The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon

I picked this up after my cat knocked The Interestings off of my nightstand on the very day I was considering DNF'ing it. "Just a few pages," I thought to myself. "It's important to know if this is a reading rut or if it's just that book in particular."

Yea, fuck you glasses case!

Well, it was that book in particular.

Wolitzer's use of language was fantastic, but I found her story to be lacking. Similarly, Lyon's writing is engaging, but the story wasn't the crazy revelation of ancient hijinks that I was (for no particular reason) expecting. Instead, it was what I can only describe as... hazy. As if Aristotle were telling his story through the fog of old age, describing events and loves of his life without regard to things that didn't really affect him.

Things that affect teenaged me: Jared Leto's earnest face. And eyeliner.

Also hazy in that sense of, everything felt really hot and languid - that's the word, languid! Don't say it too many times or it won't sound like a word at all. It was a fascinating re-telling, in which Alexander the Great figured hardly at all - a bold choice for a story about the time in Aristotle's life when he was Alexander's tutor.

A tutor who neglected to explain about hairstyles, obvs. LORD that is some bad hair.

And Aristotle himself? Noooooot super-likeable. He was kind of a dick to his wife, Pythias, and there was this weird homoerotic tension between him and... well, everyone else. And then there was this awesome maid but she said something snappish to Aristotle while his wife was having their baby, so she got dismissed, end of her part in the story.

This is the weird thing about writing based on the actual life events of people: there's not really a purpose for a lot of things that happen IRL (as kids these days say), but I like fiction and tidy bows on things and emotionful reasons for dismissing your wife's favorite servant who may or may not have saved her life that one time. But instead? Aristotle dismissed her and we hear no more about her at all.

This is not why I read books.

But EVEN SO, I liked the writing and the book didn't make me grumpy even though I sound that way. ARISTOTLE makes me grumpy, with his servant-dismissing ways and his bizarre treatment of Alexander the Not-Yet-Great's seriously fucking weird behavior. How much of that is based on historical record? It sounds like that guy was seriously disturbed. Everything I know about him, I learned from reading Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George, and now this strange novel.

You would think I would know more about Alexander; many of my paternal relatives carry that name, and I have not one but TWO brothers named after Mr. the Great. But the more I learn, the more I think that maybe... not such a great guy.

Staaaahp being such a jerk, Alexander the Worst.

You'll have to forgive me, I've been watching New Girl all day and I'm feeling witty after a couple of glasses of wine and a very successful experience with my new Le Creuset stockpot. It'll pass soon.

7.5 out of 11 Literal Caves - Not Those Mind Caves Like Plato, Who Was Aristotle's Teacher

The Flight of Gemma Hardy - Margot Livesey

One of the fun things about reading a lot of (awesome) book blogs with the library request page open is that books show up on the hold shelf for me and, depending on how long I was in the queue for, I don't  remember anything about them - there's just a vague feeling of "positive" hanging about the title. SO, when this one showed up, I was surprised (probably for the second time) that it is a re-telling of my beloved Jane Eyre. And then I got suspicious! And then decided it can't be worse than Wide Sargasso Sea, and by "worse" I mean "more preachy," so just read it already, Self.

Just so we're all on the same page (HAHAHAHA I crack me up), my official Jane Eyre Re-telling Scale goes from Wide Sargasso Sea at the bottom to Rebecca at the top, with The Eyre Affair somewhere around the 85% mark.

Unlike in Rebecca, the events of this book follow Jane Eyre pretty closely for the first 2/3 of the book, and since we've all read the original or at least seen the movie with Michael Fassbender, I don't need to worry about spoilers for a book written in 1857, RIGHT? Good. Okay.

Then please come in and let's begin. Is it warm in here? Please feel free to disrobe, sir.

You've got your evil aunt, your wretched school, your Helen Burns - who in this context dies of asthma, your graduation/leaving of said wretched school, your governess in the remote wilds of a place, your inappropriate relationship between master and servant, etc. etc., and your wedding-that-wasn't.

But it's different, you see, because it all takes place in Scotland, which is further north than Yorkshire and so is colder and even more remote! And herein lies my first quibble with this book - there will be more, as should be expected with a re-telling of a beloved text - it could have been set anywhere, and I feel like a book deliberately set in northern Scotland needs to evoke the feeling of that place. I'm not demanding kilts and rugged, sexy time travelers - FOR NOW - but Livesey didn't capture the distinctive cadence of the Scots or their feelings about their country, which I understand from reading a lot of Diana Gabaldon are vehement.

And then there's the issue of the Mad Woman in the Attic, which was shocking and (barely) plausible in 1857 but definitely not going to work in 1965. I won't spoil how it was dealt with, but I will say that it made Gemma more petulant than her predecessor; the offense wasn't equal to her reaction.

The OTHER thing that I had difficulty with is that the female cousins were not sisters but they were *whispers* lesbians. WHY, Livesey? This is unnecessary. Ok, first of all I fully believe that there need to be more homosexual characters in literature - that fictional homosexuality is less obviously challenging (because it's in a book that you can put down and walk away from when it becomes "too much") and so it helps to encourage acceptance on a subconscious level. BUT. The story wasn't enhanced by the sexuality of these characters, and while their relationship taught Gemma some things about love, it stuck out as an anachronism. So I am torn; on one hand, yes please more positive homosexual relationships, Fiction! and on the other, don't fuck with canon if it's not going to forward the cause,

Overall, I walked away from this one feeling like the story would have stood better on its own feet and not pasted on top of an iconic story arc. The last 1/3 of the book - after Gemma runs away - took on a tale of its own and I liked it better than the previous section. I'd have also liked to hear more about Rochester's Whasshisname's stint in WWII and a deeper discussion of their age difference, as would have been appropriate for something set in the 60's.

6.5 of 11 Ferry Trips to the Orkneys

The Little Stranger - Part the Second

This read-a-long brought to you by The Estella Society, which is awesome: 

Four hundred sixty-three pages later and I am... seriously underwhelmed.

First, let me say that I read through a lot of the first round RAL posts over at The Estella Society, and I think those people maybe read a different book than I did? Because their reviews were full of praises for the characterization and the creep factor and the slow build of the characters' interpersonal relationships, and (as you may be aware) my review was full of Whoopi Goldberg gifs and what-am-I-missing-guise?!?

For those of you new to this place - which is pretty much everyone since this blog is only a month and a half old - I promise you that I know A Lot about plot and watching slow characterization and that I can use all the Big Literary Words and once got 100% on a paper about how the City of London was a legit character in The Old Curiosity Shop. But let's face it: gifs are funnier, and everyone needs a niche.

SO. Let's talk about how this book is basically the literary equivalent of:

So I guess titular character was only ever after the family? Which is weird because they never really talked about it, or when they did someone got chucked into an asylum. And also un-scary because I didn't really care about the family much, and since I'm NOT the family, I'm safe. Safety is the antithesis of fear. And then Doctor Faraday convinced himself that he was in love with Caroline, which isn't really true because obvs. he wanted Hundreds - weird shit and all. And THEN Mrs. Ayres goes and hangs herself on a doorknob (?) because why not leave the woman with spontaneous body-stigmata all alone? Surely nothing could happen to her!

The Aunts KWIM.

And then Caroline calls off the wedding to Dr. Faraday because she never loved him after all, which I COULD HAVE TOLD HIM based on her behavior, and THEN she jumps/is pushed off of a balcony in her house and dies, too, because she thinks The Thing in the house is done with her family maybe, so getting up in the middle of the night is safe?  This is All So Sad, but from one event to the next, there's no sense that the next person should GTFO and move to sunny Spain and spend the rest of their lives tilting at windmills.

(My favorite metaphors are mixed ones.)

Herein lies my ISSUE with this book: I got no sense of looming danger, no sense of frenetic AGGHGHHHHHH for me-the-reader, no sense that the thing in the house is truly malicious or even really dangerous. The Doctor got more and more repugnant as he pushed and pushed his wedding to Caroline, and really in the end I felt like everyone deserved what they got, which (while allowing me to feel very smug) is probably not the way Waters intended me to feel. Witholding information from the reader can be extremely effective, but in this case there was too much witholding; not enough detail got through to incite fear or dread.

I will say, though, that I enjoyed the read-a-long itself very much, and am looking forward to more with The Estella Society!

4 of 11 Victorian speaking tubes, and a mandatory viewing of Arsenic and Old Lace for anyone who doesn't recognize the Aunts.



BONUS LIST OF Things that Do Suspense Better than This Book:

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland
My cat about to pounce on something
The doorbell when you don't know who's coming over

The Little Stranger - Part the First

This read-a-long is brought to you by The Estella Society, which is amazing and about which I am very excited. 

I don't read scary stories because I hate being scared. Haaaate it. This irritates the crap out of my brothers, but it's probably their fault since they liked nothing better when we were young than to jump out at me and make me scream like the little girl I was. Horror movies are Right Out; I had to be convinced by at least 3 other people - also avoiders of scary - that Cabin in the Woods (2011) was something I'd like, and even then I took a boy I could clutch in times of distress (I did like it, by the way, despite the boy turning out to be sub-par. You probably would, too).

You know how sometimes you have to revisit things to see if you still hate them? Like Brussels sprouts or fish or chardonnay? This read-a-long is me figuring out whether I still hate scary stories.

And guess what? I STILL DO.

I hate the creeping fear, I hate the gnawing dread, I hate that characters haven't read the blurb on the back of the book so they don't know they're living in a scary story so they do things like go down into the basement or up into the attic or insist on living in a mouldering old wreck of a CLEARLY HAUNTED HOUSE.

So there's this family living in a Clearly Haunted House, and they're Barely Hanging On because it's post-WWII Britain and everyone's still on rationing and the gentry are all a-wail because their parks are being broken up and they have to sell their five zillion horses, boo hoo. And in comes the Good Doctor character, our narrator, who has no premonitions, no precognitions, no nothing! As a good doctor should, but as a Good Scary-Story Narrator should most definitely not. He's a bit of a jerk, really, and I don't much like him. So there.

And shit starts happening and of course the servant figures it out first because servants are the Salt of the Earth and all. But does anyone listen to poor little Betty? NO THEY DO NOT. So I'm laying in bed reading this and getting alternately terrified of finding little black marks on my walls and annoyed with everyone in the book for being so veddy, veddy stiff-upper-lip English and practical.

And also sugar and petrol rationing. 

Sarah Waters, I miss your lesbian sexytimes, but I will finish this because I have to know what (if anything) will happen so I can sleep at night and also I have the palette-cleansing Tipping the Velvet in my TBR pile. It turns out that when you actually go into the stacks at the library instead of just from the door to the hold shelf to the checkout machine, there are other books for you to read!

Technology, you make me lazy.