Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 30

Who’s experimenting on who?

34. Sundial – Catriona Ward

In 1977, a movie called Dogs came out that involved packs of dogs that had been experimented on escaping from the isolated, small university where the experiments had been conducted and attacking people. This is not dissimilar to Sundial, where there is much talk of dogs being experimented on in a very isolated place, Sundial, essentially set up like a research facility/former hippie enclave. However, Sundial is most certainly not a sanctioned research facility where something went wrong and this novel does not seem to be received in the same way that Dogs was. Dogs was a flop and Sundial seems to be taken as a slow, but very original horror novel. For me, it was all right, definitely slow and full of unlikeable characters. And I definitely wouldn’t read it if you cannot abide animal experiments, especially ones where the worst of it is the experimenters really going a long way to rationalize what they’re doing. A protesting too much situation that makes more sense in the end.

The story we get is of Rob and Jack, two young girls, essentially being found feral and growing up in Sundial with those dogs and those experiments and how that upbringing has ripple effects in their adulthood for them as Rob goes to college and really leaves while Jack does not. Rob goes on to have a pretty awful sounding relationship and is writing a novel that keeps intruding in a way I didn’t find useful. However, Rob’s daughters, in particular Callie, who brings home bones and has connections with dead animals and “Pale Callie,” who could be imaginary, remind Rob of how she cannot really escape her past and the issues that happened with her and Jack in Sundial could just be continuing to play out all over again. Rob needs to return to Sundial to potentially find a solution for Callie, or herself, really.

Belvedere and Pickles are comforted with not being the animals in the experiments in a story for once. They were using predators and not prey. Phew for the guinea pigs.

 

“It could be worse. You could be duct-taped to a glider.”

21. The Tenant – Katrine Engberg

I had a hard time getting into this story, it seemed like there were too many characters and I wasn’t connecting with any of them particularly well. I stuck it out and in the end I did enjoy the interactions between Esther the landlady and Detectives Korner and Werner on their paths to figuring out the murder of Julie the tenant in Copenhagen. However, I will say I enjoyed the third in the series, The Harbor, a lot more. I had a better idea of who Werner and Korner were by the third book, of course, and I do quite like Werner. They’re no Hap and Leonard, but, this is Copenhagen and they’re detectives so…it’s no East Texas friendship amidst the crime and brutality, but worth reading about nonetheless if you’re willing to put in the three books’ worth of time.

 

Danger Crumples can handle three books. He can handle more than three books, at least, standing on them.

I have socks that say “I’m Not for Everyone” for a reason.

84. The Women Could Fly – Megan Giddings

I truly enjoyed this story, it’s about a lady who doesn’t want to get married, but she’s in a dystopian world where witches are real-real and women have to get married by 30 and have to register and be monitored for signs of witchcraft escaping them like they’re nuclear reactors with coolant leaks. Jo is not into any of that. Same.

There are also some women who admit they’re witches and then they’re essentially regulated and sometimes get gallery shows apparently. And in Jo’s dwindling set of options there is a mystery that might lead her somewhere else – her mother’s disappearance fourteen years ago and the will her mother left behind which sort of indicates that she was not murdered…she may have made it to a legendary island.

Jo is a difficult character at times, and this book, like making life choices against the grain of society, is not for everyone. However, it is hard to find stories of single women where being married is not the desired goal on any level through the whole story. The whole story. And the prose here sings. It is a bit of a song of pain and misunderstanding and pushing back against both systems of power and yourself though. It’s for the women who can’t put aside who they are and don’t want to anyway.

 

Merricat doesn’t believe in women who put aside who they are, those can’t exist.

 

“You’re dead? How about a nice cup of tea?”

94. Devil in the Darkness – Archie Roy

Paul and Carol are trying to get to their cottage for their honeymoon when they get hopelessly lost in the sudden snowstorm. They end up seeing one little light in the darkness and they follow it to…a giant house in the middle of nowhere, which is obviously going to be haunted. There are other people there who have all come to this house to investigate the hauntings, as opposed to turning out to be ghosts, which was definitely a possibility in a short novel like this.

Ardveck House has been vacant for a while and of course, it can’t keep a buyer, and there are modern stories about haunting situations and these men and women with cameras and a reel to reel tape recorder and one woman who is very helpful through hypnosis, Ann, have come to figure out if they can prove the paranormal to be real. They can. But, until Paul and Carol arrived, they weren’t having much luck.

Paul and Carol, sophisticated seventies newly marrieds, kick things off with a thud and a dragging noise until the bitter end of exploding house and the last secret is revealed, which I found to be a let down in terms of shocking secrets. I guess because I am not of the sophisticated seventies and had more time than them to read Poe. And also because it never explained what happened in the attic, which was apparently a huge deal. I would have liked that to be explained as it definitely wasn’t the murderous maid or the vengeful brother. Maybe it was Colonel Mustard.

Salem and Hen Wen, sophisticated seventies newly marrieds in any decade.

The house came furnished with an occult library and ominously breaking figurines.

123. The Woman Who Would not Die – Carolyn Busey Bauman

Okay, so, technically the titular “woman who would not die” is mostly dead. Just a spoiler there for this book from 1969 about a newlywed couple – an artist and a cat-hater, who end up enveloped in the occult and require their neighbors to save them from a ghost cat and a ghost who wanted her portrait painted.

You see, in a confusing history lesson about who has lived in Calder’s Cottage before, it turns out Jeanette, who lived there with her mother and is not the lady who kept losing children and was an actual Calder, Jeanette aka “the Bad One,” wanted to have a new body because her moon-based occult evil is still in the house and what else are artists for except to paint you an ideal body and be manipulated into giving up their life force?

Norman the artist played right into her ghost hands while insinuating his new wife Lorrie’s encounters with the ghost cat (which she really hates, she like super hates cats, her description of it on her ankle is really visceral) are just her imagining things because no one can find the cat. Also, I learned that possession causes a feeling of stiffness in the spine, thanks psychologist ESP studying neighbor Guy.

A lot of this reminded me of the early parts of Messiah of Evil where she’s narrating to herself, staring at the beach, and wandering around the house like she’s wading through quicksand until something bad happens. There’s just a very weirdly dramatic tone that isn’t earned right away in both that movie and this book, like whatever happens in the story, Lorrie is going to freak out dreamy-style and that’s that.

I saw a house for sale recently that was decorated in 1975 and had a bathroom that is in Peregrine’s exact colors. No mention of any ghost cats either.

Also, listen to the Boss, he’s on the stereo in an unexpected place.

132. Road of Bones – Christopher Golden

Forest spirits and brutal freezing cold are the threats to survival in Road of Bones, Golden’s horror novel set on the Kolyma Highway, which is truly a road of bones that exists built on permafrost and the people tasked with building it during the Stalinist era. In the story, an American and a Englishman are trying to make a TV show about the road of bones and living in the coldest place in the world, which in this story is Akhust. They meet their guide at an isolated gas station and then end up at a bar eating reindeer burgers before getting to Akhust and finding the entire town empty…with doors open and some footprints in the snow – barefoot prints, that is. On the way they’ve also saved a woman named Nari from her car’s breakdown which could have been the cause of her death had they not picked her up.

The mystery of what happened at Akhust is followed by some wolves that don’t seem like wolves and a figure straight out of shamanism in that area of the world, the parnee. Very scary nature is involved in the town’s abandonment and while they’re searching it and before several people at attacked by the not-wolf wolves, they find a little girl. Now, just a reminder, not every little girl is a nice one who is catatonic because she’s scared. Some little girls are more Bad Seed than Little Orphan Annie, but if you’re a bad spirit looking for a place to hide, a child is a good choice because someone will inevitably want to save and protect a child. In this case, they all should have fought that impulse as much as possible and they wouldn’t have gotten in their own car wreck. Sometimes the scary looking ones are in the right.

Ozma will never be thwarted by a little girl. She knows how to thwart evil spirits, hide while looking sweet, and is as formidable as an ancient goddess of nature.

“You scared, ain’t ya? You should be! Christmas Eve is the scariest damn night of the year!”

93. Twas the Nightshift before Christmas – Adam Kay

A very funny and very short book of anecdotes about Kay’s time working six Christmas shifts in the UK in obstetrics and gynecology (the UK adds an a in there, just to acknowledge) at varying levels of difficulty. Some apparently are nightshifts, but Kay doesn’t make his sleep strategy super clear so I don’t think they all were and being on call, with a “bleep” as he calls it, is very different from working the nightshift regularly. I think it would be part of the problems of social life he mentions consistently to be working repeated nightshifts because, weirdly, people expect you to be awake during the day as well, as though sleep is not necessary because you agreed to work nights. That’s never going to be true, just as the ER, or A&E, is never going to be closed on Christmas – or ever, really…

I really enjoyed this book as someone who has also spent some holidays enjoying marathons of Untold Stories of the ER’s holiday themed episodes in particular. And! A guinea pig is mentioned – not as part of an actual story, but rather Kay’s partner brings one up in the context of a Secret Santa situation where Kay’s person is someone he hates. I will quote the passage, the first part is from Kay’s perspective and the quote is from his partner:

I want to get something that will piss him off and inconvenience him so hard that it results in some kind of public breakdown.

‘OK then. Buy him a guinea pig.’

I think a guinea pig hurt Kay’s partner. I think one did.

 

Peregrine’s on her way to England, apparently they need a difficult guinea pig to break someone’s spirit. She’s on it.

 

She just got the call.  It will be a difficult Black Pigmas for someone from Pere.

 

Thorfy’s showing off how well he can sleep before working nightshift because he knows how incredibly necessary nightshift workers are. Remember, they’re doing what has to be done during the day, only with fewer resources and, if their work involves being outside or driving, in the dark. They deserve respect and quiet during the day for their service to their communities.

 

Gratuitous Fruit Cake Baking

127. Winter Chill – Joanne Fluke

This is from the before time, the long, long ago of Joanne Fluke’s career. I mainly know Joanne Fluke from shelving food-based mystery titles that were not particularly appealing to me to read. However, she’s also YA writer Jo Gibson of The Crush and The Crush II and Slay Bells…no food in those. And 1984’s Winter Chill, which has a great cover (1984 edition only, none of that 2013 nonsense) and quite the plot. So much death in Nisswa.

I read this haltingly, even though I thought it would go faster. It’s very 80s to me, sensibly as it is from the 80s, but, there’s just a feeling to the plot of a grieving mother and her husband who has hysterical paralysis after a snowmobiling accident impales their child on farm equipment buried under snow (Who doesn’t put stuff with blades away?). Their relationship dissolves as more and more weird deaths continue to happen to children and one set of naughty teens and a popular teacher and possibly this guy named Drew who disappears after trying to take advantage of drunk Marian post-teacher’s Christmas party. I mean, you can’t go on the internet, so, why not murder and mittens?

It has the feel of Silent Night, Deadly Night to me and they both came out the same year. It was really easy to see in my head as I was reading and it has that lighting, the same color palette of weirdly deep reds against wood paneling, that pure driven madness (but it’s less visible in Winter Chill and no one says, “Punish,” but they were clearly thinking it). They also both have very unfortunate endings.

 

Hen Wen is okay with someone being punished. Not her, but someone.

Area teen creeped out by wilderness.

96. Fir – Sharon Gosling

Moving into an isolated pine plantation in Sweden is not everyone’s idea of a good time. I am not sure if it’s mine, it depends on how easy it is to keep everything running and how often the produce would show up… It is probably not my idea of a good time because that part might be complicated for the guinea pigs once the snow sets in early, like in Fir. And of course there’s the whispery monster folklore situation with potential sacrifices and creeping around the house hearing things that may or may not be there. This was a fun and fast isolation horror read with bonus moody teenager and angry housekeeper. It’s also a part of the Red Eye series, which are like fatter contemporary Point Horror with decent covers, not as cool as the 1990s Point Horror covers though.

 

Thaddeus already had to move from Mississippi to Iowa to Wisconsin, that was enough without any monsters of folklore stalking him.

“First goddamn week of winter.”

74. Outside – Ragnar Jonasson

Daniel’s instinct not to go on this “ptarmigan hunting” trip was correct. He should not have left London and his 20 year old girlfriend, no matter how unsuccessful his career was, to return to his native Iceland and all the secrets he left behind amongst himself and his friends from college…and Gunnlaugur, who he knew from the before time and no one likes.

This was an all right thriller, a couple of the things that came up to cause tension did not really work, like what’s in the cabin, and I’m not sure the jumping back and forth in time was efficient since with the constantly shifting perspective I didn’t get a weight to some of the flashbacks. And I didn’t really care about anyone involved at all, so there was no one to side with and ground the story or make it more suspenseful. That said though, it was a super fast read. Ludicrous speed. Go.

Pickles and Belvedere, a brother and sister with hunting-trip based plots to whisper about.