Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 15

“Stark terror that strikes in the dark.”

106. Darker – Andrew Matthews

The Point Horror Unleashed series whisks us away to Abernant, Wales, the scene of much boredom during the summer and also Nick’s giant break up with Louise. Poor Nick. He works in a bookstore with a sort of grumpy dude like every dude who owns a bookstore and is noticing more and more that there are teen boys terrorizing the whole town for literally no reason, like the gang in Psychomania without motorcycles. They’re super rude and totally don’t care. Total hooligans. And none of them sound as cool as Tom Latham, which is unfortunate because there is a dark force propelling them to their stupid and awful activities and it is also named Tom in a roundabout way.

You see and old story of Abernant involves a Tom Dacre, which is spelled in varying ways over the stories, getting hanged, followed by repeated time periods of total teen takeovers of shittiness in the town. The bookstore owner was traumatized by the last Tom Dacre plague and he’s doing primary source material research to see it doesn’t happen again. So is Nick, his employee, the one dude who is kind of immune to Dacre’s mind control from beyond the grave because he’s really more of a demonic entity now called Darker. Anyway, Nick’s also got a new girlfriend who likes UFOs and is a little overly talkative, so now he’s got her to lose as well. Of course, my favorite thing about this is that they’re doing research in two places with archives to sort it out. Research!

 

With or without a plague, it takes at least full ears of corn for Hen Wen and Snuffy to be civilized to each other. Full ears, as you can see.

 

Hen Wen and Snuffy really did never bond. Not even over those ears of corn or their powerful leadership skills or anything.
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“There have been many stories and, I’m afraid, some tragic events.”

139. The Owl Service – Alan Garner

A Welsh vacation takes a turn. Two families coming together and making a young girl and her stepbrother sort of reenact a story from the Mabinogian along with the staff of the house’s son Gwyn. It’s a love triangle story involving flowers and owls and trapping a spirit in a set of plates (and a painting). It’s a complex story, but what it comes down to is an old story with a love triangle that keeps repeating itself through the people who occupy the house by the standing stone with a hole in it that’s a focus in the original story. At least Alison does read the Mabinogian and particularly that story so they can recognize it a bit better in between all the teenage angst and plate manipulation.

I did find the book hard to visualize. I mean, Hen Wen tried to eat my copy, she knows her name also comes from the Mabinogian (via Lloyd Alexander via Disney, but still). Right away, I couldn’t get an idea of where the people were when it started and Alison was yelling at Gwyn about the noise that was plates and not mice until I saw the 1969 televised version. The televised version helped me sort a lot out, but I thought the secret barn owl taxidermy situation was going to be a bigger deal, it seemed way bigger in the book, like literally I thought the owl was bigger. The show had a great set of opening titles and it did make the whole stepsiblings participating in a folklore love triangle reenactment thing more obvious and weird. Speaking of that, I still feel like the ending is just a bit mean and hard to parse. I probably need to read the Mabinogian again. It’s been about 20 years since I read it the first time.

 

I know it’s The Owl Service and not The Sam the Eagle Service, but Peregrine is my most bird-esque guinea pig because of her resemblance to Sam the Eagle.

 

She also has little bird friends to stare at her while she reads The Owl Service.
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“Never thought there’d be a worse way to die than a shark attack. Having my head ripped off never occurred to me.”

14. The Cunning Man – Celia Rees

Finn and her family visit her aunt’s summer cottage at the seaside and find out about the Viper Rocks, which wreck ships and the mysterious folk who know about all the superstitions surrounding seafaring life. Finn just happens to be scared of the ocean and has regular nightmares about drowning. There are knots tied with magic and cleavers involved in scavenging and a lot of wrecked boats. A lot of them. The nephew of the man sent to do a lot of work on the cottage, Mike, tells Finn and her brothers a lot about the local family quarrels throughout time and to stay away from the dude with the serious moustache and snide look, a cunning man if ever there was one. And Finn actually does for the most part stay away from him, but, sometimes the cunning man comes to you and sometimes he’s just constantly stalking around laughing at jokes no one else can hear, like Griffiths in this book.

 

My own Finny has a seafaring theme himself, it’s “Fiskarens Fiende” by his namesake, Finntroll.

 

If there are cunning men hiding in the neolithic stone tombs, Finny will find them. First up, Pembrokeshire.
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The other story is a French movie called Don’t Deliver us from Evil, if you must. Its tagline is, unsurprisingly, “At First It Was Just a Game.”

144. Harriet Said… – Beryl Bainbridge

When there are titles like The Exorcist and The Other on the cover, I’m going to think it’s a horror novel. This is not a horror novel unless you think girls being total assholes is scary while surrounded by creepy men. I am not surprised by this, personally, on any level. But, this is the second story from Europe in the 1970s I’ve encountered where two teenage or pre-teen girls, one who is worse than the other in terms of her will to be ridiculously manipulative to the people around her, both try to manipulate men into trying to have sex with them. Sex the girls do not want. Usually the more manipulative one offers up their friend to some creep who takes advantage and for some reason thinks that it isn’t weird or sketchy that a young girl is just willing to have sex with him all of a sudden. It’s an extremely weird game. And in both stories someone ends up murdered and they’re not remotely supernatural despite being advertised that way. Look, there’s no need to act like there’s also malevolent supernatural evil if that’s not in the story. There’s a word for insinuating something’s on the table when it’s not.

In Harriet Said…, Harriet is a little older and in charge and she thinks her best friend should basically seduce one of the townspeople who they call the Tsar, but whose real name is Mr. Biggs. He’s a sad sack, essentially, got married because a woman who was interested in him won a house in a raffle and that means he could have a house. He doesn’t like his wife, he doesn’t seem to have much going on besides wandering around the beach and talking to the younger friend of Harriet (and narrator and whose name is not shared). He doesn’t seem to be entirely trying to fall in love with a teenage girl on her holidays from school, but, he also does not make much effort to remind himself he could have morals and not rape children of opportunity. He does accept her and Harriet into his home when his wife is away while he’s having a letchy friend over, after sharing a weird, cold, icky kiss with the best friend at the fair in a field adjacent to said fair. The friend goes along with all of this and also Harriet’s plan to make him fall in love with said nameless wonder and it’s all for having “an experience” or something along those lines. It’s not this sad, disgusting man that ends up dead though. Or Harriet. Or the narrator – or her innocence, although that does get sort of murdered, but she also already seemed dead inside, so make of that what you will.

 

Pammy and Twiglet (facing front) were mother and daughter and like two peas in a pod, but on her own no one could convince Twiglet to do anything she didn’t want to. She had a strong personality and an iron will.

 

Pammy finds the girl-crime free garden type area, where no one will convince her to do anything icky in England.
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“There are many imminent scholars who have documented proof of the actual practice of witchcraft.”

113. The Witch of Lagg – Ann Cheetham

This time, Colin and Prill and cousin Oliver are all on summer holiday in Scotland, getting acquainted with the castle of Lagg and the nearby witch of Lagg and her sister who got sacrificed as a witch even though she was a total Christian and has a monument cross to prove it. Since the current master of Lagg’s ancestor participated in killing her, her ghost seems a bit restless and bothers him quite a bit. As does the actual witch ghost, who also seems super keen on making sure everyone has terrible food with like nails and hair and blood and stuff in it and is mean to animals and is also quite tricky about her appearance.

It’s based on a real story of witchfinding and witch-mistaking and is a bit on the scary side. Oliver, of course, is the most useful of the three even if they mainly think of him as an uncool tagalong. He knows they think he’s uncool, he helps anyway. That’s Oliver. If he were real, he’d be a librarian by now.

 

Speaking of being witch-mistaken, here’s Salem.

 

How could anyone who hides and naps with his plants be mistaken for a witch? Don’t answer that.
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I assume this is not what “bogling to Aswad” means in Spaced.

18. The Bogle – Samantha Lee

In the Scottish Highlands, one should not go out at the “dark o’the moon.” If you do, the Bogle is bound to get you and eke out your death slowly and painfully and it has a year to do so. Peter and his dad the absent oil rig engineer don’t believe in the Bogle and poor Morag, the girl who knows her folklore of the area very well, can’t resist the dare that gets them all in super trouble. There’s also a curse at work on the house Peter’s dad moved his family into and the one person who can help with both of these things is an accused witch whose ancestor was burned in the time when being an accused witch led to death rather quickly. This was a pretty fun story and involved an impressive library with a grisly secret too, we know I like a good library.

 

This is what Thorfy’s always doing during the “dark o’the moon.” Always. No Bogle for him.

 

If Thorfy were to go out at night, it might be because a cursed spoon told him to. At least he wore his raincoat.
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“They missed on the haircuts by roughly 1200 years.”

27. The Beggar’s Curse – Ann Cheetham

Oliver’s a Mummer now. Not a silent one and really, he mummed by force, but there he goes taking his place in an ancient tradition to save the village of Stang and stick it to that awful Edge family. Really, the Edges deserve it. Acting like they own the village since they’re descended from a beggar who was cast out of a nearby city and who promptly drowned the entire city for its callousness so now it’s supposedly at the bottom of Blake’s Pit aka the Black Pit. If the pit suddenly goes clear and you see the city shining at the bottom, something bad is about to happen.

This was an odd vacation for the Blakemans, for once the baby wasn’t there and neither were the Blakemans’ parents or Oliver’s mom. That led to them being much more on their own and Colin seemed like a way cooler character than in the other mysteries. Granted, he and Prill were still both sort of snippy with Oliver’s knowledge and curiosity, but I feel like they should both can it because Oliver does also keep his wilder theories to himself until he’s got it all worked out.

Prill and Colin can sometimes be really untoward about Oliver thinking differently than they do, not everybody wants to be like you two or normal. And I do not understand why Prill is so scared of older people and has such an aversion to visiting. It’s not that bad, you usually learn something you didn’t expect. But, like I said, Colin was better in this one. Prill just got severely depressed and not without warrant since her favorite horse to look at was essentially murdered. And Oliver finally got an admirer in Rose, who at first I thought was an elderly lady, but was actually a young woman who is also a bit off in her thinking. She could really sew though and was super keen on the play and Tony Edge, local stud/total jerk, who was extremely rude to her and nearly killed Oliver. Unlike his I think brother (there were a lot of Edges), Sid, who was beyond the worst on so many levels. This was well reinforced throughout the story in a variety of ways.

 

Ozymandias is always willing to help find some danger, or, Danger Crumples, mostly.

 

See? He’s his own investigator, but he likes his teammate Danger Crumples too.
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This isn’t City of the Dead’s Candlemas, that’s for sure.

145. Candlemas Mystery – Ruth M. Arthur

As it says on the back: “an unexpected holiday on the Dorset coast throws Harriet headlong into a strange and mysterious adventure.” Totally. Harriet’s friend Nancy’s parents take her in while some repairs are going on at their school. Then Nancy gets really sick and Harriet ends up wandering around on her own and meets the “Gramma” of the village area, who tells her stories about witchcraft and not going outside after dark on Candlemas, Groundhog Day to quite a lot of the US that likes weather predicting rodents or doesn’t but likes the movie. Personally, rodent holidays where the rodents aren’t the scary kind work for me.

Anyway, Harriet also encounters a plaque about a boy that died on Candlemas via drowning and Gramma is all like, witches did it because he was out after dark on Candlemas, and then Harriet sees his ghost because…she is out after dark on Candlemas. But it’s not actually a ghost, it’s a boy from a juvenile detention center who escaped and is hanging out in caves. Spoiler. Birney is a little disagreeable and the witchcraft part is a little skimpy, but this is a nice enough story in the end.

 

Mortemer thinks towels are much better to hide in than caves. Usually you need a towel, as opposed to it needing you for witchcraft.

 

A Wisting to the Curious, a darling reference to the 1970s “A Warning to the Curious” from the BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas, is the sensitive story of how not to do archaeology and to respect the folklore of a coastal area. Wisting, as a ghostly but very solidly alive guardian with his little hat, also wouldn’t shatter a witch staff like in this book and he’d turn that boy out of the caves before he could break stuff. Such is the life of a referential guinea pig painting.
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Libraries can save society, but you have to leave the books in them.

5. In the Circle of Time – Margaret J. Anderson

It’s 1979 in Scotland and it’s time to be worried about the environment. Get on it. Because the future is going to involve barbaric peoples and a bunch of peaceniks hunting for resources and living with chosen families and Robert and Jennifer find that out via standing stone time travel. Weirdly, the peaceful society babies are sort of “everyone’s babies” like in some modern cults, which is totally scary to me.

Jennifer is pretty whiny and quick to give up once she realizes no one knows how to get them home to their own time, even though it was her idea to start digging and trying to find the stones that used to be standing but must have fallen over and that’s what causes the time travel in the first place. With such impatience, I’m not sure she’ll be that great at archaeology like she says she wants to pursue. Robert is more grounded and willing to figure out what this whole weird future is all about; he’s a learner of lessons and the first one to get back through a different kind of magical situation. He also listens to his grandpa, which is particularly sweet in this book because his grandpa’s totally been to the future too, he wasn’t just weirdly hung up on watching the standing stones.

One thing I’ve always liked in books where there’s an ecological disaster and society collapses is that the left behind people seem to realize the value of reference books in libraries and that certainly happens here. The internet is permanently down and so they remember where knowledge is still waiting for them to actually physically look at it. They break in, find some Time Life series and old school non-fiction that never got weeded, and now they have electricity back and can mill grain. That’s right, support your local libraries for the apocalypse because you’ll need them then and you need them now whether you know it or not.

 

I would trust Belvedere to lead people to public libraries in the event of societal collapse and/or time travel; that said, he would probably take them to Mime: A Playbook of Silent Fantasy or Great Granny Crochet, only one of which is useful.

 

Peregrine in Pigsploitation posters, making it obvious why we need libraries.
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Crime by a field

105. Night Landings – Alison Prince

Harrie wakes up in the middle of the night because there’s a plane landing in their area at like 2AM. That’s not prime crop dusting time, no it is not, and that airfield is supposed to be abandoned for the most part. It is a UFO? No. I thought it would be, but I was wrong. It’s smugglers. But Harrie doesn’t know that until she meets Rick – the kid who has run away from home because the smugglers are forcing his mom to help them. Rick doesn’t want the police, he wants 12 year olds to help him, or really just feed him while he hides with Harrie’s pony Taffy. Yes, Harrie has a dog and a pony. Lucky.

Anyway, after at least one child learns the value of telling their elders about shitty smuggling plots in the airfield where no one is supposed to be, a lot of action goes down at once in the airfield with the police, the smugglers, Rick’s mom, Rick who has been kidnapped, that really quiet old man who owns where Taffy the pony stays, the crop duster, Mutty, and fire. A lot of it could have been avoided if Rick hadn’t been so cagey about telling the police smugglers were trying to use his mom for crime, but in the end they all get a trip to Amsterdam anyway. Lucky, again.

 

Pickles has a hay field, but she doesn’t have a pony or crime.

 

See?
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