Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier
My rating: 0 of 5 stars
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Sunday, September 26, 2021
Review: Frenchman's Creek
Saturday, September 25, 2021
Tuesday, September 21, 2021
Review: Unseen Academicals
Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I'm not big on sports, either participating or spectating. But I am perfectly capable of enjoying a novel about sports, particularly one by Pratchett.
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Sunday, September 19, 2021
Wednesday, September 15, 2021
Monday, September 13, 2021
Review: My Best Friend's Exorcism
My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Possession stories are all about girls becoming young women and how poorly everyone else deals with the change from sweetly innocent and virginal child to totally-asking-for-it-slut whom guys will start terrifying on the street, never mind if she's ten. It's a time of incredible vulnerability for the girl, both emotionally and physically, because not only is she changing but so is the way everyone reacts to her.
When one of four smart, popular, best friends starts behaving strangely after a failed LSD trip their sophomore year in high school, Abby has to discover and name every awful thing about being a 16-year-old girl in 1988. It's a substantial book, as you can imagine. There's class and wealth and power in Charleston, which might as well be a small town given the insularity of this private school. There's all the public pressure on girls to protect their virginity and their drinks from drugs which facilitate rape, with no equivalent pressure on the guys not to rape. On the contrary, every movie of the decade showed that incapacitated hot chick = major score for the nerdy guy. There's sex and drugs and rock and roll in the chapter titles. There's a very narrow range of acceptable looks: clothes, of course, but makeup, hairstyles, body shapes, and everyone is policing and judging girl’s appearance all the time. There's an expectation of all-around excellence from the girls and women that is rather at odds with the expectation of marriage to a good provider followed by a couple of kids and well, really, nothing else except chauffeuring for a few decades. There’s the destructive economy of Reaganomics played out in downward mobility for some, limited access to health care, undisguised systemic racism, there’s urban legends and satanic panic, and the stigma of mental health issues. There are earnest Christians being brought in to proselytize in school assemblies, when every student understands football is more important.
And against all of that there is friendship and being seen and known and having shared jokes and memories and an entire shared lifetime by 16. The importance of having your friends stick with you when everything is awful and adults don’t listen, don’t understand, and don’t help. Hendrix evokes the lives of teen girls in a way that doesn’t feel weird or clueless and he shows how helpless a bright 16 year-old is when everyone turns against her.
The amazing thing about Hendrix is that he understands and respects both genre horror and the real horrors that genre reflects obliquely. He makes the most of both of them, with a gentle mockery but very serious intentions. Unlike the books and films he evokes he shows real insight and empathy for the lives of women. One is tempted to say "uniquely."
Library copy
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Review: The Secret
The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
The SECRET is this: thinking hard about stuff magically lures it to you. Therefore, anyone who doesn't have everything they want is to blame for being too damn lazy. Especially all those starving people. If they would just picture a delicious meal, served in a lovely setting, it would come to them. Also, sick people are to blame for being sick, because if they just visualized themselves being well that nasty broken bone, cancer, or whatever would heal.
Edited to add an E on 9/13/21
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Monday, September 06, 2021
Review: Metaphrog's Bluebeard
Metaphrog's Bluebeard by Metaphrog
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Bluebeard was described as a "feminist fairy tale," so it's going to differ from the traditional in some way, right? But there was just no telling how it was going to differ, which meant that anything could happen, which made it rather more suspenseful than I had anticipated. Very atmospheric and creepy. Pretty, too. I'll be looking for more of their work.
Library copy
Genre: Suspense
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Sunday, September 05, 2021
Friday, September 03, 2021
Thursday, September 02, 2021
Wednesday, September 01, 2021
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