Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books

141. The Black Dog – Georgena Goff

Lottie moves to this random small town because her boyfriend, Jed, is studying some spiritualist guy named Holme, who is mysterious and maybe, maybe, a fraud. Maybe. Who is to know? Not Lottie, regular human teacher and girlfriend. Jed plants her in the boarding house where Holme tends to show up as her landlady is a disciple of his of a sort and does seances. Jed wants Lottie invited to a seance to see if Holme shows up and she gets the in and Holme totally does show up. He also claims to be possessed by some sort of rude demon.

Anyway, as spiritual conmen usually tend to have charisma, Holme also has charisma. Lottie goes to visit him in his big out of the way house and he’s like totally into her. Jed thinks Holme is a little too into Lottie since Holme maybe brought his own harem of two from “Lancastershire” (as I recall from living there, the county was Lancashire…), but Lottie hasn’t even seen any ladies around. Clearly, ghosts also make dinner for Holme. Eventually, Lottie agrees to help Holme with his apparently abundant typing needs and then they quickly fall in love.

Lottie agrees to marry Holme about 10 seconds after she stops going home and suddenly, he’s a traditional roles guy. Lottie needs to cook. If Lottie’s going to go into the basement, she can take care of those poorly ladies of Lancastershire. It’s a total bait and switch and Lottie’s getting the life sucked out of her for a rich dude’s charisma. If only she’d listened to Jed and also not left her sandals randomly by the lake.

Thorfy would never ask Hen Wen to fulfill a traditional role of any kind. She’s made it clear she does what she wants when she wants like kicking me in her sleep while I was typing.

58. Butter – Asako Yuzuki

A book so focused on butter cannot be called a slow burn so much as a slow melt. Butter is based on a real case, The Konkatsu Killer, which also involved an overweight woman dating and taking a lot of money from men via a dating site. I’m sure the shock experienced in Butter about how an overweight woman could be considered desirable enough to be able to kill multiple men she met on a dating site is based on reality… and that’s a significant part of this book as well.

Rika, the journalist, tries to understand Manako Kajii, the killer here is so focused on luxury food and old ideas about what women should be like while also unexpectedly confident in her rounded body. Rika ends up taking on a bit of a food quest in order to understand Kajii, who says she hates women and doesn’t want to talk about her case – she wants to talk about food and tells Rika things to eat and what context to eat them in occasionally. And Rika gains weight! The horror. Or at least, some people see that as a horror, evidence she doesn’t care about herself or a loss of the her they knew and thought of as a male substitute at girls’ school because she was their “prince,” like her friend Reiko, who is a bit ruthless overall and a very interesting character.

Of course gaining weight and enjoying food consistently is the kind of thing women are societally expected to avoid around the world, regardless of whether their weight gain has anything to do with food or a new medication or hormonal changes they can’t stop, etc. Societal expectations and Kajii as someone who doesn’t fit in overall and has a fantasy version of reality she’s presenting to Rika is well explored. Her history and how she seeks to obscure it as she wants “worshippers” not actual connection.

There is a lot going on in Butter that I did not expect to read about in a novel about a female journalist getting an exclusive with a female serial killer. While a lot of it involved issues I’ve experienced or am interested in, and I’m not sure what exactly I expected the read to be like, it was arduous by the end.

Ozma did not have a hard time gaining worshippers while eating whatever she wanted.

167. Randalls Round: Nine Nightmares by Eleanor Scott – Ed. Aaron Worth

This was another winner in the British Library Tales of the Weird series. There’s a helpful essay about the author and I liked all of the stories. The ones at the end which were published under the name “N. Dennett,” who is thought to be Eleanor Scott, which is also a pseudonym, were the creepiest, but all the stories had their own levels of creepery and subtle dread. There’s also an introduction by the author herself, mentioning her story “The Room” was published in Cornhill Magazine, which should be a mark of awesomeness based on the amusing name alone. I mean, it was like a serious magazine, but Cornhill.

Twiglet, former subscriber to Cornhill Magazine, and also Gorezone.

88. Bleak November – Rohan O’Grady

This has the normal set up for a haunted house story – new house, young couple, mother-in-law buys them a house and it has a tragic past. In some of these, it would be the husband who is at home all the time to work on the great American novel who would be quietly going mad, but in this case we’re always with his wife, Amy, who also quit her job but then sort of is going back (but we really don’t read about her working).

Amy ends up with lodgers and one is a way better housekeeper, so Amy has time to have a very weird affair with the suggested handyman, Igor, who is very pushy. And she has time to vaguely find out about the tragic past murdered family who lived in her house. There are newspaper clippings across the top of each chapter that aren’t the full clippings, almost as if something’s constantly being left out of the story…

At the end, after the seance and all the fantasizing and Amy forgetting her husband hates peanut butter and a weird trip to the zoo, it’s not exactly clear what’s going on, but it also is. I wondered why there are polar bears on the new cover when it’s a Gothic haunted house, now I know, mostly.

Danger Crumples really loved frisee. I still think of him every time I buy it even though he’s been gone for almost ten years. Clearly, I am not descending into madness just yet.

122. Home Before Dark – Riley Sager

Is Baneberry Hall haunted? It seems like it should be. It’s got the tragic past going for it – several families and visitors have been injured or died there. And when the Holts move in and really only hear about the latest tragedy, a lot of people’s stuff is in there. They do not last either and end up running out in the middle of the night…which leads to Maggie’s father’s bestselling docudrama book about the family’s experiences there and how super totally haunted Baneberry Hall is. Fully grown Maggie remodels houses and thinks the book is completely bullshit lies and she doesn’t understand why her father would do lie so wholeheartedly about what happened. When he passes away, she finds not only that he still owns Baneberry Hall, but he left it to her, he still pays the original caretaking families to help with it, and he used to come back once a year on the anniversary of them running away.

Maggie has ideas about renovating it, finding out what really happened that she does not remember because she was a traumatized 5 year old when they left, and figuring out what her relationships with her separated parents really are as well. She is also really, really angry about that book that has defined her life and wants to disprove it. And she does figure out what really happened after a lot of strife and interjectings of The Sound of Music soundtrack song about being 16 and being careful. Like a lot of them. Because The Sound of Music record intrudes upon the present time and the inserted book sections from Maggie’s father’s authorial perspective.

As usual with Sager, this reads really quickly and has some twists that are interesting and propulsive. The book within a book works better than that usually does and he skirted my usual issue about researching the house’s past with bound volumes (dusty) at the newspaper office and a vertical file of clippings at the library both in present and past time. I see that small town newspaper and library don’t have great budgets for preservation.

Snuffy would not have been happy about any startling musical intrusions, especially patronizing ones.

19. Scribe – Alyson Hagy

This foray into the weirdo new frontier did not do much of anything for me. The description sounded great, the en medias res world building was not. I still don’t know what I was supposed to ground myself in this world with. It was just like, here, some stuff that doesn’t make sense in just a few pages. Hagy could’ve used more pages to, like, I don’t know, make things in this world just a tad more grounded, but chose to rely on the poetics of vagueness instead. The goals of every character are ill defined. The background of each character that was presented also had no sense of stability to work with. I can take a set of unreliables as long as what they’re doing makes sense in some form of context and I just couldn’t find any in this book. It was like reading an idea cloud using only pseudo-old west words.

Well defined goals include: lording over Ozma. Peregrine achieves it.

127. Autumn Bleeds into Winter – Jeff Strand

1979, Fairbanks, AK, there are children being abducted and one night after a sleepover argument goes wrong, Curtis watches his best friend Todd become one of them. And he recognizes the kidnapper – and does all the stuff he can right away to get his friend back within half an hour – call the police, get them to the rightish house only to have the right one pointed out by a neighbor. There was nothing else he could do and there he is, well aware of the responsible party, and nothing happens to find Todd or bring Mr. Martin to justice.

So, Curtis comes up with a plan. Not a good plan necessarily for someone of his limited athletic skills and level of sweatiness at the time, not to mention the lack of convenient surreptitious recording technology, but it’s a plan to get a confession. And I have to say, basically nothing went how I expected it to in this novel. I really enjoyed reading it in no small part because of that. Curtis is a fun character, he’s a chubby best friend made the main hero. And he has Tina, who is excited about a date to the real library, not the school one, which is awesome. They also have what sounded like an excellent Halloween party, even if attendance is quite limited, and also confront a child serial killer pretty effectively.

Although, my favorite scene and the one that made me laugh the loudest in this quite funny coming of age/confronting a serial killer thriller was when Curtis explains why his new English teacher is his favorite to his mom. “Wise ass,” indeed.

My most mischievous pig was Belvedere and here he is about to be confronted by his sister Pickles. Wise ass, indeed.

31. Pranks – Dennis J. Higman

Evil teenager alert! Bucky Foster, terrorizer of the island neighborhood of Horsehead Point, is a total psychopath. The total psychopath for Halloween 1983 definitely. He and his two friends, Jeff and Harry, are riding around on their motorbikes and up to the most no good on Halloween anyone could be. I know I’m being more expressive than usual but I spent this entire book wondering how Bucky was going to be vanquished because you do not beat a sheep to death, strangle an elderly dog, bash the head of an elderly woman, hit an old grumpy dude with an axe, threaten your teacher, and live to see the end of the story. Preferably.

Jeff and Harry are kind of caught in the flow because they’re “friends.” And nearly everyone who should be keeping Bucky from doing these things is either overwhelmed by it enough to just pretend it’s not happening (Bucky’s mom), thinks it’s just “boys will be boys” to spray paint and murder animals (Bucky’s stepdad), thinks they can help him (his teacher), or is willing to write off some serious deaths as “accidents” (the police and the on island EMT dude). They should all have taken that sheep’s death vastly more seriously. Even if her owner was an awful woman.

Pranks read very quickly. Very. And it has a lot of perspectives and a lot of background about the community, even mildly stupid political intrigue, and I never found it confusing. It does have a lot of gruesome animal death, women struggling with their roles, flawed and terrible people, the worst teenager I’ve ever read about, and also a Halloween party.

Snorri and Jonesy are both teenage boars, but they would never do anything like what happens in this book. Their worst prank would be something like taking little bites out of someone’s pumpkins (as seen here).

142. Play Time – Morgan Fields

I’m beginning to think Morgan Fields has a title problem of sorts. Both of the books I’ve read of hers have titles that just aren’t quite right, in fact, I think the two books I’ve read of hers should switch titles. I mean, Play Time is about Druids and their sacrifices around Samhain, so Deadly Harvest fits it way better since they harvest people in the time of harvesting plants. And the one with the weird time hole and other weirdness could just as easily fit Play Time, which just doesn’t suit the oaky feel of a Druid sacrifice house, even if a young ghost is stuck in it. She doesn’t really, like, play.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book, as I was not expecting a Druid story and I love those and it was a good one. There was even a Wicker Man, which sounded like it was on the ground and not standing on stubby little wicker legs, but, whatever. Building a multistory wicker sculpture would definitely be noticed in a small town, even if you left it in the woods. Especially when there’s a snooping, neglected young girl running around all over everywhere. Amber is pretty great though. She has some serious grit and very hurt feet by the end of the story.

Despite the title problems, I’m definitely a fan of these Morgan Fields books. I’m pretty sure I read a first printing of this too, as there were many typos, but I still enjoyed it.

Thorfinnur says it’s actually always time to harvest sleep.

121. I Think I’m Alone Now – Ali Seay

This was a great little snort of a possession story. I love the cover, it is Trapper Keeper inspired, with the perfect color choices. The story is quite short and involves a teen latchkey kid (relatable) in 1985, Dorrie nee Doris, and her potentially creepy across the street neighbor, Mr. Frank. Mr. Frank sees what’s really going on with Dorrie and we get a lot of incredibly gross and/or sad clues as well, which can make it quite scary. There are some unfortunate fates for animals in here. There is also a lot of time spent at the mall. The way Dorrie relates to her friends is quite realistic, supernatural situation or not, and her family’s Halloween decorations were quite realistic as well.

Snorri is an excellent little snort of a guinea pig. Here he is in his first pumpkin photoshoot sneating the big pumpkin. Very sneaky, Snorri.