The witch of Spooksville needs help preparing for her big scary party, so brings a set of pumpkins to life. Something goes a bit wrong with the last oThe witch of Spooksville needs help preparing for her big scary party, so brings a set of pumpkins to life. Something goes a bit wrong with the last one, though: instead of all things ghoulish, Christopher Pumpkin loves all things fun. He bakes cupcakes instead of stirring gross potions and strums a blue ukulele instead of inducing screams. The witch threatens to turn him into soup if he can’t be scary. The plan he comes up with is the icing on the cake of a sweet, funny book delivered in rhyming couplets. Good for helping kids think about stereotypes and how we treat those who don’t fit in....more
There’s a Gothic flavor to this story of a mentally unstable artist and his teenage daughter. Edmund Stearne is obsessed with the writings of MedievalThere’s a Gothic flavor to this story of a mentally unstable artist and his teenage daughter. Edmund Stearne is obsessed with the writings of Medieval mystic Alice Pyett (based on Margery Kempe) and with a Bosch-like Doom painting recently uncovered at the local church. Serving as his secretary after her mother’s death, Maud reads his journals to follow his thinking – but also uncovers unpleasant truths about his sister’s death and his relationship with the servant girl. As Maud tries to prevent her father from acting on his hallucinations of demons and witches rising from the Suffolk Fens, she falls in love with someone beneath her class. Only in the 1960s framing story, which has a journalist and scholar digging into what really happened at Wake’s End in 1913, does it become clear how much Maud gave up.
There are a lot of appealing elements in this novel, including Maud’s pet magpie, the travails of her constantly pregnant mother (based on the author’s Belgian great-grandmother), the information on early lobotomies, and the mixture of real (eels!) and imagined threats encountered at the fen. The focus on a female character is refreshing after her two male-dominated ghost stories. But as atmospheric and readable as Paver’s writing always is, here the plot sags, taking too much time over each section and filtering too much through Stearne’s journal. After three average ratings in a row, I doubt I’ll pick up another of her books in the future.
Memoir as letter and as graphic novel. Wong narrates the traumatic birth of her first child and her subsequent postpartum depression in black-and-whitMemoir as letter and as graphic novel. Wong narrates the traumatic birth of her first child and her subsequent postpartum depression in black-and-white sketches that manage to feel breezy and fun despite the heavy subject matter. “I felt lost. I had no maternal instincts and no clue how I was supposed to take care of a baby,” she writes to Scarlet. “Your first two months in the world were the hardest two months of my life.”
For Wong, a combination of antidepressants, therapy, a postnatal doula, an exercise class, her mother’s help, and her husband’s constant support got her through, and she knows she’s lucky to have had a fairly mild case and to have gotten assistance early on. I loved the “Not for the Faint of Heart” anatomical spreads and the reflections on her mother’s tough early years after arriving in Canada from China. The drawing and storytelling style is similar to that of Sarah Laing and Debbie Tung. The writing is more striking than the art, though, so I hope that with future work the author will challenge herself to use more color and more advanced designs (from her Instagram page it looks like she is heading that way)....more
This has been inescapable in bookish Twitter circles for over a year and a half. Hype is generally a turnoff for me, but I’d seen enough positive reviThis has been inescapable in bookish Twitter circles for over a year and a half. Hype is generally a turnoff for me, but I’d seen enough positive reviews from reading friends to give it a try for myself. It was a sweet book to end the year on, but pretty twee for my tastes, and not really that well written – there are many instances of telling, not showing, especially when filling in secondary characters’ personalities and backstories; the one that annoyed me most was the rundown of Grace and Andrew’s exes. The romantic storyline was disappointingly predictable, while the subplot of preparing for a sibling’s wedding seemed like something that could have been chosen by a random number generator.
Still, I appreciated Hession’s interest in the sorts of outcasts and geeks who don’t often get to star in novels (the title characters are board game addicts, for instance), and the way he gives them chances to take risks that widen their lives: (view spoiler)[Leonard gets a girlfriend and is no longer just a ghostwriter of children’s encyclopedias but an author in his own right; Hungry Paul is still a substitute postman and hospital volunteer, but also finds a new career path with the National Mime Association (hide spoiler)]. Hungry Paul seems like he might be supposed to be autistic, but occasionally comes out with improbable philosophical monologues. I did, however, value his devotion to silence and his resistance of a mobile phone.
You may wish to note the above. (Or not.)
Some favorite lines:
“Hungry Paul … suffered from writer’s block when it came to small talk.”
“How does the National Mime Association have a spokesperson?”
When Leonard says interviewers are usually looking for a can-do person, HP replies: “I suppose there are probably lots of things I could do if I were to try them, but generally I don’t try them, so maybe I’m more of a could-don’t person?”...more
I had the tone of this one pegged wrong, for which I mostly blame the hot pink cover and all those (only peripherally apt) Bridget Jones comparisons. I had the tone of this one pegged wrong, for which I mostly blame the hot pink cover and all those (only peripherally apt) Bridget Jones comparisons. It’s more of a downer than I was expecting; although Queenie does pull some professional and emotional success out by the end, for much of the book she’s a mess, so brokenhearted at the end of a long-term relationship that she goes from one exploitative short-term hookup to another with men she meets through dating apps or everyday life who then quickly reveal themselves to have zero interest in her beyond quick, rough sex. She eventually realizes the habit is self-destructive but still can’t seem to stop, even ruining a friendship by unwittingly sleeping with her friend’s boyfriend. I think I was meant to find this funnier than I did, but for me it was pretty explicit and depressing and the Black Lives Matter subplot felt shoehorned in. I most enjoyed the group texts with her friends and her Jamaican grandmother’s nagging....more
In 2013, Joe Harkness was in such a bad place that he tied a twisted bedsheet to a roof beam and was about to hang himself before someone burst in andIn 2013, Joe Harkness was in such a bad place that he tied a twisted bedsheet to a roof beam and was about to hang himself before someone burst in and saved him. Although he’s continued to struggle with OCD and depression in the years since then, birdwatching has given him a new lease on life. Avoiding the hobby’s more obsessive, competitive aspects (like listing and twitching), he focuses on the benefits of outdoor exercise and mindfulness. He can be lyrical when describing his Norfolk patch and some of his most magical sightings, but his writing is too often weak: obvious, formulaic and inelegant, with lots of use of the passive voice. Although I don’t doubt that birding has helped him, his book is less convincing when he tries to extrapolate from a social media survey he sent out; a couple hundred self-reports hardly amounts to scientifically robust evidence. I wish he’d stuck to the anecdotal. (My husband helped crowdfund this book through Unbound. Lots of UK nature writers, as well as a couple of blogger friends, can also be spotted on the sponsor list.)...more
Alexander was the sole GP on the small Scottish island of Eday in the Orkneys in the late 1980s. Coming from Glasgow, he knew the job would mean a bigAlexander was the sole GP on the small Scottish island of Eday in the Orkneys in the late 1980s. Coming from Glasgow, he knew the job would mean a big change for him and his family: his wife Maggie, also a medical professional; and their four young sons. Everyone knew everybody’s business on Eday, not because they were nosy but simply because they were observant. And there were advantages to such enforced intimacy – when a laborer didn’t return to his home overnight, his neighbors knew to report him missing the next morning.
But the small population meant Alexander was sometimes called upon to fill roles for which he didn’t feel qualified, including preacher, Religious Education teacher, and large-animal veterinarian (you try taking the rectal temperature of an injured seal). The dentist only made an annual visit to this island. Obtaining a heart monitor and defibrillator represented a real step forward – a chance that someone who had a heart attack wouldn’t die before they could be transported to the nearest major hospital.
The book is structured around a personal crisis: Maggie’s fifth pregnancy was risky and required her to fly to Aberdeen to be on bedrest. The separation was a scary time for both of them, and Maggie’s mother came to help take care of the other children.
I liked hearing about the rhythms of island life and the way extremes of weather affect people, but I would have liked some more about the day to day of treating patients. I can’t remember many treatment scenes beyond visiting an old lady with back pain. (Her simple croft is his first glimpse of traditional Orkney life, with no electricity, a well or rainwater for drinking, and a box bed.)
This is a pleasant book for readers of Gervase Phinn. We readers like learning about the everyday lives of people in interesting careers, whether it’s herding sheep or selling books. The writing is decent, apart from the few poems inserted between chapters. But what I did notice was a dozen or more dangling modifiers* – where was the proofreader!? I also would have preferred an upfront indication of the time period and what has changed since that time; I fear the lack of such details (as in Shaun Bythell’s memoirs) means his publisher is going to try to turn this into a series. I wouldn’t read a sequel, though. [According to his publisher’s page on him, Alexander later became the Medical Director for the Orkney Health Board and Associate Medical Director for the Scottish National Telephone Triage service before returning to general practice on the small island of Bute, where he now lives.]
Note: The wonderful title was inspired by the poem “Orkney: This Life” by Andrew Greig.
*For instance, here are two in a row on p. 242 of the Michael O’Mara paperback: “Turning it over with my foot, the eggshell is quite fresh but smashed on one side by a powerful beak. Standing looking at the destroyed dream beside my foot, my thoughts return to the phone call all those weeks ago.” Do you see what’s wrong here? “The eggshell” and “my thoughts” are, absurdly, made the subjects. Instead, the sentences should have Alexander as the subject and read “Turning it over with my foot, [I see that] the eggshell is quite fresh but smashed on one side by a powerful beak. Standing looking at the destroyed dream beside my foot, [I let] my thoughts return to the phone call all those weeks ago.”...more
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