Badgwendel's Blog, page 6
October 19, 2013
Flowers On The Grass
It might seem like I have gone down a rabbit hole of horror the last few weeks. I mean I did start reading Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (Blacklight Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy lying on the couch> : “Gwen! That is the scariest thing I have EVER SEEN! PLEASE GET RID OF IT!”) . But fear not, I have also been reading things like my beloved Monica Dickens too. No need to race to the store, snatch up a bundle of sage and march through Moderate Income Apartments cleansing the rooms of Chez Gwen and Blacklight.
Flowers on the Grass is the story of a man who loses his wife and unborn child in a tragic incident in their little country cottage and drifts all over England, maybe just drinking a wee bit too much and wallowing in his downward spiral vs pulling himself up by the bootstraps and going on with life. Although, when you consider it closely, Monica Dickens’ Flowers On The Grass has horror elements to it. And once again, in a small way, a Monica Dickens novel written in the late 1940s reminds me of the 1966 Patrick Dennis novel Tony. The chaos Patrick Dennis’ Tony causes is greater (it’s rather hard to top Tony’s adventures including his stint serving in World War II and his destruction of a Mary McCarthy like writer) than Monica Dickens’ Daniel but it’s joy and destruction all the same. After all, Daniel slips through the lives of several people causing chaos and destruction where ever he goes on his downward spiral. No place is safe or no one is safe from Daniel. Daniel flits through lives starting with his wife/ first cousin Jane, yearning to not be tied down to anyone or anything, slipping away to start again somewhere else. He pops up in boardinghouses with permanent guests, rooms for rent, private schools, a tutor in a wealthy family. You would think there would be something that repulses people and keeps them safe from an encounter with Daniel. But there is just something about Daniel which keeps attracting people to him and coming to his aid even as he causes more trouble then he’s worth. Families protect and shelter him even though his actions could send them to prison. Women risk everything for him including their very livelihoods. And at the end, even when he actually trying to do the right thing, he’s still causing pain and sorrow. And I ended the novel very glad my only interaction with Daniel was through the pages of a book.
Filed under: book review, Flowers On The Grass, From The Library Stacks, Library Raid, Monica Dickens, Patrick Dennis Tagged: book review, Flowers On The Grass, Monica Dickens, Patrick Dennis
Danse Macabre
Over the last few months I’ve been re-reading Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature and S.T. Joshi’s The Modern Weird Tale on Mr Kindle. But I could only get a few pages into each before changing to something different. Both are interesting looks at the genre but not what Mr Brain wanted. Mr Brain wanted the fast food version, hot and greasy and salty, not Lovecraft’s high prose or Joshi’s snipping (as much as I respect the work S.T. Joshi has done in the field I don’t think I’m a lesser mind for loving Stephen King or Jacqueline Susann or Grace Metalious). So off to the library I toddled for Stephen King’s Danse Macabre leaving The Modern Weird Tale abandoned on Mr Kindle.
The library gods must have been looking favorably on me because I found the 1981 hardcover edition and a CD audiobook edition with a new essay “What’s Scary”. Even though certain critics (coughcoughSTJoshicoughcough) (Blacklight: “Do you need cough drops?” Me: “NO!”) might regard Uncle Stevie as a hack or untalented or just a hot mess with Qtips shoved up his nose and a desk drawer full of empty bottles, I have a certain fondness for the gentleman. He’s the fun uncle who has a room full of goodies and is more than happy to share even if your parents are trying to shake their heads in a big “NO”. He’s the babysitter who will tell you stories and let you watch movies that will keep you up all night, but what’s a few hours of sleep anyway?
Danse Macabre, like the best Stephen King books, is sprawling, full of interesting tidbits and will keep you reading until very last sentence. Some might wish Uncle Stevie’s editors had reigned him in a little more and made Danse Macabre more just the facts. What makes Danse Macabre so much more appealing and accessible are the meanderings. Part of how we process horror and the weird is tied in with our introduction to those things. And the meanderings also remind us that the person writing the book isn’t just a lucky hack with a typewriter but a person who has studied and loved and taught literature. Another thing to remember is the scope covered. Uncle Stevie just doesn’t look at books alone, he dives into movies and television with same relish as he does the classics like Dracula and Frankenstein. Imagine going to an amazing used bookstore or revival movie theater with Uncle Stevie?
And for the reader of 2013 vs the reader of 1981 there is the added benefit of access. Back as a very young Gwen circa 1983, stumbling across a library bound paperback of Danse Macabre with its haunting cover of Uncle Stevie’s face looming in shades of purple, there was just wasn’t access to all the wonderful things Uncle Stevie was telling me about. I had strict parents and a tiny allowance. The only resources I had were the local library and video store, basic cable and the hope I might stumble across something at a tag sale. Now? I can walk a few blocks down to my local library and scoop up The Blob, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Night of the Demon, The House Next Door, Richard Matheson collections and more without breaking a sweat. Actually I may have already done that last Saturday. Heck, I can pick up my Kindle and have books in the blink of an eye or use “methods” to find anything that the Central Connecticut library system doesn’t have.
Danse Macabre is just as wonderful as my twelve-year-old self thought it was. It’s a love letter to the genre. It was my introduction to an author called H.P. Lovecraft. It makes me want to actually read Harlan Ellison beyond “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream“. And It gives some glimpses at one of Uncle Stevie’s truly greatest creations, his son and fellow writer Joe Hill as a mouthy youngster who you want to know more about. The only way Danse Macabre could be better? Having Uncle Stevie and Cousin Joe Hill sitting down and writing an overview of horror from 1981 to 2013…together.
Filed under: book review, Books I Loved Back in the Day, Danse Macabre, horror, Library Raid, Stephen King Tagged: Danse Macabre, horror, Joe Hill, Stephen King
The House Next Door
I’m at the library circulation desk, picking up my usual stack of inter library loans when the Jan the Librarian pauses and asks “so what’s this?” because the book in her hand isn’t one of the Monica Dickens novels trickling in from all over our library system. “I never heard of this one”, Jan continues, passing it through the security scanner, “And I read all of her books.”
At this point am a bit stumped. Just how do you explain a book that Uncle Stevie King himself states in Danse Macabre is one of the best genre novels of the 20th century? Especially when you’ve just come the from fall library book sale you can find tons of Anne Rivers Siddons books with soft focus covers and titles that make you want to head South? “Oh…it’s about a house that might be haunted or possessed or something and the people who live in it”. Lame explanation I know but I was tired and there was a line behind me and telling Jan the Librarian about Uncle Stevie’s ravings about The House Next Door was just a little too much for me.
On the surface, The House Next Door, published in 1976, is a novel of it’s time. There’s the horror angle. The modern haunted house angle (The Amityville Horror is published just a year later), the Me decade lifestyle and it’s trappings. Our narrator is Colquitt (which my brain keeps translating to Clicquot like the champagne) Kennedy who lives an idyllic child-free life with her devoted husband Walter in a very nice and upscale Southern neighborhood in a lovely older home. She works part-time in PR, has cats, can wear painted on Levis and knows she’s hot. In real life? I would loathe her. The neighbors could be the daughters of Mary McCarthy’s The Group or Clare Boothe Luce’s The Women. All is fine and dandy in Clicqout Colquitt’s little slice of heaven until she finds out the wild and gorgeous empty lot next door is going to have a house built on it. And with that news, heaven acquires it’s first hairline cracks.
I don’t know if I hold with Uncle Stevie on the whole “one of the best genre novels of the 20th century” thing. On the surface, The House Next Door, published in 1976, is a novel of it’s time. There’s the horror angle. The modern haunted house angle (The Amityville Horror is published just a year later), the Me decade lifestyle and it’s trappings.
Our narrator is Colquitt (which my brain keeps translating to Clicquot like the champagne) Kennedy who lives an idyllic child-free life with her devoted husband Walter in a very nice and upscale Southern neighborhood in a lovely older home. She works part-time in PR, has cats, can wear painted on Levis and knows she’s hot. In real life? I would loathe her. The neighbors could be the daughters of Mary McCarthy’s The Group or Clare Boothe Luce’s The Women. All is fine and dandy in Clicqout Colquitt’s little slice of heaven until she finds out the wild and gorgeous empty lot next door is going to have a house built on it. And with that news, heaven acquires it’s first hairline cracks.
Remember the Dead List I created for The Nightingales Are Singing? That list is nothing compared to whatever lurks in the Lot Next Door. Like Renfield collecting souls, at first the victims are small and then get bigger and bigger and BIGGER. The House Next Door, whose very blueprints take your breath away and makes you think the house is almost alive, chomps through three families in a matter of two years leaving confusion and a new real estate agency’s FOR SALE sign on the front lawn after each family has gone. Our first set of victims family are the Harralsons, a couple from a very small city strong taints of New Money that decide the Lot Next Door is going to be their entry and showplace. Oh do they get theirs. After the tragic departure of the Harralson clan, the Sheehans from New Jersey buy the House Next Door. More tragedy strikes, leaving the neighborhood reeling and fractured. Next to our House Next Door of Horrors are the Greenes, Yankee newcomers or sad victims who give the neighborhood it’s death blow. Finally, Clicqout Colquitt and Walter rouse themselves from the cosy groove of their lives and decide to take action. They break the Old South codes of gentility and keeping things hush and go to People magazine, that bastion of the everyman and spill as much of the story as Joe and Jane Average could handle even though it means their end.
Like Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, The House Next Door has it’s chills but is most fascinating to me as a social document or a snapshot of when it was written. The House Next Door is a fascinating look at the outsider in the New South. Everything about the House Next Door, from it’s contemporary design to it’s occupants are the New South breaking across old barriers. What’s more terrifying to the neighbors? The house itself and the changing times or what happens to the people who live inside it’s walls? And The House Next Door will leave you wanting just that little bit more when you close the covers. Did Pie and her daddy…no…they couldn’t have? How did a particular character go from having drinks and listening to records to their…end? It there really such a thing as “bad blood”? What happens after the book ends, Walter and Clicqout Colquitt sitting in chairs and waiting…a lower novelist (coughcoughJohnSaulDeanKoontzcoughcough) would have told me in endless detail. Maybe the true genius of Anne Rivers Siddons’ The House Next Door is leaving me wanting and wondering…
Filed under: book review, Books That Haunt You, From The Library Stacks, Library Raid Tagged: Anne Rivers Siddons, book review, Danse Macabre, Modern Horror, Southern Horror, The House Next Door
October 18, 2013
Doctor Sleep
Thursday I came home from a challenging day at Company X and found something I wasn’t expecting waiting for me in the lobby. No, NOT the 1918 HP Lovecraft demanding a bracing walk around historic downtown while munching on broken crackers. Not the Necronomicon Press chapbook I have been waiting nearly two months for. Trust me, a little chapbook the size of one of the vintage Betty Crocker recipe pamphlets I collect would not be in a huge padded envelope. No, this package was a doorstop of a thing, propped up under the bank of mailboxes and almost as heavy as my tote bag. A little thrill rippled through me. June must have popped it the mail before the post office closed on Saturday. Either that or mail from the West Coast set a new land speed record.
Now what would have me tearing open a package before my apartment door had even closed? Two words. Okay. FOUR WORDS. Stephen. King. Doctor. Sleep. Back in the day when I wasn’t reading pure and utter sex and shopping trash, I was devouring Stephen King like the True Knot well…devours steamhead rubes. (Blacklight: “Huh? What are you talking about?”). Most of Uncle Steve’s output over the last ten years hasn’t appealed to me (Blacklight: “Wait…didn’t you want to jump up and down on the final Dark Tower novel until the spine broke and shove it in your dad’s woodstove? ” Me: “maybeeeeeee” Blacklight: “You totally DID!”) but Doctor Sleep got my attention. A look at Danny Torrance as a grownup? I put my name on the hold list at the library and resisted the urge to spend an entire Sunday morning tearing into Doctor Sleep as soon as Barnes & Noble opened once it was released. And stuffed an Entertainment Weekly right back in the library bag when I realized there was a Doctor Sleep excerpt in it. And yes, this is the same person who can’t watch at movie on her couch without having Mr Laptop on and checking out the IMBD, Wikipedia and TV tropes pages on what I’m watching. But there would be NO Doctor Sleep spoilers for me beyond grownup Danny Torrance and vampire things.
So when I slipped off the dust jacket from Doctor Sleep and settled down in the bedroom with there were two thoughts in my head. “Yes” and “Please don’t suck like Black House“. Now fast forward to 9pm Friday night and I’m lurching out to the living room to grab Mr Laptop and write down all the feels.
Uncle Stevie set himself an interesting challenge in writing Doctor Sleep. Going back to the well of one of your classics and writing a sequel with an older and maybe wiser character is beyond tricky. I almost wonder if Uncle Stevie and Helen (Bridget Jones’s Diary) aren’t instant messaging each other and nervously watching the best seller lists and reviews with their breaths held back. Is there anything new to explore about your character? Are you setting yourself up for cries of “you just want a big fat check”. And then Uncle Stevie has another challenge that I doubt Ms. Fielding has, as highly regarded of a novel as The Shining is, the movie version looms so much larger. And then my Stephen King fan girl confession…The Shining wasn’t my favorite King novel ever. It’s in the middle of the King canon for me. I’ve read The Stand so many times I need to kick my shoes off to count that high. And then there is the Black House factor. I loved The Talisman. I read the poop out of The Talisman. I can babble on about Twinners and Wolves and Black 13 until Blacklight rouses himself from his daily Minecraft coma to tell me to shut the bleep up. But I could only finish Black House by forcing myself to read it and remember how much I paid for it (ahh the days of having money to spend on new books). Would Doctor Sleep be the same awful experience as Black House? Or would I just stay up all night blasting through it in a white heat, ignoring that I needed to be at my desk at 5:45am the next day?
Doctor Sleep wasn’t as challenging to get through as Black House. And it was put away at 9pm last night, left on the sideboard while I trudged off to Company X this morning and picked up on and off through the afternoon into evening. I didn’t spend my time flicking to see how pages where left and wondering just how many trees died to print the copy in my hands (Under The Dome). My wrists and hands didn’t burn from just holding the damn thing up (once again…Under The Dome). And I didn’t fall asleep reading it and have it smack me in the face leaving a nasty red mark on my cheek (you guessed it! Under The Dome). Shallow things to think about, but things to consider all the same.
Our friend Danny, who now goes by DAN Torrance thank you very much, has grown up to be a tormented man who like his father has a love of the bottle and a nasty temper lurking just barely under the surface. And he still has the shine. Oh my does he still have the shine. A series of what I like to call Bad Life Choice Theater lands him in a quaint tourist town were he starts working at the local hospice and gets the nickname “Doctor Sleep” for his talent with the dying. If there is a good night to go into, you certainly would want Dan Torrance there to guide you there. Now it wouldn’t be a Stephen King novel without a little kid with powers so enter Abra Stone, a little girl who reminds you of Charlie from Firestarter with a scoop of Carrie. And since we need a Big Bad, enter the True Knot, a group of “people” (think soul vampires mixed with the Library Policeman and Stevie Junior’s I mean Joe Hill’s (Blacklight: “you mean your boyfriend Joe Hill”) Charlie Manx) who cruise around in RVs and look just like you and me but are pretty much ageless thanks to a diet of “steam” from rubes just like our friends Dan and Abra. However the True Knot is hong-ray and want to feast and gorge like I intend to with a box of Stew Leonard’s apple cider donut holes. Of course our heroes will battle the True Knot, crazy stuff will go down and Uncle Stevie will hit the best seller list.
Overall, Doctor Sleep is an interesting read. Like The Shining, it’s in the middle of my personal Stephen King canon. I was sad to know certain characters had died, surprised others made it to the last page and didn’t roll my eyes too much. Yes, I played Casting Fun Time (Rosie The Hat from the True Knot is totally Death from The Sandman graphic novels, Abra is a young Kirsten Dunst) but I couldn’t decide on who should be Dan Torrance. I googled EarthCruiser RVs and they’re more Hummer-ish than rock star palace on wheels that I imagined. And sometimes I wondered who would win in a contest between Charlie McGee and Abra. Closing the book after the last page (and I mean the last of the last pages right down to the Author’s Note) I was glad I read Doctor Sleep. It puts the “I wonder what happened to Danny and his mom and Dick” thought to sleep and leaves new ones open. Because if Uncle Stevie can revisit the Territories and the Outlook…maybe we could see what happened to a certain Miss Charlene Roberta McGee in the future? One can only hope and wait.
Filed under: book review, Doctor Sleep, sequels, Stephen King, The Shining Tagged: book review, Doctor Sleep, sequels, Stephen King, The Shining
October 12, 2013
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
I really should be puttering around the apartment, making sure I have a proper shopping list for my mad dash to the library and shops before going to lunch this afternoon. But the clean dishes are still stacked up on the drainer. The books I fully intended to review are in a little sad pile next to Mr Couch and I’m sitting here writing a review of a book I finished not more than fifteen minutes ago. A book that was actually in the library return pile before I snatched it up as something to pass the time until the laundry room was unlocked at 9 am.
Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane is billed on the front cover as a novel. But it’s such a slight thing. Okay, it’s 178 pages but they’re a fast 178 pages. If I could have transferred the clean clothes from washer to dryer with The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It’s not the best Gaiman book I’ve ever read or the worst but like the grey worm creature that burrows into the narrator’s foot, The Ocean at the End of the Lane burrowed into my brain. Gaiman hasn’t lost his fine touch of making you feel inside the skin of the narrator, the things you can trust and not trust as a small child. And if I was ever a small child or man in trouble you could have no finer persons behind you then the mysterious Hempstock women snug on their farm. I almost wish I was brand new to Gaiman, that The Ocean at the End of the Lane was the first book of his I encountered. It’s lovely, unsettling book, but the baggage of my former Gaiman fan-girlhood kept pulling me out of the tale and playing literary detective. And even though Gaiman says in the acknowledgements that the narrator’s family in the book isn’t his family my internal literary detective still popped right up, rolling her eyes and saying “yeah right”.
Even though my internal literary detective is sneering with my internal President of the I Loathe Amanda Palmer Club (both are giving me major side-eye for even picking up this book) The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a fine read for a rainy October, fog spilling down the hill and a cup of hot tea at your side.
Filed under: book review, Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Uncategorized Tagged: book review, Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
October 6, 2013
Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations
Sometimes a book comes out and you wonder why (example just about ANYTHING Annoying Author “writes”). And if you do pick it up and read it, you wonder why you even bothered to spend your time or money (coughcoughAnnnoyingAuthorcoughcough).
Given the above and the fact I kept falling asleep (the kind of sleep where one minute you are awake and the next thing you know it’s two hours later and you’ve drooled all over the couch like a Newfoundland on Mucinex) whenever I tried to read Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations you would have thought I would just take the hints, close the book, shove it deep into the library tote bag and curl up Mr Couch with something wholesome like the third season of Archer and a packet of Swiss Rolls even though Swiss Rolls are so darn sweet I can taste colour.
My stupid brain ignored all the hints and warnings and epic nap time (aka brain escape) and kept slogging through the darn book. I feel awful and am sure the late Peter Evans was a wonderful writer but no. The ingredients are all there. Reporter who a friend of rich and famous, down on her luck movie goddess, a book project, London, Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. But the end result was more dull and unpalatable than the time I tried to make chili without fresh spices or my first attempt to make scones.
It’s not that I’m a hater. Ava Gardner is one of the all time Hollywood beauties. I’m the person who cut class (really hope my Dad isn’t reading this review), took the Bentley shuttle to Harvard Square, bought Ava: My Story and started reading the darn thing before I had barely left the bookstore as a college freshman. It’s a miracle I didn’t walk right in front of a damn bus that day. If the publishers and the Peter Evans/Ava Gardner estates meant Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations to be a memorial to them and the chance for the public to read what happened and could have been with their stillborn attempt at writing Ava’s memoirs then I beg to differ.
All I got out of Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations is Ava likes a) men b) to swear c) is leery of revealing all d) is broke and everyone in her circle doesn’t want her to work with Peter Evans. And yeah, Ava says she never never ever claimed her third husband was 110 lbs of umm…man meat. (Once again really hoping my Dad isn’t reading this review). And calling the book Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations implies there is something beyond shocking and tawdry to reveal. Maybe I’m dim because I didn’t find anything shocking or secret (besides the third husband man meat claim). The most shocking thing is that Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations even got published.
Filed under: Ava Gardner, Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations, book review, Books That Suck, Peter Evans, Why Why Why Why Tagged: Ava Gardner, Ava Gardner The Secret Conversations, book review, Peter Evans, Why Why Why Why
Housewife Superstar!
Now if my head really exploded over Monica Dickens’ My Fair Lady novelization (and it almost did but we live in Moderate Income Apartments and exploded head is really really really hard to get out of cream walls and tan carpet), I am positive Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh (it’s like something out of a soap opera isn’t it?) would have a handy tip for stain removal, an inexpensive and delicious treat to give the Hazmat clean up crew AND find a use for all those delightful rubber gloves. Martha Stewart and Amy Dacyczyn, ladies you are on notice! Bow before Queen Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh.
I don’t know how (well living in New England vs Tasmania might be a tiny factor) I reached the age of almost forty-one without encountering the housewife goddess of goddesses Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh. But I have seen the light! Thanks to my bottomless craving for books, I found myself at the Plainville Public Library book sale last week. Because my hip was hurting like a melon farmer at harvest time I took the elevator vs the stairs to the sale. And while waiting for the elevator to arrive, saw the book that is making me trawl eBay, Awesome Books, Thrift Books and Book Barn for everything Marjorie. I mean I could just break down and order copies from Amazon but a) expensive b) the thrill of the hunt and c) Marjorie of all people would understand wanting to stretch my book buying dollar right?
Shimmering like a retro beacon, a vision in mint green and clutching gaudy orange flowers, Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh beamed from the cover of Danielle Wood’s Housewife Superstar: Advice (and Much More) from a Nonagenarian Domestic Goddess. It was as if Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh knew I was weak and the worst housewife ever and would scoop up the book the second I was done with the book sale. And scoop it up I did just in cause there were retro housewife fanatics lurking in the mystery section to race out and snatch right from under my poor scratched to heck hands. (And yes, I just know Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh has a cure for that and a replacement for the expensive RX cream I should be using every day).
Danielle Wood could not have engineered a book more perfect for me because Housewife Superstar: Advice (and Much More) from a Nonagenarian Domestic Goddess hits all my “YESSSSSS” buttons. Biography. Healthy snippets from Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh’s books. Dame Edna Everage. COLOR photo section. But enough swooning right?
Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh (am copying and pasting that over and over because my poor hands) is a treasure from the island state of Tasmania (yes, where the Tasmanian Devil and Errol Flynn come from) who for over sixty years has been perfecting the art of being a housewife. She’s won endless prizes, written more books than I ever will and has a museum in her house. She’s also survived grinding poverty, an abusive first husband (Mr Blackwell), over forty year estrangement from her eldest son, the tragic death of her beloved second husband, battles with stepdaughters and poor health. But her life hasn’t been all sadness. She’s designed two houses (the 1950s Cli-mar makes me want to go to Tasmania and see it in person), given books to the Queen, is adored by Barry Humphries and in her nineties still does more in one day than I will do in my whole vacation next month.
If you trawl through the stacks at Goodwill, Savers and Salvation Army, block the aisle in the cooking/crafts/gardening section at library book sales (hands off those Time-Life Art of Sewing because they are MINE!), scour estate sales for treasures and can make your own Oxi-Clean then Housewife Superstar: Advice (and Much More) from a Nonagenarian Domestic Goddess is tailor made for you. Heck if you’ve even picked up a duster or tried one of Heloise’s hints, Housewife Superstar: Advice (and Much More) from a Nonagenarian Domestic Goddess is for you. Now time to wrap up this review and do a little housekeeping of my own.
***
Sad news…Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh died last month.
Filed under: book review, Buy or Check It Out, Danielle Wood, Housewife Superstar, Library Raid, Marjorie Blackwell, Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh, Uncategorized Tagged: book review, Danielle Wood, Housekeeping, Housewife Superstar, Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh
My Fair Lady
Blacklight: “Dickens? I thought you hated Charles…”
Me: : “Monica Dickens! M-O-N-I-C-A! Never say that other name. EVER!”
Blacklight: “How can you hate Char….”
Me:
A few months ago I discovered the author Monica Dickens. And have been requesting every Monica Dickens title available through the inter-library loan system. I may or may not have the Follyfoot series requested (I totally do!). But there comes a point where even a completest such as myself (Blacklight: “Don’t you mean crazy pants OCD?”) breaks. Now I have slogged through the Slough of Despond, I have gone through the Valley of the Shadow of Death (and read Rae Lawrence’s Jacqueline Susann’s Shadow of the Dolls). I have read Tooner Schooner and the first two Meg novels. I have read every single Beany Malone novel my library system has. I have read Eloise Takes a Bawth. But there is nothing and I mean NOTHING (not even the 1918 HP Lovecraft knocking on my door wanting to go for a brisk 16 mile hike holding a crate of Magnum Double Caramel ice creams) that can make me read the abomination I found waiting for me at the library yesterday. You would think I might have gotten a clue from the title but lots of books can have the same title right? And if Ray Garton thinks writing In a Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting was a career low…oh honey…I think I might have found something even lower….
MONICA. DICKENS. NOVELIZATION. OF. My Fair Lady…
I can’t even. No, you can’t make me. Even if you paid off all my bills. The cover alone (a washed out watercolor of Eliza in a pink dress getting gawked at by men folks) is awful enough. The artist was trying to pain Audrey Hepburn but ended up with a zombie Winona Ryder a few years before Winona Ryder was even born. Zombie Winona Doolittle wants to eat my brains and soul. Also isn’t that stupid dress suppose to be white? Have never seen the movie My Fair Lady and have no intention of doing any Google image search to get a definitive answer. Also why in the name of Great Tulu do you NEED a novelization of My Fair Lady says the person who bought The Abyss and Iron Man novelizations. And why drag Monica Dickens into writing it. Did she need crack money? School fees for her daughters? Did the price of hay for her beloved horses go up?
This…horror…this thing that should not be is going right back to the library this afternoon.
Filed under: Blast From The Past, Books That Suck, c-i-l-l me now!, Can You Tell I Hate This Book?, emotional scar, Library Raid, Monica Dickens, My Fair Lady, The Big NOOOO!!!, Why Why Why Why Tagged: I Can't Even, Monica Dickens, My Fair Lady, Never In A Million Years, Why Why Why Why
September 29, 2013
The Landlord’s Daughter
A Sunday afternoon curled up Mr Couch reading a Monica Dickens novel should be delightful right? Then why am I staring at The Landlord’s Daughter wondering if blasting through Season Five of Deadly Women on Netflix would have been a better use of my Sunday afternoon?
According to the Internet, The Landlord’s Daughter is Monica Dickens reworking/re-imagining of Alfred Noyes’ poem The Highwayman. I must not have the brain to properly appreciate poems and literature because I don’t care for The Landlord’s Daughter. There are so many parts of the book that could have been turned into novels of their own which I would have happily read. But mushed all together? Yuck. The framing story with Charlie (the landlord’s daughter) widower and wannabe musician Terence has a Patricia Highsmith/Ripley feel. Charlie’s background as the plain girls school gym mistress who leads a narrow and chaste life in her run down cottage, an outsider from her family (rich landlord father, famous artist model mother, popular actor brother and society beauty younger sister) could have drawn even more on the experiences Monica Dickens had living as a spinster in her little country cottage. She could have even expanded the plot thread of the sister in law dying of TB from her working as a cook/housekeeper in the 1930s for a family with a mother dying of TB.
Instead what we get is a story that leaps from the current time (circa the late 1960s) back to the early 1930s and back again. Just when you’re getting cozy with Charlie at school, BANG, it’s time for Charlie’s widower to pop up and babble on about dealing with his daily cleaner and Terence. There is a way to make these jumps less annoying because golly knows that Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell does it superbly in A Dark-Adapted Eye which also has a mysterious at its core. But Rendell’s mystery is interesting. I really don’t care what “Jack Morgan” did or didn’t do. If you must do the whole story told as a memoir for the descendants thing, why cut off at the point Monica Dickens does. If “Jack Morgan” and Julia’s loathing of her mother is so important keep writing and show me what Charlie endured after “Jack”‘s death and the birth of Julia. Or tell me the story from Julia’s perspective of discovering the truth about her parentage and her mother’s secret life.
If you do appreciate poems and literature and are made of stronger stuff then me, by all means pick up The Landlord’s Daughter. For me? I’d rather re-read one of Monica Dickens memoirs any day. Heck, I’d rather re-read The Nightingales Are Singing and you know how much I loved that book. Maybe I’ll have a revelation and find a way to better get my head around The Landlord’s Daughter like I did with The Happy Prisoner. But at least The Happy Prisoner felt more like a proper novel versus The Landlord’s Daughter everything in the fridge stew of ideas.
Filed under: book review, Library Raid, Monica Dickens, The Landlord's Daughter, Uncategorized Tagged: book review, Monica Dickens, The Landlord's Daughter
Behind The Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America
If I say “burlesque” what springs to mind? Gypsy Rose Lee? Dita Von Teese? Sally Rand? Blaze Starr? Lili St. Cyr?
All lovely and talented ladies indeed. Does the world need another book all about Gypsy Rose Lee? Not really. I’ve read and reviewed them all. But there is a whole history and other people in the burlesque world whose stories need to be told. Luckily Leslie Zemeckis is among the few who are willing to delve down and let the ladies talk. Behind The Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America is a solid but fast read. First the basics, burlesque is more than some hard body bleached blonde grinding away on the pole and showing almost everything…okay is some cases everythangggggggg. Burlesque was a world with singers, comedians, dancers, novelty acts and yes, ladies who might remove a garment or seventeen all in the name of entertainment. The Alan Alda all our moms swooned over back in the day when M*A*S*H ruled the airwaves? Raised backstage as his father Robert worked as a “tit singer”. Yes a “tit singer” is a real thing. I swear. Stop giggling Blacklight. I mean it. Everyone else? Read Chapter 12 starting on page 72.
The genius of Behind The Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America, is the ladies themselves telling their stories. The stories aren’t pretty. Some of the women are proud of their pasts and eager to help Zemeckis with her project. Others are reluctant. One former dancer had a picture of herself in her prime hanging in her agency and no one thought to connect the lush girl in the picture with the elegant lady at the desk. Another is the last of three sisters to grace the stage and is let with just her memories after her last sister dies.
But burlesque isn’t just the ladies. Each chapter brings you deeper into the burlesque world from working around the censors to getting booked for an indecent act to the decline of the burlesque world into straight “get on the pole and work it nakey” stripping. By the middle of the book, you’re ready to powder up, slip on your costume, do your set and then wait in backstage until the next show.
You want to know more? Please scamper damper to Amazon or your local bookstore and pick up Behind The Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America. Sure it’s $24.95 and you might be on a budget. Go to your local library if they have it and if they don’t ask them to order it. Why are you still reading? Go get Behind The Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America NOW!
Filed under: Behind The Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America, book review, Leslie Zemeckis, strippers, stripping, striptease Tagged: Behind The Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque In America, book review, burlesque, Leslie Zemeckis, stripping, striptease
