Jack Duggan > Recent Status Updates

God damn I am salivating

Oh there’s the twist I predicted 50 pages in

Considering I’ve been so lukewarm about this the entire time, now in the home stretch it’s started dropping some real banger chapter-end cliffhangers

I am really loving the way Jackson looks at ‘soft’ prejudices, the indignities people will suffer to keep up appearances, and how heartbreaking everyday life can be. Really lovely writing

Oh the character called Duggan has a brother called Jack, and some not very cricket things happened to him 🙃

I thought I was going to really dislike the parcelling-out of flashbacks in reverse order, building up to revealing whatever the inciting event was, but it’s actually being done quite well. Even in reverse order, each new flashback is revealing something new and recontextualising everything happening, which is good. Sadly I care a lot less about the stupid affair A-story.

Partway through the longest story in this collection, and I’m enjoying her writing more in shorter stories. The quick bursts of insight and wit are really enjoyable, and while the longer stories have more time to explore the webs of 50’s America’s prejudices, they lose a little charm in their length.

I’m absolutely adoring this collection, but I have never heard anyone talk this much about maple furniture

This collection is great. The Villager was a lovely but also heartbreaking story about a women lamenting the death of her own dream and her jealousy of the lives of others, and then The Witch made me laugh so much that people in my office were giving me weird looks

Like Mother Used To Make: Jesus Christ these are some of the most depressing stories I’ve ever read in their depressing mundanity, really well written.

I think we’re supposed to feel sad for the woman having an affair with a married father-of-two that they clearly can’t be together, but honestly I’m to incensed by all the breaching of GDPR that wouldn’t exist for another 55 years

Not even suspension-of-disbelief could make me believe anyone is as dumb as this sister-in-law. “No, it couldn’t possibly be my fault my daughter is acting out, she LOVES it when I berate her, belittle her hobbies, and criticise her behaviour!”

With the exception of a short chapter that must be important mater (because otherwise it was totally pointless padding), most of what I read tonight seemed to be focussed on saying “wow, wasn’t life in the sixties complete shite”

Forgot everything that happened before a character called Duggan was introduced

Getting the impression the niece and her overbearing parents are going to be running parallel to the strange man who refuses to talk

The Intoxicated: oddly threatening, but does a great job of making you wonder what is going on in the other character’s head as you read the narration.

The Daemon Lover: genuinely heartbreaking. Felt really strongly for the character, the time ticking by in the first half is done very well and her getting gradually more desperate and shameless is really affecting. Every character she meets is such a selfish prick

Got far too cosy watching my favourite body horror tonight so I am far too sleepy to do any significant reading 😌

Weirdly though some chapters have a year prefix, but since they’ve all been the same year so far it seems totally arbitrary

I’ve never had the desire or opportunity to have an affair, but even if I had this makes it so sound like such an exhausting and meticulous task that it definitely would have put me off

It doesn’t do it often, but when it does get grotesque it’s delightful

Hell yeah our gal’s about to get herself into trouble

Couple of chapters in a row with some really quite frightening moments which is very cool, and some gothic tropes hanging over it like a ghost on the moors (the classic moors of North Carolina)

It’s not the most genius addition, but I do like the recurring element where the painter narrator will describe what she sees using the names of pigments. It doesn’t add anything to the plot, but it’s a nice touch for depth for the character

Not that I want to sound like I’m referencing stuff just because it’s popular, but there’s a definite Sinners vibe to this. The sensibilities of the characters still feels too 2020s for me, but when a character was relating old wives tales about spooky happenings, that felt real horror movie to me which is great. I wish there were more descriptions of the house and how it fits together though, Shining-style

We’ve just done the ‘Sadie Green/John Carmack makes a game that’s technically brilliant but deathly boring’ Quake bit, I can’t WAIT for the Daikatana-era ‘Sam Masur’s going to make you his BITCH’

I’m liking it so far. All the characters feel archetypal, so hopefully they’ll build on that instead of everyone just being stock characters. All the little ‘old wives tales’ are neat, I love how everyone seems to have a story about the devil doing something inexplicable just around the corner (as if he’d pick Nowhere, Tennessee instead of anywhere in the bible)

Cool set-up, all the bug descriptions are gross and cool. I’m liking character dialogue, but the main character’s narration is so obviously not ‘an 1890’s woman’ and so obviously modern that it is pretty distracting

Just one chapter tonight, next proof copy, off to an intriguing start. Seems genre-fiction-y, but I’m excited to try some.

Pro: I’m liking the description of the setting, which is very fitting for Southern Gothic (which I like)

Con: it’s set in 1899, but the narration feels very modern and maybe a little YA. I’m not sure that this woman would have been able to articulate the way she is at that time.