Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 40

Abominable Gothic

114. The Ancestor – Danielle Trussoni

This is a different tread down the inheritance path. Sure, it’s nice for Alberta to find out where her giant feet came from, but she’s being asked to sacrifice any future she may have had outside a remote Alpine castle to do so. I mean, the castle has paintings and a green house and an in house researcher who also doesn’t leave, and she was going through a weird divorce where she kind of didn’t want to divorce her husband but also kind of did, and that really gets taken care of once she’s in the Alps, but, still. For like a few random days Alberta makes a mild effort to get out that she then forgets to follow-up on. In theory with an isolated place and secrets and people that won’t let someone leave, dread could be present, but it’s just not here. However, once Alberta figures out what the story wanted her to do and gets an old family journal, takes an interest in genealogy, finds the secrets of her genetic line, and how she fits in with her giant feet finally, she gives up on everything outside the Alps pretty quickly. Everybody likes being told they’re special.

Danger Crumples, obviously special, had very cute feet.

 

“Disobedience is treason, treason is a crime, crime will be punished!”

34. The Natural Way of Things – Charlotte Wood

This is a story of my nightmares. Women who don’t do what someone male and powerful tells them, or who are publicly embarrassing for some reason, are taken from their homes and end up in a dilapidated prison camp in remote Australia. There’s no real criminal reason for these women to be imprisoned. They’re subjected to being sheared and beaten and treated like objects with no sentience while one of their captors checks his online dating profile and sneers at them and all their captors generally seem to believe they deserve this degradation. In The Natural Way of Things (such a prescient title), as in many non-dystopian situations, it seems that standing on your own two feet with your own thoughts and opinions is wrong for the ladies. Those thoughts could ruin someone powerful’s day.

Even though there are a lot of hazy elements and “look at this magical fable of doom” sorts of aspects to the writing in this book, I see the precedent of writing the helplessness of these women in exploitation films and even though there’s a lot to be said that is not so good about exploitation (I mean, it’s in the genre name), it’s the occasionally bright version of bleak. If I want to be Oz-specific like the book, there’s Turkey Shoot of 1982. Some dour looking official-dudes take Olivia Hussey off the street for being nice to Steve Railsback and send them to a co-ed prison camp where they get yellow outfits and mistreated to the usual exploitative degrees before they are hunted by the rich and powerful, including some werewolf-looking dude later on. At least it’s co-ed, “deviants” are in every gender, thank you very much.

And then there are the “women in prison” movies, including such wonderful trashiness as Women in Cages, The Big Doll House, and the Scorpion series from Japan, all of which are centered around similar themes as The Natural Way of Things – women being stuck in a centralized location, objectified, treated absolutely abhorrently, turning on each other, and in the best aspect of the exploitation ones – forming elaborate plans to get out and then Getting the Hell Out! Usually, they end up losing one of the better characters along the way, but also make sure to stick it to whatever shitty corrupt forces are in charge of their prison.

The Natural Way of Things is good, but not allowed to have fun, so it stays in the sad energy of a Matsu (she’s the Scorpion) story about her past if she got discombobulated and went mad instead of staying cunning and getting out. I did like The Natural Way of Things, but I do like my fables with some trashy pizzazz also, as the trashy pizzazz unexpectedly trends more towards empowering.

Merricat escapes the spider while keeping her cool. Or is she cuddling with the spider? Either way, she’s minimally trapped…for now. She will escape. Oh yes, she will escape.

 

This is my day.

117. Nothing but Blackened Teeth – Cassandra Khaw

All of these people used to date each other and now, technically, they don’t want to hang out together, but they are in this clearly cool house for Talia and Faiz’s wedding. This was my main takeaway from this book. I did not want this to be my main takeaway from what is being touted on the back as “Hill House for this century.” This is no Haunting of Hill House in terms of being scary, not at all. The house sounded cool and definitely had super potential to be creepy…but… For me, the characters were so annoying and would not shut up about their relationship drama with each other from the start that I had a hard time even realizing that I could possibly be scared, which makes it more like an 80s haunted house slasher with weirdly little death than The Haunting of Hill House. Except in an 80s haunted house slasher they would have waited for scary things before starting to repeatedly yell about leaving, not just seen each other.

The beats are there – haunted house with very animated wallpaper and a very, very good backstory, a group that doesn’t really care about each other but say they do, drinking, the lights go out, the ghost is whispering to one of them, things are decrepit in the house – but the dread was really not. I felt like narrator Cat was telling me I should be scared and I couldn’t muster it even though I was already on edge when I started reading it because I had been startled quite badly an hour earlier (I even thought, this is supposed to be very scary, maybe not the time to start because it could give me actual nightmares). And then Cat and Phillip started talking like now-time versions of The Big Chill characters.

Pammy and Thaddeus didn’t have much relationship drama. He even slept with his eyes closed by her and me, which is a threshold of prey animal trust that is absolutely golden so I sincerely hope they are haunting every house I’m in and chasing away annoying characters.

 

If the people in this book had stopped talking about their interpersonal bullshit, Taddy and Pammy also could have helped with the whole haunted house situation. They have experience, as seen here.

It goes between “And All through the House” and Elves

62. Santa Claws – Nicholas Adams

This 1991 slasher YA novel is good enough that I wish it were one of the many terribly made Christmas horror movies I put in a YouTube playlist along with 80s commercials (the golden times for toy commercials – so many very stiff action figure bodies being bounced around, so much imagination required) to wrap presents or make presents to. One other thing I appreciate about it more so now when trying to re-look it up is that it’s a werewolf book and not about a cat. It seems that cats have latched on to the “Santa Claws” concept and run away with it. It could have been werewolves.

This is the story of Cory, his weird dreams and inability to finish one article for the school paper, unexplained blood-splashy deaths of both animal and aggressive teen girl boyfriend stealer, Cory’s ex-girlfriend and her investigative prowess, and a Canadian exchange student all coming together in their little town to have a bad time. It works though. It hums along at an angsty clip and was very easy to visualize to the point where I can picture the brightly colored sweaters now.

Is that a werewolf in this clearly very real forest? Nope. It’s Thorfy standing on his hind legs, which makes it look even more real.

 

P.S. Happy Black Pigmas from Pere! She’s still on the phone.

 

Whistle and I’ll show up if I feel like it

73. Mistletoe – Alison Littlewood

Mistletoe has a great premise for a horror story, the promise of moving somewhere new for Leah to escape her grief and all the usual reminders that one is supposed to be happy during the holiday season, in this case Leah moves into an old Yorkshire farmhouse which is isolated except for some not really that close neighbors… except for the people who used to live in the house, who are still there to some extent and also her relations. It sounded good to me, anyway, but then I kept trying to find a way to get into the story and I just couldn’t. I had no dread and considering that any time there’s a mouse in my house I am in a state of constant dread until I know it’s dead and subsequently out of the house, living alone dread is not unfamiliar. See also, what was that noise? dread, which is also easy to get when alone. I can relate to Leah’s possible dread sources living, dead, and nature-based, even holiday based, is what I’m saying – but I couldn’t in Mistletoe. I would have liked to, I’m fond of holiday horror (which this is more of a polite ghost story that meanders), but I just could not get into it. I don’t think even eating our apparently less toxic variety of US mistletoe would have helped me believe here.

Snuffy jumps forth from the piggie A-frame after I told her not to eat the electric lights because she will get hurt. She was really mad I wouldn’t let her nibble her way to electrocution.

 

So instead, she tried to nibble on the plastic tree. Nothing here is even holiday edible, Snuffy!

This was not meant to be festive.

37. Slay Ride – Nick Baron

It’s the Nightmare Club, where Andrea Wanamaker can ask for the harassment and bullying to stop at school and get actual help in the 1990s, granted, that help involves humiliating her tormentors followed by murder, but it’s help…at first, mostly… It’s hard to get help with harassment and bullying now, in school or at work, and that has to be taken into consideration. Was the murderous approach justified in a society that won’t take the daily torture of Andrea seriously? The bystander effect is quite strong in all decades, which I believe is part of why Andrea’s “Guardian Angel” stays secretive and doesn’t let her know who he is, well, that and the murdery reasons. I think her Guardian Angel could have been more festive though, like Billy from Silent Night, Deadly Night or, really, Ricky from Silent Night, Deadly Night Part II – “Garbage Day” is a pretty apt slogan for the Guardian Angel’s approach in Slay Ride towards the awful Tom and his friends.

This was actually a pretty rough book to read because of the subject matter, especially if you’ve gone through being made fun of in a hurtful manner or much worse because of your name or just for existing in the same space as an insecure popular person and then told you “just can’t take a joke.” Andrea is not exaggerating and is pushed to her breaking point and yet she’s only being taken seriously by someone with homicidal tendencies. I honestly can’t say that’s not how it would happen now as well despite some theoretical level of progress. I’ve noticed that the less powerful on the receiving end of harassment and bullying tend to continue to get the most consequences of having existed. How dare they. Unexpectedly for a YA horror trade paperback, Slay Ride does come with information in the back about sexual harassment in school and how to get help, so they were trying to give 1990s youth something useful.

Danger Crumples fully supports the tactic of shouting, “Garbage Day!” at any bullies or harassers, but make sure you do it like Ricky from Silent Night, Deadly Night Part II so it is completely bewildering.

“It’s better to stop than to drive the car gently over a cliff, isn’t it?”

86. Black Ice – Carin Gerhardsen

The events of Black Ice are all centered around one day when a car crash was caused by some drunk driving that some dude did right after he raped a young woman he gave a ride home, and yet he comes out okay in the end, which is interesting. I almost put this down because it wasn’t particularly intriguing, mostly sad, and just didn’t have as much of a draw for me as many other Sweden-set crime or mystery novels have. There are several perspectives, all sad ones or making excuses for their terrible behavior, and for me it was just sort of there. I wasn’t all that into the mystery of who took pictures of someone dying in their car instead of calling the authorities, which is the main mystery really. If it hadn’t read quickly, I wouldn’t have finished it.

Pammy never learned to drive on winter roads, so she doesn’t get the car crash references.

Not the light of day

8. Bringing Out the Dead – Joe Connelly

So, this is one of very few cases where I enjoyed the movie and the book equally as much. The movie makes it easier to see the ghosts of patients past haunting Frank as he continues to be a medic in NYC on the night shift and there’s great music and some of the clear fun is represented more obviously. The book makes it easier to understand exactly how it feels. Joe Connelly has the experience to back up the novel and I don’t think Bringing Out the Dead is intended to be exactly accurate to anything but the intensity. It has the adrenaline junkie part of saving people covered and the knowledge that it comes with very disheartening failures – and it is all weirder on the night shift. The worst shit happens on the night shift. Although it’s always possible to have the worst shit happen during the day, at night everyone involved is pushing themselves to be awake at an unnatural time, whether they’re used to it or not, it’s harder to see, and the decisions made are many times blurrier. Bringing Out the Dead also takes place during a blurrier time period of even less to be done for those with no insurance… but therein is a stark reminder that perpetual low pay for paramedics and people having to go to the ER instead of being able to be regularly checked out via a universal healthcare system will always be a bad combination no matter how hard anyone involved is trying to make things work out well.

Salem does well in his night shift moral support position and has received an A-frame winter photoshoot in response. He doesn’t think this is adequate compensation.

Coercing orphans

72. Christmas Babies – Christopher Keane & William D. Black, MD

Christmas Babies, children born with red hair and green eyes, like glowing jade green eyes, are the signature of nutball out for vengeance Dr. Bradley Burns. Also some of them are somehow adults with no feelings who do whatever Dr. Burns needs to his former med school classmates he needs revenge on. He also recruited DC area orphans to send to medical school for this very, very, very long term vengeance. There is another doctor involved in this, but the one with the ego and lack of practicality is the main villain.

Anyway, Dr. Josh Heller, whose daughter has a pony, is having problems with his wife and his practice’s computer system has gone haywire. Enter computer salesperson Sam (Samantha) with the jade green eyes and the inability to not constantly show up for things that could have been a phone call, but “it’s complicated, could we do lunch?” The “and start an affair” is implied. Josh, however, actually does not want to start an affair, not even in Florida, not even since she has a pool and is all like “I’m just so drawn to you and attractive, do you see?” (I may be paraphrasing).

Dr. Josh’s wife Pat is a journalist and she’s researching a medical story that involves genetic research and a senator who is supporting that. Guess who is doing the research? Revenge-Doctor who wants all the babies to look like him, but somehow creepier, that’s who. But apparently what’s most important about her is that she’s an alcoholic, which sets up her meeting with the senator and getting trapped in the facility for the engineering, while pregnant, and she decides to get sober right there. Go Pat.

This book was not well paced or particularly thrilling. There were several chapters about Josh’s med school classmates that set up what’s going on overall, but they didn’t strike me as foreshadowing where they were because I wasn’t sure who the real main character was yet. This is one time where the switching perspectives did not work out so well and I wasn’t exactly hooked by “baby comes out barely alive and covered with sores, but with red hair and green eyes” because it wasn’t clear yet what was weird about having red hair and green eyes- and because who are these people? Do they have bad genes? Is it Christmas so this is extra upsetting? Turns out no.

I thought this would take place at Christmas before I understood the significance of the title and then later had it explained to me by the crazy doctor and Pat all over again. I was under the impression these weren’t going to turn out to be just genetically engineered failed experiment babies. I thought they might be elves. I am not sure this would be better if they were elves because the supernatural does not always help, just like genetic engineering.

Some of us are born with sweaters on and white pants and some are born with orange hair and brown eyes, so red hair and green eyes definitely doesn’t seem odd to Belvedere and Pickles.

 

Also, Gruss vom Fimpus.

“Why did I have to fall in love with a dedicated female scientist? She considers marriage some kind of prison.”

108. The Corpse Queen – Heather Herrman

The 1850s, Philadelphia, right about when the Mutter Museum was about to get started is perfect timing for a story about grave robbing. Molly is in an orphanage, but she’s about to get too old and one of her best friends has just died, or been killed, and the only clue as to who killed her is that they knew about her vestigial tail and cut it off. Also, unlike lots of other orphans who will at some point have their faces washed and their hair pushed behind their ear so someone can tell them they’re actually pretty under all the poverty, Molly is plain and not hiding preternatural beauty, which was a nice twist for a YA novel. Molly is also not afraid of hard work and has her guard up, which made sense. She’s also ambitious, or realizes she’s ambitious once she is picked up unexpectedly to go live with her very rich aunt, the titular corpse queen. Through a lot of extremely gross work, Molly figures out that learning quickly skill she has could actually be useful for a future, which she aims to have. This was a good read and had a lot of grime and smells and medical gore. The main female characters had a lot of differences and were resourceful and although I do enjoy the supernatural, I liked that this story was grounded in knowledge and effort and pushing oneself to get somewhere with advantages or without. It did not paint a nice picture of male medical students of the time, but the ones in this story didn’t really deserve a nice depiction either so oh well.

Thorfy and Snuffy, a cute little couple manipulating a graveyard, just like in the book.