book review - The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

I think The Little Stranger could be called a thriller. More in the traditional gothic style of thriller though, rather than a heart-pounding, non-stop action, people-running-all-over-the-place, car-chases-and-stuff-exploding thriller. Is there such a thing as a quiet or muted thriller?

See, what quiets this story down are the hard-to-miss elements - class structure and psychology.

Let's start with class structure. The first person to sense something weird going on in Hundreds Hall is the maid, Betty. As a servant, and a barely teenaged one at that, her fears are attributed to homesickness and an overactive and childish imagination. At best, she's not abused by her employers, and they come to rely on her for companionship in the big, lonely house. But even with such decent treatment, her employers wouldn't hesitate to ask her to do some chore or other at a moment's thought - she and they never forget that she is a servant. Even at the end of the story, when she is the chief witness of the final event, she is not believed, and for the same reasons she was not believed at the beginning of the story. Her triumph is that she soldiered through all the events and came out relatively unscathed, which can't be said for other characters.

Next is Doctor Faraday, the narrator of the story. His mother was a servant at the Hall. She wanted him to have a better life and saw to it that he got a better education. He becomes a doctor, but only a local one with not much of a practice, although he does start to make a name for himself and become more well-known and respected toward the end of the story. He might be above the station of a maid, but not by much. He often comments on feeling out-of-place with the Ayres family at the Hall, and with others he considers above himself. The evening party at the Hall is the prime example of this, although he ends up being the hero of the evening when a major event happens. He is ever sensible, honest, trustworthy, sympathetic, the one you rely on for stability, and little seems to shake his beliefs or determination, even when facing impossible things or Caroline's rejection of him in the end. He has moments of doubt, which increase the longer he knows the family and the goings on at the Hall, but he clings to the rational despite that. He's boring, and he knows it. Oddly, this is a good thing because as narrator, he's not getting in the way of the story. I appreciated that.

There's Seeley, a rival doctor, and there's the family lawyer, both of whom are a bit better off than Faraday, and he feels it and lets the reader know it. Dr Graham and his wife seem to be the only ones on his level, as it were, and he has a genuine friendship with them.

Finally, we have the Ayres family. Shabby genteel is probably the term for them. And getting shabbier all the time. Roderick served in the war and was badly injured in it. His sister and mother nursed him back to some semblance of health. He's head of the household, at least for awhile, and then he falls apart trying to contain "the infection" of the house. Faraday attributes this to latent stress from his war experiences (I suppose today it would be called post-traumatic stress disorder) as well as the strain of trying to keep the estate going with no money or resources. About halfway through the story, Roderick's part is done, and he's packed off to a mental hospital. One expects a downward spiral for the family after that, and one gets it, almost too predictably.

The mother is next. Mrs Ayres represents old-fashioned grace and stiff upper lip, and is the most class-conscious character in the story. She is fragile, stronger in mind and resilience than her children give her credit for, at least for awhile. It is the loss of her first daughter, years ago, that is her undoing. It is an oddly calm undoing, too. Unlike Roderick's.

Caroline was the character I grappled with the most. I kept picturing her as an older, frumpy woman; however, I think she was meant to be younger, but stout and healthy. That Faraday would find her attractive seemed odd to me, and their relationship fizzling wasn't a big surprise since she had an air of reluctance about it all the way through. I wanted to root for her at the end. I wanted her to succeed and start a new life after all the tragedy she'd been through. It was disappointing that it didn't happen, and her exit was abrupt.

Now for the psychology. This book has an even rhythm - almost too even. Things are humming along, normal as anything, for about a third of the book, then (finally!) something weird happens in the house. Things settle down for awhile after that, and then something else weird happens in the house. This goes all the way through to the end. Is that to lead the reader to think that this is nothing more than a chronicle of the destruction of a mentally unbalanced family? Faraday certainly wants to believe that's all it is. In a number of scenes, he's rather condescendingly trying to get the family to buy into his idea of the true cause of their troubles - war weariness, lack of money, just the three of them in a crumbling house. After all, it's safe, logical, and sound, and perhaps makes the manifestation of events a little more bearable for those involved.

Interestingly, Faraday is never in the house when the mysterious happenings, well, happen - he sees the result of them and hears about what happened from the family, which lends credence to his theories. Still, the events are described in such a way that it's easy to see why the family are inclined to a supernatural explanation, and why they're frustrated that Faraday doesn't believe them. The story ends with finality for the family, but none for what caused it. I have a guess about who the "little stranger" was, and I'm not sure why this wasn't brought out more explicitly. The ambiguity of was it all in their heads or did something supernatural cause events isn't satisfying.

One thing that was satisfying was the narration. Faraday narrated the story in a first-person voice, and it actually worked really well. It read smoothly and naturally and believably. Unlike the first-person narration in The Swan Thieves, which sounded clunky and forced. Obviously, first-person point of view is hard to do well. Sarah Waters definitely knows what she's doing with it.

Another strong aspect of the story was the house itself. Waters captured the atmosphere of a crumbling English estate just after the war just about perfectly. And she shows it decaying even further throughout the story, which lends weight to the supernatural possibilities and the menace of the place.

Overall, it was a good story, well told. I quibble with the ambiguous ending, but not much else.

My next read is The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt. It's a doorstopper!

movie review - Scott Pilgrim vs the World

I'd point you to this review, and say, "what she said," but I rarely do movie reviews, since I rarely go to the movies, because there are rarely any movies that I'd want to see, so I thought it would be a nice change from book reviews.

Let's get my ignorance out of the way first, shall we? I'm not a gamer, never was as a kid either. I've dated a few gamers in my time, but never got into it myself. I've read some comic books/graphic novels - mainly the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman and a few by Alan Moore, and more recently the Hatter M series by Frank Beddor and the Fables series by Bill Willingham. But that's it. I do want to read the Scott Pilgrim series after seeing this film, though.

It was solidly funny all the way through, with the touches of seriousness just when needed. The special effects were in the gamer style, which even a non-gamer like me could get. The acting was pretty damn near perfect - Michael Cera in the lead plays a geek with surprises: without depth in that character, this wouldn't have worked; Ellen Wong as the starry-eyed, naive girlfriend who grows up a little; Keiran Culkin as the gay roommate and conscience. The story was solid, and nothing was wasted, not even Ramona's constant correction of Evil Exes rather than Evil Ex-Boyfriends. The soundtrack would make great workout music. There's lots of violence in it, I warn ya - done in a kung fu/Matrix sort of way. The defeat-by-coffee creamer was the funniest though.

My only beefs with the film were that the finale seemed to go on a little too long, and I couldn't figure out who Scott would end up with. Scott facing himself didn't need to be there, but the twist was fun, so I almost didn't notice how long the ending was. Almost. And having not read the comics the film was based on, I don't know how it ends on the page. Perhaps the point was to keep the audience guessing until the very end? I'm satisfied with who he ended up with. I'd have been equally satisfied if he'd ended up with the other one, possibly even the third one. Or was she the first one? Anyway, Scott picked one. Can't ask for more than that. And who doesn't love to see a geek win? However awkwardly and clumsily he goes about it.

A fun film, and well worth seeing. I can't remember any kind of movie like this when I was a teenager. How disappointing!

I mainly wanted to see this film because Edgar Wright directed it. The first of his films that I saw was Shaun of the Dead. I watched it late one night while eating Ghirardelli chocolate squares and snuggling under blankets in a hotel room in San Francisco several years ago. Now, I'm not into horror films At. All. But I loved Shaun of the Dead. It's the perfect film for horror film lovers AND for those dragged along to see them or for those who would never otherwise watch them no matter how much dragging was attempted. Who would have thought you could make a horror film deliberately funny?

I went to see Hot Fuzz when that came out. I'm not into cop films either, but I loved Hot Fuzz for the same reason I loved Shaun of the Dead. Lovingly tweak the nose of the genre and do it well, and you have my interest.

Somewhere in there, I discovered Spaced, which is one of the funniest sitcoms I've ever seen. And for the record, I liked where it ended.

So anytime I hear that Edgar Wright or Simon Pegg or Nick Frost or Jessica Stevenson have a new project out, I take notice. When is Paul coming out?

Oh, that review I linked to at the beginning? I'm in the author's demographic to a T, and agree with all her points, which the professional movie critics have obviously missed. What she said.

And I SO want Ramona's hair. When it was pink. I'd never get away with it at work though.

book review: The Forgotten Garden

Huzzah! One I actually liked!

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton is a detailed, slow read, but really worth it.

The story is told from the third-person perspectives of three women - Eliza, Nell, and Cassandra. As such, it skips around in time. It actually reminded me of several Doctor Who episodes where the story is told out of order, chronologically speaking, but as you see bits of it, other bits make sense and/or take on more meaning, and you eventually get a complete story. It's actually not too hard to keep up with the time shifts in this book. The location and date is listed on the first page of each chapter, so you're immediately oriented as to which main character you're tagging along with.

Speaking of characters, there are a lot to keep track of, and not just because the story is told in three time periods. Cassandra is Nell's granddaughter. Cassandra's mother more or less abandons her with Nell when Cassandra is a kid. However, Cassandra and Nell get on well together, and as Cassandra gets older, she starts helping Nell run her antique shop. After Nell dies, Cassandra is left not only with the remnants of Nell's life, but also her belongings, including a cottage in Cornwall and the beginnings of a mystery. Cassandra's own personal tragedy seems too briefly touched on, and I sense it was put in merely to give her more in common with the other two women. It doesn't quite ring as true as the traumas the other two women suffered.

Nell's sisters eventually reveal to Cassandra that Nell was a foundling. She arrived on the docks in Australia as a four-year-old with a white suitcase and no name. The sisters' father took her in and she became one of the family. Just before her wedding, Nell's "father" told her of her origins, which she could only dimly remember - time having fuzzed them out and replaced them with her adopted family. As a result, Nell canceled her wedding and withdrew emotionally from her family. Eventually, she decided that she wants to know who she really was. We follow Nell a bit as she finds out her real name and pieces much of her background together, but she has to abandon this endeavor abruptly. Years later, Cassandra picks up where Nell left off and finds the remaining clues.

Eliza is the pivotal character. She is referred to as The Authoress throughout much of the story, and she had the worst life of the three women. Her mother, Georgiana, coming from a rich old family in Cornwall, runs away and marries a sailor. He dies at sea, leaving her with twin babies. She doesn't want to return home to the family seat disgraced, so she takes lodgings in a filthy hovel in London, making what money she can. She dies of tuberculosis, and her children are left to fend for themselves, under the abusive gaze of the lady of the house, who constantly threatens to send them to the workhouse, although they each bring in rent money via various forms of child labor. One twin dies in an accident, the other, Eliza, is sent back to the family home, much to the displeasure of Aunt Adeline, who married into the family after having been Georgiana's companion, and who lives for respectability and for advantages for her only daughter, Rose, whom she feels should be given precedent over Eliza. However, Rose, who is an invalid, and Eliza get on well together, so Eliza manages to earn her keep, as it were, as the BFF of the daughter of the house.

Eliza has quite an imagination, which was an obvious escape from her circumstances. She starts to write down the fairy tales she makes up to entertain Rose, and eventually gets them published. She also gets to know the house staff, the gardener in particular. With her uncle's consent, she helps the gardener restore a garden next to a cottage on the estate. There is a hedge maze that separates the cottage from the mansion. Years later, when Rose announces that she is engaged, Eliza moves to the cottage in a sort of self-imposed exile as well as to be out of the way of the newlyweds, but still near enough should Rose need her. She's rather more passive and naive in adulthood - blindly agreeing to anything Rose wants in hopes that Rose will be happy and always need her. Personally, I liked the more adventurous, mischievous, and defiant Eliza as a child than the woman she became. Once Rose and her husband return from a trip, Eliza plans to travel, but her plans abruptly change as a result of tragedy, and she disappears.

Eliza moving to the cottage and then being gone from their lives are joyous events as far as Aunt Adeline is concerned. Bluntly, Adeline is a scheming, selfish bitch for whom one's place in society is everything, something that Eliza could care less about. She very nearly lets down her guard after the tragedy, but manages to contain it. She's interesting, if loathesome.

Rose is slightly annoying and weak-minded. She has a bit of her mother's selfishness, and she does not have a close relationship with her father, which is far more his fault than hers. While she understands her mother's obsession with societal standards, she can't resist Eliza, who is the most authentic and lively person in her circle.

There are a line of people who pop up to give Cassandra information about aspects of the mystery - they serve their purpose and then pretty much go away.

If there is a pointless character in this story, it's Rose's father. He was close to Georgiana (his sister), felt abandoned when she ran off, instigated the search for her and her children, and insisted on Eliza being brought to live in the family home, despite Adeline's protests. He's a photographer who often goes on expeditions for months at a time, hence the lack of relationship with his daughter. He becomes obsessed with photographing Eliza, as she is his only link to his sister, but she manages to elude him. He's rather like a living ghost roaming about the place. I was never sure what to make of him, other than as a barrier to Adeline throwing Eliza out on her ear.

Frances Hodgson Burnett makes a cameo appearance in the story, so the similarities to The Secret Garden are not coincidence. Thankfully, Morton doesn't dwell too much on the connection, but just leaves it as a nice bit of detail.

Morton did really well with the settings - Brisbane, Australia; London and Cornwall in the UK. You definitely get a good feel for the atmosphere of each place. I've already put Cornwall on my list of places to visit someday.

The whole thing does have a layer of melodrama running through it, in a Dark Shadows sort of way (if Johnny Depp really does go through with the film version and plays Barnabas Collins, I'm SO going to see it). I was in the mood for that kind of thing at the time, and the parallels between the lives of these three women, not to mention the connections between them, are intriguing and distracting enough, so I found the melodrama amusing more than irritating. I can see that others might roll their eyes at it, though.

It's a relief to find a good read after several duds, although it was short-lived. The book I started reading after this one didn't hold my interest At. All., so I had to abandon it. I've just started The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, which looks more promising.