Synopsis:
A feud between two magicians at the turn of the 20th century escalates into madcap trickery and violence.
Review:
I was very disappointed by The Prestige, which promised so much and then just took the easy way out.
Synopsis:
A multiplicity of narrators weave together a story that spans WWII and the present day (1984), including a fugitive from justice and a troubled high school senior dubbed “Bored Girl Genius” by her chaotically evil ex-best friend.
Review:
Try as I might, I just couldn’t get into Day for Night. I greatly admire Frederick Reiken’s deft prose and complex characterization, but for me, I just couldn’t get engaged with any of the story lines. I felt that the dazzling prose hid some contrivances in the plot that I couldn’t really get past.
Synopsis:
Accused of murder, a troubled young woman tries to piece together the odd facets of her life, starting with her supposed immaculate conception.
Review:
The chapters in Madapple alternate between a teasingly opaque courtroom case, and defendant Aslaug’s reminiscences about life with her disturbed mother and eventual reunion with her long lost aunt and cousins. Nothing about Aslaug’s life has been ordinary. Her mother claimed that Aslaug had no father because she had never had a lover. She raised Aslaug in the woods, among the plants and herbs that she studied for their powers, healing and otherwise.
Upon the death of her mother, Aslaug set out on her own and discovered the family she never knew: her aunt, the pastor of a Pentecostal church, and her children, Aslaug’s cousins. Susanne is a pagan with mystical leanings who deconstructs the Christianity of her mother’s calling. Rune, her brother, is instantly familiar to Aslaug, and disturbingly compelling as well. Add an off-kilter pregnant teen and a murder investigation to the mix, and Madapple has a gripping intensity and intellectual heft that sets it apart.
I’m often unable to get through books that are overtly critical of Christianity, not because they threaten my faith but because I just don’t enjoy them. Madapple was a surprising exception, because the criticism played an actual role in character and plot development. I enjoyed Susanne’s excursions into Gnostic theology because they amplified the suspense of the murder trial. Outstanding book.
Synopsis:
Fearful of her husband’s sexual advances, a young mother falls into a spectacular case of hysteria–that might not be all in her head.
Review:
Angelica is yet another neo-Gothic tale, set in a Victorian England conjured more from literature than from history. It has all of the elements you’d want: repressed sexuality, midnight visions, hysteria and a spiritualist, all rendered in gorgeous, sumptuous prose from four different points of view. Continue reading
Synopsis:
The premature baby of Fifth Business was kidnapped by roustabouts, grew up a circus performer, and has grown into the greatest magician in the world. His life story offers the final piece to the question posed in The Manticore: “Who killed Boy Staunton?”
Review:
Robertson Davies’s masterful Deptford Trilogy deserves to be on more must-read lists. I discovered it thanks to Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose, and can say that Davies’s writing not only warrants Prose’s close reading, it actually provokes it in the reader. Davies intimately marries story and language with sorcery worthy of his creation, the famed illusionist Magnus Eisengrim of World of Wonders, fooling you into believing you’re reading a simple story simply told, when in fact, over three books, Davies has pulled off epic spectacle through linguistic pyrotechnics. The works are that well hidden; the machine that skillfully crafted. There’s nothing obviously showy about his writing, yet the overall effect is more explosive than fireworks.
On an emotional level, the Deptford trilogy is exceedingly masculine, to the point where I can’t say I exactly connected with the characters and their journey. Of all the stories Davies tells, however, I was most enthralled by Magnus’s accounts of growing up among a traveling band of vaudevillians and circus folk. It’s such a fascinating world, particularly as Deptford doesn’t shy away from portraying its seamier side. And young Magnus, kidnapped and spirited away, is in a wonderfully rich predicament. Knowing what we know of his parents from Fifth Business, his account is infused by the specter of double tragedy. You can’t help but imagine what would have been if he hadn’t gone to the circus that day.
In each book, Davies employs a conceit to justify why the story is being told; positing a teller and an audience. In Fifth Business, it was Dunstan Ramsay’s attempt to write a hagiography of Magnus’s mother, whom he believed to be saintly in her feeble-mindedness. In The Manticore, he had Boy Staunton’s grown son enter Jungian analysis to tell his tale. In World of Wonders, Magnus’s tale is coaxed from him by Jurgen Lind, a great Swedish filmmaker who has cast Magnus to play Houdini in a biopic for the BBC. When Magnus mentioned that there is always a gap between autobiography and the truth, Lind seizes upon this notion. In lieu of Houdini’s truth, he will use Magnus’s truth to create the subtext that will give his film depth and truth.
As Magnus unfolds his tale, the tension between the telling and the truth grows ever more apparent, and it turns out that Davies is in fact interrogating the very structure he’s chosen for each of the three books. At one point, the characters debate point-of-view in art as it relates to truth. Liesl, the erstwhile lover of both Magnus and Dunstan says,
“Which man’s life are you talking about?” she said. “That’s another of the problems of biography and autobiography, Ingestree, my dear. It can’t be managed except by casting one person as the star of the drama, and arranging everybody else as supporting players. Look at what politicians write about themselves! Churchill and Hitler and all the rest of them seem suddenly to be secondary figures surrounding Sir Numskull Poop, who is always in the limelight…
This business of the death of Willard: if we listen to Magnus we take it for granted that Magnus killed Willard after painfully humiliating him for quite a long time. The tragedy of Willard’s death is the spirit in which Faustus LeGrand [alias Magnus] regarded it. But isn’t Willard somebody, too? As Willard lay dying, who did he think was the star of the scene? Not Magnus, I’ll bet you. And look at it from God’s point of view, or if that strains you uncomfortably, suppose that you have to make a movie of the life and death of Willard. You need Magnus, but he is not the star. He is the necessary agent who brings Willard to the end. Everybody’s life is his Passion…
Herein lies the crux of the Deptford Trilogy. History is subjective; yet subjectivity is really all we have. Not even a great filmmaker like Lind can create God’s point of view; as his cinematographer puts it, it’s all just a trick of the light. But I don’t get the sense that Davies is a relativist, or that this notion provokes despair. In World of Wonders, Davies gives his most disempowered protagonist an audience who fights with him, refuting him and even despising him, and that’s where hope and ultimately truth emerge.
Synopsis:
When Mary was 16, she may or may not have been abducted and raped by an older man, whose life was ruined by her accusations. Continue reading
In another incarnation I spent some time teaching screenwriting, which, as you may know, is all about structure. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that there is no screenwriting without structure. Typically, that means three acts highlighting a tightly causal chain of events with linear narration. In films that utilize flashback structure, these flashbacks are usually ordered so that they unfold in a linear fashion. Even Memento, to provide a notable example of a film that plays with time, employs linear temporality after a fashion. In other words, when it comes to time, things can only get so complex. Continue reading
Synopsis:
Entranced by the folk tales of an old mountain man, and repulsed by the same man’s grisly crimes, Redmond Hatch struggles to narrate the events which led him to bring his beloved wife and daughter to winterwood.
Review:
I was upset by the way Winterwood seduced me. I did not want to be reeled in by Redmond and his elliptical storytelling because I knew that, between the lines, he was telling me stories I didn’t want him to be able to tell. I wanted to believe the surface of Redmond’s life, that he and his Catherine (and, later, his Casey) were blissfully happy, with no hand ever raised from husband to wife. I wanted to believe that winterwood was an impenetrable castle where loving parents and daughter Imogene barricaded themselves against the attackers without. Perhaps Redmond would have lost his life in the battle, but such a death would be preferable to the slow drip of madness that leaked out from every sentence Redmond spoke to me. Continue reading
Synopsis:
In a rotting-down town in nowheresville Maine, a woman with a broken mind haunts the minds of the inhabitants, tormenting their dreams and leading them to make deadly choices.
Review:
I picked The Keeper up after reading about it on SciFi Wire, but I have to say I was disappointed. The writing is assured, and Langan demonstrates considerable ability in bringing the reader inside the characters’ heads. She’s also not afraid of going for the gore, and some of her imagery will be sticking with me for quite some time. Continue reading
Synopsis:
One girl with four personalities at war for dominance, and her only hope is the doctor who is growing to loathe her.
Review:
I swear this has never happened to me–I could have sworn I read The Bird’s Nest when I went through my Shirley Jackson phase back in 1998. I found this awesome woman in Canada who found me most of her out-of-print books–except this one–in a used bookstore in Toronto. I knew I didn’t own The Bird’s Nest, but I thought that at least I had checked it out from the library. And since the subject matter is both so classic to the time (multiple personalities!) and so perfect for Shirley Jackson, I can’t imagine not moving heaven and earth in order to read it. Continue reading
