gives you the creeps.” There is something malevolent within – furniture moves, strange stains appear on the walls, footsteps can be heard coming from the deserted rooms on the top floor, doorknobs turn but when the door is opened, no one is there. Whispers are heard from unknown sources and the eerie events become truly frightening when some family members are physically hurt. There is a mysterious fire in Rodrick’s room which almost kills him. The gentle family dog uncharacteristically bites a young girl and has to be put down. Mrs. Ayres, who spends most of the time dreaming of past glories, shows signs of marks and scratches on her body. The external haunting and the family’s internal turmoil seem to merge as the tension continues to build throughout the storyline.

After treating his patient, Faraday is invited to tea, and despite the differences in classes he becomes a close friend of the family which seems to depend on him – his kindness, practicality and stability. Local physicians were never treated as social equals by landed gentry like the Ayreses before the war. The doctor is thrilled by his new upper class connections, especially as he in unable to forget his own humble beginnings, nor how his shopkeeper father and servant mother sacrificed to send him to medical school.

The author spends more than the first 100 pages setting the gothic scenario with the haunted house as the center of activity. Faraday, ever the scientist, refuses to accept any supernatural explanation for the events at Hundreds Hall. A colleague tells him, “that the cause might be “some dark germ, some ravenous, shadow-creature, some ‘little stranger,’ spawned from the troubled unconscious of someone connected with the house itself.”

Scary as the book may be at times, this is much more than a ghost story or historical thriller. There are many different threads woven into this tale. Ms. Waters’ characters come to life on the page, along with their conflicting emotions about their situations and the changing times. Faraday is a superb narrator, although not totally reliable, (obvious to the reader), due to his lack of confidence about class differences. Contradictorily, he has a strong sense of confidence about his education and abilities as a doctor. He also lacks objectivity because of his conflicting feelings about each of the Ayres family members.

This is a most original take on the genre, although a bit too long. The writing could have been tighter at times. Kudos to Sarah Waters, who never disappoints, (at least she never disappoints me)! I highly recommend this book, especially to fans of Alfred Hitchcock – rather than those of Stephen King. Although King fans, like me, might like The Little Stranger too.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 116 readers
PUBLISHER: Riverhead Hardcover; First Edition edition (April 30, 2009)
REVIEWER: Jana L. Perskie
AMAZON PAGE: The Little Stranger
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Sarah Waters
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of Fingersmith

Bibliography:

Movies from Books:

]]> THE GARGOYLE by Andrew Davidson /2009/the-gargoyle-by-andrew-davidson/ Sun, 22 Nov 2009 06:54:15 +0000 /?p=6438 Book Quote:

“I could feel my hair catch fire, then I could smell it. My flesh began to singe as if I were a scrap of meat newly thrown into the barbecue, and then I could hear the bubbling of my skin as the flames kissed it. I could not reach my head to extinguish my flaming hair.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (NOV 21, 2009)

The Gargoyle is one of the most gripping novels I have ever read. I am not one to usually read books more than once and I can probably count on two hands those novels that I’ve read two or three times. This is my second reading of The Gargoyle and it is even better the second time around.

The book is a first person narrative, told by a man who is severely burned in a car accident. He is driving in a ritzy sports car, stoned on cocaine, alcohol and other drugs du jour, when his car goes out of control. The bottle of booze he has been drinking from is held between his legs (a most unfortunate place for it to be) and when the car explodes in a wreck of fire, most all of his body turns to cinder. He is not expected to live, but miraculously he does. While recuperating in a rehabilitation hospital, he reflects on his past life as a good looking stud, a pornographer, drug addict, alcoholic and sex addict. He sees his life as valueless but does not know how to turn himself around. He is now a “monster” to most who see him – – a man without a face and with most of his body parts missing. He is in constant pain and his hospital rehabilitation is an effort that will take years to complete.

Amazingly, one day he is lying in his bed when a young woman named Marianne Engel, walks up to him and says quite simply, “You’ve been burned. Again.”  Marianne is a patient in the psychiatric ward but believes absolutely that she has known this burnt man in a prior life, some time in the early 1300’s when she was a nun and a scribe in the German village of Engelthal. Is she schizophrenic as her diagnosis reads or is she telling the truth? This is a hard question to cipher and forms the crux of the book.

The book is chilling in that Marianne knows many things about her paramour , things both simple and sublime. One amazing fact is that he was born with a small scar right near his heart and Marianne is aware of that. She is also aware of his life history, those events they shared and those that he suffered on his own.

I read this book with chills going up and down my spine, trying to decipher the truth(s) of the story as Marianne tells it. She captures her lover by telling him Scheherazade – like stories, one after the other, all about their lives together,
one story more interesting than the next.

Supposedly, Marianne is one of the great scribes of the town of Engelthal, writing a new version of the bible and a copy of Dante’s Inferno. Her style and script are unique and beautiful, not to be confused with anyone else’s.

What is revealed from these nights of stories after stories is that theirs was a great love, one that is to be repeated forever, through eternity. Whether the reader is a believer or a doubter, there is there is always the great question – – Could this have been possible? Is it still possible? Will this great love repeat itself through eternity?

Davidson is a writer of remarkable talent. I found it impossible to believe that this was his debut novel. He is able to combine several genres – – the psychological thriller, historical fiction, horror, and mythology. His genre is unique, and I, for one, was grasped from the first page and the story never left me outside its grip.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 313 readers
PUBLISHER: Anchor; First Edition edition (August 4, 2009)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Andrew Davidson
EXTRAS: Excerpt and Interview and Reader’s Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Other explorations of “past lives:”

Diary by Chuck Palahuniuk

Fangland by John Marks

Yes, My Darling Daughter by Margaret Leroy

Bibliography:

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