Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 7

“This we do for pleasure, so that we may shortly be at the mercy of venomous snakes and poisonous ants.”

62. Gwen, In Green – Hugh Zachary

Plants in the 1970s had an interesting and strong role in décor, in stoking fear about the environment if we don’t protect it because nature will go berserk! I mean, this was two years before Squirm. And in Gwen, In Green, the plants are a source of very, very 1970s style horror and liberation. You see, Gwen’s one of those women who is married but is also frigid. She’s been married for 7 years already and she’s just not into her total horndog of a husband. However, he’s definitely into her and her ability to fill traditional roles like cooking and cleaning up their little slice of paradise. And he wants her to get therapy.

But when Gwen finds the pond on the property of their new secluded island home, which may be a pond of murder, suddenly things take a turn. And then she’s not just into her husband, she’s into whoever passes by. And she’s into more than just random sex, she’s into making sure those weird plants by that weird pond which is clearly not aliens (it is aliens) and not getting weirder because of the nuclear plant going up close to where they are (not aliens, but eco-horror) are happy. You see, Gwen now feels their pain very literally and she gets way more connected to the plants and their sexy murderous impulses.

 

1970s Hen Wen says those alien pond plants are probably right about their own potential destruction.

 

 

Mushroom and Baby Home

41. The Ghost Woods – C.J. Cooke

Lichen Hall is a mother and baby home on the Borderlands of Scotland and the entire house is very fungi positive from a number of angles. However, it is not doctor positive and Mrs. Whitlock doesn’t allow for any medical professionals on site or phone calls to the police, basically anyone who could stop what she’s got going on at this point. And she’s kind of maybe possessed by the witch of the area, Nicnevin. So it’s not like any of the unwed mothers know what they’re walking into when they are dropped off.

The story follows Mabel’s entrance to the home and later Pearl’s in 1965 before the timelines converge. It’s a very gothic tale and I know women have been giving birth in terrible conditions since the beginning of time, but when your home’s entire purpose is to adopt out those babies, is a little professional help really a bad thing? Pearl is a trained nurse and lost her job because of her pregnancy, and so the lack of actual medical care really bothers her and it is her who pushes the envelope and breaks everything open.

I really liked this. The characters are interesting and the descriptions a bit gruesome and it was just a good story relating the lack of choices so many women had. Cooke’s books have always been fast but worthwhile reads for me, even at 401 pages, and this was no exception. I liked it better than the one in the Arctic too. The cordyceps fungus plays a big part and is familiar to me through the TV version of The Last of Us; this was the tragic gothic version.

 

Camille and Dagmar look both cute and skeptical around mushrooms in a stone-effect cardboard mansion, they have the right attitude for this tale.

“Women! They let ’em vote, smoke and drive – even put ’em in pants!”

112. The Book of Cold Cases – Simone St. James

Shea Collins, receptionist, true crime blogger, haver of a scary past, is very occupied with her hometown’s major unsolved true crime mystery. You see a woman murdered two men in the 1970s and there was some scant information linking a local rich girl with an attitude (you know how it is when the women get an attitude like they’re allowed to be both innocent and pissed off at the same time), Beth Greer, to them. And her father was killed in a home invasion – so, obviously, it was her. But she wasn’t convicted. Like it matters in a small town.

One day Beth waltzes into the office Shea’s working in and Shea realizes why she looks so familiar. Beth has never talked in all these years, but she’s ready to let Shea in on the real story, sort of, eventually. And Shea will need to overcome a few things of her own to rightly tell the story and get her life back to one she’s living for herself and not just to hide from her own trauma. The story goes back and forth between the 1970s and recent times and just flows right along as a quick read. It’s not bogged down too hard in the blogging, either, which was super nice. Whenever one of these protagonists has a podcast, it seems like too much narrative space is given to having a podcast, like having a conversation with a podcaster no one is listening to.

 

Murderface says glare like you just got acquitted. Pickles says look more conflicted so people are less suspicious.

As usual with Epperson, there are some brutal descriptions and good solid horror. And Frank.

51. Nightmare – S.K. Epperson

There is a lot of darkness going on in S.K. Epperson’s tale of two doctors who treat what would now be called dissociative identity disorder, one doctor has a brother who is a writer and they have a difficult relationship, but the writer is needed to come to the ranch where the other doctor does his work to write about the whole thing. The doctor who owns the ranch is not behind all the serious injuries and/or deaths that have happened to the patients…and he has a wife who is super into electronics and has a psychology background herself. She’s also into the writer.

Also along for the story of a terrible working environment and weirdo-family drama are Mel, a bisexual nurse assistant type who comes along to the ranch and definitely wants to leave before she ends up in a cave full of dead animals and one lady, Kate, a very pale love interest/former patient turned assistant who really likes the writer once she meets him and his parrot, and Jay, the totally bizarre gun-obsessed son of the ranch doctor and his hidden electronics and chocolate loving wife. Oh, and Frank, the writer’s parrot who loves beer and watching the Oprah show. Frank really was a parrot of sound mind.

 

Duncan was a guinea pig of sound mind and she stayed by my side while I outlined parts of my Squirrelpocalypse Trilogy. Not a beer drinker though.

“Fooled you!”

136. The Night House – Jo Nesbo

I’m not sure you’ve got a command of horror, Nesbo. Mystery, clearly, a lot of people have read and enjoyed Jo Nesbo’s writing and his questionably named protagonist Harry Hole. But, I read horror all the time, and a book within a book within a dream within a schizophrenic within inpatient trauma therapy written the way this is was just not reading as a horror story to me. It’s like a halfway there horror story. Horror for people who don’t read horror. So if you don’t really like horror and want to read something that might turn out kind of charming, read away.

There’s nothing wrong with it, it just couldn’t have scared me less, and I already read a book within a book within another person’s book novel this year that actually was way worse than this one. I don’t think I like that trope at all when it’s a secret, since it does not have to be at all. Like, you didn’t know what you were reading, twice! How clever this author must be! No.

I will say, the cover is absolutely glorious and why, yes, they are luring in me specifically with that landline phone receiver dripping blood. However, it feels like a ruse now that I’ve read the book. A cruel ruse.

 

Snuffy says she wasn’t confused or concerned about the lack of horror in here, but she can’t read either.

 

 

I definitely like the cursed creative works.

93. Burn the Negative – Josh Winning

This was a fun read for the most part and I enjoyed the ending. I definitely get that a lot of this is service to horror fans and that works and the sort of warning against being obsessive to the extent that lots of horror fans are also works, I say this as a lifelong horror fan who has watched Cursed Films and also the supposedly cursed films. And in Burn the Negative, the curse of the film is the main event and the journey. I wouldn’t bother if you don’t want to be immersed in either showbiz stuff or horror movie references, however, if that’s your jam and it certainly is mine, you might find this to your liking. I don’t want to give too much away, but there’s a box of occult research at the original script writer’s house. Somebody did research.

 

Thaddeus knows research, from a few angles. It does make sorting out curses much easier.

“There was absolutely no way of knowing the trouble we’d run into.”

32. Midnight on Beacon Street – Emily Ruth Verona

Amy is a babysitter now, in 1993, but this nonlinear narrative also covers her being babysat by a character who shows up at this current babysitting job dating Amy’s boyfriend’s terrible shithead older brother.

Amy is not exactly cool as a cucumber when taking care of anything. She has high anxiety and panic attacks, she clearly underestimates her own looks, she doesn’t have a lot of suggestions for sullen young teen Mira because she totally understands wanting to be in your room with a book all night, and she loves horror movies and is trying to get her boyfriend to at least watch them with her. Tonight she chose Halloween and Night of the Living Dead.

I have to say though, that they reused leaves to make California look like Illinois in the fall and that’s “funny” is a very weak argument for why someone who likes arthouse movies should watch Halloween. I mean, the music is awesome and drives the tension completely is a better one for someone who is into arty movies; Halloween is well done, that’s another one. Also, they really should have done more of a deep dive about her video store because I don’t know how a high school kid in 1993 without the internet would otherwise know about Italian horror from the 1970s like Torso. I think it’s her video dealer and I wanted to know. It took me forever to get to Italian horror and I was younger than Amy in 1993, but my way of finding exploitation and drive-in sorts of movies were the horror shelves at Mr. Movies where I would see the covers. They didn’t have Torso, but they did have I Spit on Your Grave in a huge clamshell and I will never forget seeing it, or actually seeing it once I was old enough to drive and bought my own VHS so I could see it. My first Italian horror was Cemetery Man, a different sort of Italian horror, but great nonetheless.

Anyway, the kids Amy is babysitting for tonight are Ben and Mira, they have a very vivacious single mom, Eleanor, and she usually stays out pretty late. The usual stuff of slasher set ups is here, including a very bloody scene at the beginning that we have to get back to, like breather phone calls and a rash of burglaries and unexpected visitors. We do get Ben’s perspective, complete with kid versions of words like “insomac” that no one in his life was able to figure out was “insomniac” for some reason and I thought those could have been more condensed or edited out completely in some instances as they give information that’s not important to the ending more than they do anything else. Sparing is caring.

My other issue besides “too much kid perspective” in this short book was that there are two important incidents that could potentially lead to the bloody situation at the beginning of the book and she chose to go with the one that means the most to the babysitter instead of the kids as the endgame. I don’t think that was the right choice. The antagonism could have come earlier and played into how incapable of dealing with a real threat Amy was in a more tense way. But, at least this wasn’t mostly a literary fiction interpretation of what a slasher or straightforward horror could be. That I appreciate.

 

This is Pere and Merri’s version of a home invasion. They’re in Danger Crumples’ home, with his stegosaurus, Stephen, pictured. Near the end of his life, I did actually have Peregrine sit with Danger Crumples for me and I’m pretty sure they didn’t watch Halloween or any Italian horror.

Important Note: The bartender says she has two guinea pigs and their names go unmentioned during said bartender’s only descriptive appearance. But, live guinea pigs alert.

86. Home is Where the Bodies Are – Jeneva Rose

This is a solid thriller. I read it in one sitting even though I thought was going to get tired of it. Just when I was thinking, that font on the cover is totally inappropriate (which it is, because this is not horror), it got way more intriguing and I wanted to know what the hell happened in 1999.

Three siblings, a tech bro, a factory mom on her own, and an addict come together pretty much literally right after their mother imparts her last words, her last unfinished sentence, given to Beth the factory mom who was the one to take care of their mother in her last months. Mom tells her not to trust… I mean, she didn’t say, “Trust No One,” so, you’re kind of stuck if you’re Beth.

At first it’s just siblings arguing and being miserable, Michael the brother’s favorite word, and then they see a girl who disappeared the summer of 1999 in one of their mother’s camcorder videos very unexpectedly. A series of disappearances started in June 1999 and for a very small area of Wisconsin, it’s a lot of disappearances. I mean, they only have one bar and rely on the county sheriff’s office for policing, so, what the hell’s happening?

I actually enjoyed the reveal a lot and I didn’t guess everything too soon, which is important in a thriller. It’s also really nice to have a thriller set in an actually small setting, not a city, not a small town with too many named characters so there are enough red herrings, this actually kept the cast pretty tight and to me that was a definite benefit.

 

Dagmar is still sifting through the red herrings to get to the truth. Camille got super tired of waiting.

“They also call her the smiling cobra.”

49. Cackle – Rachel Harrison

The story of a terrible, sad sack relationship becomes a story of adorable spiders, cake, coffee, and friendship. It’s a bit sentimental and a bit sinister and, truly, the best character is Ralph. So fleshed out for a spider.

Annie gets dumped, but it’s presented to her like a mutual breakup because her boyfriend got bored of her catering to his every need and supporting him endlessly and wanted to find some other dupe to do those same activities. He will waffle on who would be best to make him feel good even though he’s basically doing nothing. Tale as old as time.

Annie gets a new job in Aster, but finds an apartment in Rowan, just down the road. Rowan is weird and so quaint that it seems like something’s enchanted. Because it is. And the town is essentially owned by Sophie, who is a witch and is both very generous and intimidating and as she says, she’s into vengeance. So it’s hard to tell if her wanting Annie to be her friend so damn badly is with good intent or ill intent. Is Sophie just being overly generous to buy her friendship so she can control Annie? Is she just really generous with Annie because she’s not descended from anyone who tried to drown her or burn her, etc.? Or, the biggest question of all, will Ralph get another cute hat? If only everyone had a spider to tell them not to communicate with people who are bad for their future.

 

Pickles is both enchanting and intimidating in her cuteness.

Alice in Unenviable Circumstancesland

111. The Vet’s Daughter – Barbara Comyns

This short novel from 1959 is quite the chronicle of being unable to get yourself out of your circumstances. It’s a bit of a squirm. Alice’s mother is dying painfully behind closed doors while her brute of a father goes wherever it is he goes when he’s not selling unwanted animals to the vivisectionist or apparently treating some of them? It’s hard for me to understand a vet who doesn’t really display compassion for animals because I’ve had several good ones in my own experience and read a lot of James Herriot, so, how does one do that job without any? He definitely doesn’t like people, that is more understandable, but we get zero scenes of decent veterinary work. When Alice’s mom dies and he moves a “strumpet” from the local bar in, he lets the strumpet put the parrot in the lavatory for fuck’s sake. That’s no place for a bird with a long lifespan.

Anyway, the story is about Alice and her unenviable circumstances. The strumpet gives her over to a lecherous hotel porter to “loosen her up” and then Blinkers, a former vet locum to her father, helps her out and sends her to live with his mother in her depression on an island. Blinkers obviously wants to marry Alice and that’s about the best she can do until she meets a handsome sailor on said island, who then finds someone else quite quickly. Sheesh. Alice and Mrs. Peebles have a sad existence on the island even before the horrid servants steal things and Alice ends up on her way back to her awful father’s and seriously, this was not a pleasant tale. The whole way through Alice has no control over her circumstances, she manages to rise above them a bit, but, Jeebus H.

 

Danger Crumples was certainly never asked to live in the bathroom. He only ever had love and comfort in a room dedicated to guinea pigs as all guinea pigs should.