F.R. Jameson's Blog, page 5
May 22, 2019
Silence by Natasha Preston
I remember once watching a documentary about
teenagers who have chosen not to speak. There are some who are affected by such
intense social anxiety that they find it best not to say a word to anyone
rather than say the wrong thing. It was a heart-breaking programme where I just
hoped that these young people could get over their issues, or at least find a
way to enjoy life.
This book focuses on such a person. Our protagonist
is Oakley, a teenage girl who hasn’t said a word in eleven years. In many ways
Oakley is a normal teen, she is an exemplary student, has hobbies, an
irritating brother and a new boyfriend who adores her. But she also has a
secret from her past. One that she has buried so far inside herself she can no
longer communicate verbally.
Some might complain that the story moves in a very straight line, that its conclusion – and how it’s going to play out – is clear from early on. But I felt that the richness of its characters, the seeming realness of its teenage world, gave this world proper depth and feeling and made for a compelling if somewhat sad read.
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
May 20, 2019
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
This is a book which surprised me.
I was expecting a lurid tale of glamorous people
in old Hollywood. You know the kind of thing: sex, betrayal, drug abuse and
maybe an untimely death or two. Okay, a lot of that is in here, but what I
actually took away was a touching love story. There’s a real heart to this
novel, one that loves its central characters and as such tells a story which
isn’t just about film stars behaving badly, but instead seemingly real people
and a distinctly real feeling relationship.
Obviously owing a debt to VALLEY OF THE DOLLS
(which really is a book about film stars behaving badly), we follow ultra-gorgeous
actress Evelyn Hugo as she makes her way from Hell’s Kitchen hopeful to one of
the world’s most beloved and sought after stars, while at the same time working
her way through a Liz Taylor-eqsue seven husbands. But who is the real love of
her life?
If I have a criticism, it’s that this book doesn’t
feel like it belongs to real Hollywood. All the movie stars at its centre are
fake movie stars, which given its fiction is understandable, but all the people
they bump into are fake movie stars as well. There is virtually no reference to
the real contemporaries a character that Evelyn would have had. No passing
allusions to a Monroe or a Hepburn. As such it feels like it takes place in a
parallel universe, one with a completely different set of stars, and because of
that it lacks a certain tactility.
But I forgive it that as its heart is in the right place and its love story rings true and in the end it’s hard not to be moved by it.
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
May 15, 2019
Doctor Who reviews (extra) – Day of the Doctor by Steven Moffat
Obviously, this is written entirely for sad DOCTOR WHO fanboys (and girls) like me, but the fact is that I really loved Stephen Moffat’s novelisation of his script for ‘The Day of the Doctor’. That isn’t a surprise. The only fanpeople who are ever going to pick this up is someone already primed to adore it.
It’s Steven Moffat stretching himself. Taking his
most well-regarded script (okay, we can debate about that, but it’s certainly top
three) and throwing it onto a much broader canvass. What I really enjoyed was
the amount of depth he added to an already complex story. How much fan service
was crammed in. This is a version of the tale with added River Song, added
Peter Cushing, links to future stories like ‘Listen’ and ‘The Zygon
Invasion/The Zygon Inversion’ and lovely jokes about The Silence and there
being a Gallifreyan child with the distinctly Earth-like name of Susan.
It’s clever and funny and everything you’d want from a Steven Moffat script in prose form. And if this is the last thing he ever writes in the DOCTOR WHO universe, then what a fantastic way to go out.
I listened to it on my Audible subscription ( they have some great podcasts as well as books, so I’ve rolled it over my subscription for a month) and have to say what a great job Nicholas Briggs did narrating it. Capturing the David Tennant, Matt Smith and John Hurt Doctors in a way which is instantly recognisable, without ever slipping into parody. His Capaldi might need more work (yes, he appears here for more than just an eyebrow shot) but he’s still Scottish enough to appreciate. Obviously neither book or audio performance are going to supersede the TV version in my heart, but I’m still amazingly glad I took the time to enjoy them.
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
May 13, 2019
Elevation by Stephen King
This is, without a doubt, the
best Stephen King work I’ve read in a long time.
Not in any way a horror story,
it’s more a fantastical allegory which can perhaps be read as about a man
finding his soul lightens when he gives up on petty concerns and instead focuses
on helping others.
(Although that reading doesn’t
work perfectly, as it implies our protagonist is some kind of bastard to begin
with, which isn’t the case.)
Taking the idea of Stephen King’s
own THINNER and twisting it, we find here a man who starts suddenly and
inexplicably losing weight. The difference is, he doesn’t lose any mass. His
body shape stays the same, he still seems to be an average middle-aged,
overweight American man, but each day he is dropping pounds.
And not only is he getting lighter,
anything he touches becomes lighter as well.
As I say, this isn’t a horror story. There is no big bad. There isn’t even a little bad, only the normal small-minded hypocrites who are always at the side of a King story. Instead it’s a tale of a man trying to do good, which builds to a conclusion that I’m not embarrassed to admit brought a tear to my eye.
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
May 8, 2019
The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch
It feels like I haven’t read any of magical policeman. Peter
Grant’s adventures in quite some time. Too long. And so this slight and
pleasing tale works for me a great reintroduction to the series. The stakes
feel low (even as our heroes eventually end up investigating a kidnapping), and
there’s a nice, unhurried, gentle feel to it which makes it like just hanging
out with some friendly characters. When those characters are as interesting as
Peter, Nightingale and newly minter teen member of the team, Peter’s cousin
Abigail, then it is difficult to resist.
Sightings of ghosts on the Metropolitan Line leads the team
to a case which isn’t just about dusty old ghouls.
If anything, there’s probably too much plot for such a slender tale (including, amusingly, some talking foxes) and the way that everything isn’t tied up suggests some elements will feed into future volumes. (I see the sixth book is already out, I should really try and get a copy). This is a fantastic world that I greatly enjoy and entering it again makes me realise how much I’ve missed it.
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
May 6, 2019
Black Cross by Greg Iles
Did you hear the one about the Zionist and the pacifist who went behind
enemy lines?
Greg Iles was, until a few weeks ago, an author I’d never come across – which given the cover boasts of ten million sales and has a Stephen King quote to boot, seems like an almost embarrassing admission. Now, having borrowed a copy from a friend and found within an incredibly compulsive thriller, I have gone from completely in the dark to fan.
When I was young, I never read any Alistair Maclean, but I of course
watched GUNS OF NAVERONE, WHERE EAGLES DARE and ICE STATION ZEBRA when they
showed up on the BBC. There’s a similar tale of derring-do here, two men sent
behind enemy lines in the Second World War on a mission to stop a Nazi atrocity.
But there’s more depth here than was ever in those films (as I say, I never
read the novels), a sense that these actions have consequences and a proper
engagement with the holocaust and the true evil of the Nazi machine. Of course,
the Nazis have been go-to villains in media since 1939, but they’re not just
the men in black hats here. They are given corrupted souls and proper depth,
which makes them so not only more interesting, but scarier.
BLACK CROSS is a truly gripping thriller, albeit one with a clunky framing device. Get past the opening chapter though and know the last chapter might irritate you somewhat, what’s in the middle is a real treat.
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
May 1, 2019
Doctor Who Reviews (Extra) – Scratchman by Tom Baker
I hadn’t expected to be so moved by this.
The existence of Tom Baker narrating the audio version of a novel he wrote and which is written from the point of view of The Fourth Doctor (a little note: there may be another one out there, but I haven’t before encountered a book written from The Doctor’s perspective) sent me scrabbling for an Audible subscription. The fact that this book was additionally based on DOCTOR WHO v SCRATCHMAN, the legendary, seemingly bonkers never-made-film that Tom Baker and Ian Marter concocted in the 1970s gave it an extra frisson. This was going to be unbridled Tom Baker and I couldn’t wait.
So, I was already looking forward to it, but I didn’t expect it to be so touching. There’s a long passage given over to The Fourth Doctor saying how much he enjoys being The Doctor, that it suits him to the tee and he couldn’t imagine existence without it. And it’s obvious that Tom Baker is talking about himself. That this is how he felt about the role which made him an icon. Furthermore, the actors who played the two companions of the piece – Elisabeth Sladen at Sarah Jane Smith and Ian Marter as Harry Sullivan have both passed on and the book is a loving tribute to them. Particularly Sarah, who is an icon in her own right. The book actually ends with a letter from Sarah and it’s quite lovely and magical and made me miss Elisabeth Sladen all the more.
(There’s also the appearance of another woman, whose identity
we don’t realise until the end, and I was hugely touched by that too. Lord. I
feel such a softy.)
As a whole, it’s not perfect. Whereas the first half of the book is strong and really captures 1970’s DOCTOR WHO, the second feels long and padded despite numerous good jokes. But by the time it flagged, I wasn’t worried about story anymore, instead I was lost in the marvellous emotion of it.
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
April 29, 2019
The Invisible Bridge by Rick Perlstein
I read the same author’s NIXONLAND a few years back and
absolutely loved it. An incredible tour of America: trying to work out how the
country travelled from The Great Society in 1965 – a seemingly new liberal age –
to 49 of the 50 states electing Richard Nixon in 1972. There is obviously a
disconnect there, and in telling it Perlstein was lucky to have such a
fascinating character as Richard Milhouse Nixon to work with. A man who still
feels hard done by and as if the Kennedys of the world are stopping him reach
his full potential, even as he is literally the most powerful person on the
planet.
There are similar themes in play in this follow-up. How does
a country that has gone through defeat in the Vietnam war and the shame of
Watergate – a country which seems to be accepting a diminished place in the
world – then a few short years later elect a President who proudly claims that America
is the greatest country on Earth and never has to apologise for anything?
The problem in this telling though is that Reagan is not as
interesting a presence as Nixon. There is so much façade to the former
Hollywood star that sometimes he just seems to be all front and nothing else.
Everything was calculated by him to give the right impression, so much so that he’s
frequently able to get away with spouting utter nonsense with no one questioning
him as he says it all in just the right tone.
This then is a less gripping book than its predecessor, more concerned
in internal Republican Party machinations than events on the world’s stage. It
ends at The GOP Convention in 1976 (rather than the election in 1980), which
does sound like a bonkers event, but is still quite dry and dull to read about
it. And dry and dull are not words I’d have used about the former book.
Still it did lead me to re-watch SPITTING IMAGE’s tribute to Ronald Reagan for the first time since 1988, and you know, I laughed from start to finish.
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
April 24, 2019
Doctor Who Reviews (Extra) – Blood Harvest by Terence Dicks
What I love about DOCTOR WHO is its ambition. That
it can take any genre of story in any place or time and turn it into a DOCTOR
WHO story.
But the thing with vaunting ambition is that you
have to coalesce it into something meaningful. If you don’t, you just end up
with a big mess.
This Terence Dicks novel is really messy.
The majority of it is The Doctor and Ace with Al Capone in Prohibition era Chicago. That’s fine, I suppose, even if the idea of The Doctor hanging out with vicious murderer Scarface is a bit of a leap. But it’s clearly the section Dicks is most engaged with, although that engagement might not be anything more than “Hey! I’d like to write an old fashioned gangster story like Warner Bros used to make!”
There’s another section where Bernice Summerfield
finds herself with Romana on a feudal vampire planet, which probably needs to
be a bit better developed.
And it all ends up in full-on Time Lord lore, back
on Gallifrey – which is supposed to be an ambitious conclusion but all ends up
too cluttered for its own good.
(There’s also what you would call an adult section – where Ace is drugged, stripped to her underwear and nearly raped – which yuck! It’s a weird mis-step that I’m amazed got through the editing).
The problem is that none of these things come together in one book. (Nor are any of them unqualified successes.) Yes, there’s the same villain in Chicago and the vampire planet and he escapes to Gallifrey, but the narrative still feels awkwardly jammed together. Undoubtedly Dicks is trying to create a big story here, but it’s a big story that just doesn’t work.
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
April 21, 2019
The Gates by Iain Robb Wright
More than six thousand gates to Hades are opened on Earth and
our planet is suddenly over-run by vicious marauding demons. It’s literally Hell
on Earth in this superb British horror novel.
Taking a page from old 1970’s disaster movies, the book zeroes
in on a cast of characters who are clearly set up to be our heroes and heroines
in this battle for humanity. But here the narrative takes an interesting twist,
as very early on it starts killing off some of these characters. We’ve been led
to believe that they are our protagonists, but such is the chaos of war that
not even they are safe. Nothing is.
The violence and bloodshed is handled expertly – making one wince, while never being too gory – and the story moves along with the propulsion of an adventure tale. It’s the first of a series about the war between man and demon and I will certainly be back for seconds.
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
