David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "parapsychology"
The Bone Clocks
THE BONE CLOCKS is a hodgepodge of fantasy, parapsychology, and futurism held together by a “normal” young girl, Holly Sykes, who has a degree of ESP.
Holly hears voices as a young girl and is visited by a strange woman (Immaculee Constantine) in her sleep, although she could almost swear she was awake. Holly calls these visitors the Radio People. She is cured by a Chinese doctor via what she thought was acupuncture, touching a spot on the back of her hand and the middle of her forehead. The voices go away, but she experiences a greater tragedy; her eccentric brother, Jacko, disappears.
Holly has a tiff with her mother over a young man (he’s twenty-four and she’s fourteen) her mother doesn’t want her to see. She catches him cheating on her with her best friend; she plans on going home but is picked up hitchhiking by these two people who end up dead. Although she didn’t know it at the time, that was her first experience with the Horologists and the Anchorites.
The story then jumps ahead to a new character, Hugo Lamb, who’s sort of a creep. He’s a scholarship student at Cambridge, but he cheats at cards and deserts his friends when they’re threatened by pimps during a Swiss vacation. Holly is a waitress at a fancy restaurant there, and she and Hugo share a night together, before he, too, disappears. Immaculee Constantine and her college, Mr. Pfenninger, are also on the scene. They’re both Anchorites, and they’ve identified Hugo as one of them. Anchorites never age, but they need to consume the souls of others with the Chakra eye (that’s where the forehead comes in. They also have a holy place called the Dusk Chapel of the Blind Cathar. The Horologists are the Anchorites enemies. When they die, they reincarnate into the body of a young child who’s dying anyway, which may have been what happened to Jacko. Let’s just say the Chinese doctor wasn’t practicing acupuncture.
Author Mitchell jumps to 2015 where he introduces author Crispin Hershey, a faded literary novelist who meets Holly at a writers’ festival. This guy is self absorbed and conceited. Holly has recently published a memoir entitled, RADIO PEOPLE; it’s selling like the proverbial hotcakes. He’s jealous, but he recognizes a truly decent person in Holly, and they become friends. Hershey doesn’t have any psychic powers. He’s only in the story to keep the Holly story thread going and to introduce a female poet who tries to get Hershey to read her work. It’s about the Anchorites and presumably the Horologists. He doesn’t read her poetry, but we see the Anchorites still after Holly who was apparently a target when she was a child. Hugo also shows up as an Anchorite, although Hershey doesn’t know that, cross examining him about what he knows about the Blind Cathar, anchorites, the Dusk Chapel etc.
The next major character is Marinus, a Horologist who in her present life is a psychotherapist. We get Marinus’s back story as a Russian serf who is taken in by two other Horologists, although she doesn’t know it at the time.
Marinus is sort of the leader of the pack, and it’s her story that leads to a climactic battle between the Horogolists and the Anchorites at the Dusk Chapel of the Blind Cathar. The Blind Cathar guy is like a supernatural being, but he’s asleep when the Horologists sneak up on him, shown the way by an apparent traitor. Let’s just say that two of these people survive, a Horologist and an Anchorite.
Now we move to the most dismal part of the book in the year 2043. Holly is living in a cottage at Sheep’s Head in Ireland. China is now a super power. An English nuclear power company has begun a meltdown; the Chinese company that runs England (the yuan is Holly’s currency) either doesn’t care or is incapable of stopping the meltdown. Holly lives with her a grandchild and an adopted son. This is an era of depression. Food is rationed, there isn’t enough fuel, and when China decides this area of Ireland isn’t worth saving, there’s anarchy. A militia steals a neighbor’s solar panels. The Net is down.
Curiously Mitchell’s version of 2043 isn’t that technically superior to 2014, and it’s hard to believe that America would be a non entity in world affairs in such a short amount of time. The ending leaves something to be desired as well. Two rather major characters are ignored. Mitchell isn’t much for suspension of disbelief either. There’s plenty of science that would justify a cluster of human beings who never die; we’ve identified the aging gene and eventually somebody will clone a human being if it hasn’t happened already. He chooses the fantasy/religion route instead. Oil and diesel are also important fuels in 2043, but they‘re running out; we already have fuel cell technology in California and there’s talk that we’re close to a solution for the cold fusion problem. Think of all the recent innovations and ask yourself if this dire situation is realistic.
Holly hears voices as a young girl and is visited by a strange woman (Immaculee Constantine) in her sleep, although she could almost swear she was awake. Holly calls these visitors the Radio People. She is cured by a Chinese doctor via what she thought was acupuncture, touching a spot on the back of her hand and the middle of her forehead. The voices go away, but she experiences a greater tragedy; her eccentric brother, Jacko, disappears.
Holly has a tiff with her mother over a young man (he’s twenty-four and she’s fourteen) her mother doesn’t want her to see. She catches him cheating on her with her best friend; she plans on going home but is picked up hitchhiking by these two people who end up dead. Although she didn’t know it at the time, that was her first experience with the Horologists and the Anchorites.
The story then jumps ahead to a new character, Hugo Lamb, who’s sort of a creep. He’s a scholarship student at Cambridge, but he cheats at cards and deserts his friends when they’re threatened by pimps during a Swiss vacation. Holly is a waitress at a fancy restaurant there, and she and Hugo share a night together, before he, too, disappears. Immaculee Constantine and her college, Mr. Pfenninger, are also on the scene. They’re both Anchorites, and they’ve identified Hugo as one of them. Anchorites never age, but they need to consume the souls of others with the Chakra eye (that’s where the forehead comes in. They also have a holy place called the Dusk Chapel of the Blind Cathar. The Horologists are the Anchorites enemies. When they die, they reincarnate into the body of a young child who’s dying anyway, which may have been what happened to Jacko. Let’s just say the Chinese doctor wasn’t practicing acupuncture.
Author Mitchell jumps to 2015 where he introduces author Crispin Hershey, a faded literary novelist who meets Holly at a writers’ festival. This guy is self absorbed and conceited. Holly has recently published a memoir entitled, RADIO PEOPLE; it’s selling like the proverbial hotcakes. He’s jealous, but he recognizes a truly decent person in Holly, and they become friends. Hershey doesn’t have any psychic powers. He’s only in the story to keep the Holly story thread going and to introduce a female poet who tries to get Hershey to read her work. It’s about the Anchorites and presumably the Horologists. He doesn’t read her poetry, but we see the Anchorites still after Holly who was apparently a target when she was a child. Hugo also shows up as an Anchorite, although Hershey doesn’t know that, cross examining him about what he knows about the Blind Cathar, anchorites, the Dusk Chapel etc.
The next major character is Marinus, a Horologist who in her present life is a psychotherapist. We get Marinus’s back story as a Russian serf who is taken in by two other Horologists, although she doesn’t know it at the time.
Marinus is sort of the leader of the pack, and it’s her story that leads to a climactic battle between the Horogolists and the Anchorites at the Dusk Chapel of the Blind Cathar. The Blind Cathar guy is like a supernatural being, but he’s asleep when the Horologists sneak up on him, shown the way by an apparent traitor. Let’s just say that two of these people survive, a Horologist and an Anchorite.
Now we move to the most dismal part of the book in the year 2043. Holly is living in a cottage at Sheep’s Head in Ireland. China is now a super power. An English nuclear power company has begun a meltdown; the Chinese company that runs England (the yuan is Holly’s currency) either doesn’t care or is incapable of stopping the meltdown. Holly lives with her a grandchild and an adopted son. This is an era of depression. Food is rationed, there isn’t enough fuel, and when China decides this area of Ireland isn’t worth saving, there’s anarchy. A militia steals a neighbor’s solar panels. The Net is down.
Curiously Mitchell’s version of 2043 isn’t that technically superior to 2014, and it’s hard to believe that America would be a non entity in world affairs in such a short amount of time. The ending leaves something to be desired as well. Two rather major characters are ignored. Mitchell isn’t much for suspension of disbelief either. There’s plenty of science that would justify a cluster of human beings who never die; we’ve identified the aging gene and eventually somebody will clone a human being if it hasn’t happened already. He chooses the fantasy/religion route instead. Oil and diesel are also important fuels in 2043, but they‘re running out; we already have fuel cell technology in California and there’s talk that we’re close to a solution for the cold fusion problem. Think of all the recent innovations and ask yourself if this dire situation is realistic.
Winter People
When I first started reading WINTER PEOPLE, I was reminded of PET SEMETERY by Stephen King, and “The Monkey’s Paw” the great short story, but I had a jones for a good ghost story, so I kept reading.
With only a few qualms I wasn’t disappointed. It takes author Jennifer McMahon a while to introduce her characters. The main one, I guess, is Sara Harrison Shea who wrote the journal so important to the other characters. She’s famous in West Hall, Vermont, as a murder victim who was skinned alive; her husband, Martin, a hard scrabble farmer, who committed suicide gets the blame.
The next character to enter stage center is Ruthie whose mother disappears. She’s left to take care of her sweet little sister, Fawn. They live in Sara’s old house and soon find some clues as to what may have happened to their mother Alice.
Katherine then enters the picture. Her husband Gary was a photographer and an antiquer who discovered parts of Sara’s journal and photographed it. Gary is killed in a car accident. Katherine discovers a picture of Gary with a woman with a long gray braid, which turns out to be Alice. So, have patience, our characters get together after a while.
Okay, now for the weird stuff. Sara has an aunt who may be a witch, and she has a formula that can bring people back to life for seven days, providing they don’t kill somebody. If they do, they will live forever. Sara had a little girl named Gertie who stretches your suspension of disbelief, but I suppose if you can do it for Stephen King you can do it for Jennifer McMahon.
The qualm I have is that Jennifer leaves us hanging with Sara. I can’t say more without hatching a spoiler. McMahon also leaves room for a hokey sequel in what happens with Gary. I’m not sure if I liked the story because I hadn’t read a ghost story in a long time or if McMahon did such a good job with suspense. I had to go back to the beginning and reread Sarah’s journal, and I never do that; I’ll give her a gold star for that.
With only a few qualms I wasn’t disappointed. It takes author Jennifer McMahon a while to introduce her characters. The main one, I guess, is Sara Harrison Shea who wrote the journal so important to the other characters. She’s famous in West Hall, Vermont, as a murder victim who was skinned alive; her husband, Martin, a hard scrabble farmer, who committed suicide gets the blame.
The next character to enter stage center is Ruthie whose mother disappears. She’s left to take care of her sweet little sister, Fawn. They live in Sara’s old house and soon find some clues as to what may have happened to their mother Alice.
Katherine then enters the picture. Her husband Gary was a photographer and an antiquer who discovered parts of Sara’s journal and photographed it. Gary is killed in a car accident. Katherine discovers a picture of Gary with a woman with a long gray braid, which turns out to be Alice. So, have patience, our characters get together after a while.
Okay, now for the weird stuff. Sara has an aunt who may be a witch, and she has a formula that can bring people back to life for seven days, providing they don’t kill somebody. If they do, they will live forever. Sara had a little girl named Gertie who stretches your suspension of disbelief, but I suppose if you can do it for Stephen King you can do it for Jennifer McMahon.
The qualm I have is that Jennifer leaves us hanging with Sara. I can’t say more without hatching a spoiler. McMahon also leaves room for a hokey sequel in what happens with Gary. I’m not sure if I liked the story because I hadn’t read a ghost story in a long time or if McMahon did such a good job with suspense. I had to go back to the beginning and reread Sarah’s journal, and I never do that; I’ll give her a gold star for that.
