How to Build a Girl: In Which We Should All Be Kind... Later

It's 2:17am PST on Monday morning and there are 2962 people ahead of me in the internet queue to buy tickets to see Benedict Cumberbatch in Hamlet next fall. Not coincidentally, 2962 is the number of people I currently hate. It's up substantially from an hour ago but down from 10 minutes ago, when the number was 3045.

I really like sleep, so this evening before bed I was having second thoughts about this plan to rise at 1:55, buy tickets, and fall back into bed. I texted Megs to make sure I wasn't being crazy:

In the end, this was a sound plan.

Anyway, let's talk about other British Things We Love, shall we? Like Caitlin Moran and her delightful novel - which you can pre-order here! - wherein we spend most of this section learning about Johanna's deflowering, her adorable relationship with Krissi, and that Caitlin proooobably suffers from cystitis much like her heroine.

In time-honored teenaged tradition, Johanna amplifies her sex life before it's an actual Sex Life. But for her, once she actually has sex - a thing that is actually at issue as to when that happens because apparently I am not up on my British slang for making out and doing it (not ONCE has the word "snog" been used) - she is ready to do it all the time, forever and always. A sensible biological impulse, I suppose, but one that clearly amuses all of the adults in the room.

(This post is taking forever. It turns out that I have the focus of a particularly manic squirrel on crack at 3:01am, and there are still 2315 people on my I Hate You All list.)

Johanna's attempts to learn more about sex are hilariously true and so, so cringe-worthy. In the days before Internet porn, brought up in a strictly religious household in a small town with one high school, I learned about sex by piecemeal.  I built my own dubious library of knowledge based on Jean Auel and Jilly Cooper, with a fair bit of VC Andrews and Danielle Steele thrown in. Needless to say, reality did not match my imagination the first few times around. Perhaps if I'd had this book, I might have been better prepared for the "wait, what are you doing? Does that go there? Am I supposed to cuddle you now? Is it normal for you to fall asleep so qui-... okay I'm going to just lay here then. Can I reach my book?" realities of the relations between men and women.

Please remember it's 3:45am and there are still 1564 people I hate.

You can order this book here from Odyssey Books, employer of the fabulous and ever-patient-with-me  Emily Crowe, who is our hostess!


EDIT: 5:15am - I no longer hate anyone and am now in possession of an email that says I have tickets. Feeling pretty damned smug right about now.

How to Build a Girl - In Which We Do Not Have Nits

Last week I had a case of the Serious Mean Reds and couldn't function beyond Work/Come Home and Watch Merlin - a show which has managed to keep my attention despite 1) the use of the words "okay" and "wotcha" in Camelot, 2) the costumers use of zippers and bare shoulders, and 3) the writers completely ignoring Actual Pre-Medieval Behavior Guidelines whenever it suits them.

So this week I owe you two posts, and two posts you shall have!

Okay but for serious, first you need to pre-order this book because it is amazing. And then go thank Emily for the GIF-Fest that this readalong has become.

We begin with Johanna on a plane for the first time, and this whole sequence is adorable. She recognizes a thing that never fails to surprise me, too: it's always sunny above the clouds. This is the kind of "every cloud has a silver lining" cliche that should make me crazy, but doesn't because it's true. Awwww.

And then she falls in Teenaged Love with a Celebrity, which is surely the worst kind of love ever and paradoxically doesn't only happen to teenagers, as evidenced by the Victorian-lass-worthy swooning I did earlier this year over a person I will never, ever meet in real life (probably for the best...). Anyway. Back to Johanna, who is at least of a proper age for this kind of thing.

This book is mostly hilarious "oh god, I remember that bit of being a teenager...::cringe::", but it's peppered with heartbreaking moments that feel familiar and... not... all at once. Johanna carefully brings her father a glass of Guinness from Ireland - one of those pre-2001 things that will absolutely confuse younger readers - and his reaction is merely, "Christ, that's flat." Christ, I would like to flatten YOU, sir. Do you not see the gesture she is trying to make? The approval she is trying to win? That she lost her father the day he fell off that building, and now she's lost her mother to post-partum depression and she's struggling in a family raised by ghosts and being a teenager is just. so. awful. already you are making it worse and giving me italics?

I slap you! 

And then, everything that Johanna feared comes to pass. Her father's benefits are being reduced, and... oh my heart. Oh, Johanna. This cannot be your fault. Caitlin couches her extremely pointed, very cogent remarks about poverty behind an extra layer of novelization - John Kite's remarks in a magazine article - but they are powerful, nonetheless. And how will Lupin ever discover who killed Laura Palmer? Spoiler: he won't. But neither will we, so you dodged that one, kid.

And now, Johanna, we need to have a sit-down discussion about your Drink of Choice. Don't worry, it'll be quick:

Class dismissed.

How you made it onto your train after a bottle of MD 20/20, five gins, and whatever else came afterward will be a matter of cognitive dissonance forever more. Was it one of those magical nights when you can drink everything in sight and not get shitfaced? Because I've had those. They're fantastic and you can't plan them or trust that they'll ever happen again. The one thing you can trust is that they will assuredly not be those nights in your 30s and you've waited for 3 months for all of your friends with babies to have babysitters on the same night and you finally get together. Nope.

How to Build a Girl: In Which We All Wanted to be Dolly Wilde

Aaaaaand we're off! Not in quite the same way as the first section - AHEM - but moving along plot-wise. Get your minds out of the hairbrush and deodorant-filled gutter.

SO! Johanna Morrigan is dead, long live Dolly Wilde! Let us pause for a moment and fondly recall 1992, when we were in our early teens and the third wave of feminism was - I say in retrospect - just getting off the ground. Grrrrls were rioting, grunge was happening, and my mother was Distinctly Unhappy with the amount of Angry Lady Singers caterwauling from my bedroom. It was an abrupt shift from the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Rodgers & Hammerstein that were previously issuing from the CD boombox I got for my birthday. I had just begged for my first set of pointe shoes and was fantasizing about choreographing a full ballet to Little Earthquakes.

What I'm trying to say is that it's hard for me to stop relating for long enough to have a coherent thought about this book.

I have maybe a lot of feelings about 1992.

I love Johanna and her Dolly Wilde persona. I love how she likes music whose creators she could probably take in a fight, her vulnerable relationship with her father, and her initial terror and then love of a mosh pit. I love that she thinks Smashing Pumpkins are too mopey. I laughed hysterically at her opinion of band security, having talked myself backstage a few times and thought the same thing.

So, in conclusion,

and if you're beginning to feel the same way too, you can pre-order it right here from Odyssey Books, which is where our lovely host Emily works! Thanks for putting this shindig together, madam!

I luf you.

How to Build a Girl: In Which it Takes 28 Words

Remember last week when we didn't know about Johanna's preferred masturbatory equipment?

It was a tenser, yet simpler time.

Actually, Johanna's self-exploration is something I'm a little envious of. I grew up in a very religious household and believed with every fiber and nerve ending of my being that Jesus was watching me all the time, so needless to say I didn't discover the finer points of - well, anything really - until after I left home.

But with that one exception, Johanna is speaking my language. She lives in a world where most of her information is gathered from books. She researches things like Spiritual Midwifery. She is pragmatic and hopelessly naive and mixed up and more than a little in love with Gilbert Blythe. 

You can start by removing that shirt...

And woven in between those moments of hilarious contradiction that is a byword for adolescence, there are moments of gut-piercing truth about the pressures of growing up in an unstable home: 

In later years, I can always recognize someone else who received this shot of fear at an early age... Children raised on cortisol. Children who think too fast. (41)

That is all I have to say publicly about that. 

Because I've read the back of the book, I know that this is all leading up to Johanna's transformation into the Self that she thinks she wants to be. And because she is an odd bird, I am very much looking forward to seeing what that Self is. 

You should most definitely preorder this book from this handy link right here! Thanks to Emily for hosting this online shindig - once we meet up in the Caribbean, 

How to Build A Girl: In Which We Introduce Ourselves

Sup?

There's an embarrassing amount of internet dust on this blog. I haven't posted since Bleak House; how did THAT happen?!? I don't know what to say about The Goldfinch and Frog Music, you guys. And I read along with Lady Audley's Secret (mostly), but I just... didn't post.

Well, if there's any book that can make me want to blog again, it'll be the new one by Caitlin Moran that you can preorder from Odyssey Books right here. And huge thanks to Emily for hosting this online shindig!

I wanted those Docs so bad when I was in high school.

I've written about Caitlin on this blog before. In fact, I bought How to Be A Woman new with actual dollars at full price and not bookstore credit because I liked it and her and her Twitter feed that much. Her writing makes me want to stand up on the train where all the Silicon Valley techies are dicking around with Snapchat on their phones and say, "THIS is what feminism is! Sister Suffragette, I support you! ALAS FOR MRS. PANKHURST HAS BEEN CLAPPED IN IRONS AGAIN!" 

and then I would read sections of it out loud - or declaim it from memory - until they're all laughing and have also learned something, just like on Sesame Street but with feminism and wanking. 

ANYWAY. A bit about me to begin: 

- By day and sometimes by night I'm an executive assistant at a Silicon Valley start-up you've never heard of because we do investment banking... stuff. Bankers need startups too. Apparently.

- I like books and read them a lot. I like knitting and spinning and I do those things a lot too. I have serious opinions about the State of Handcrafts in this Country.

- Feminism, man, I swear to god. The more I think about it, the more I want to be independently wealthy so I can become a modern-day Alice Paul. She probably knitted, right? 

Okay, Cat-lin. Here we go. 

The Bughouse Affair - Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini

I’ve mentioned my library’s 7-Day Shelf before, usually to bemoan my inability to return books on time; library fines are an actual line-item in my (mental) monthly budget. (Who has time for a real budget? I’m too busy spending money I don’t have!)

I did a quick sweep of the 7-day shelf at one point and came home with this GEM, but I’ll admit to the following mental process:

1) Wow, that cover is really awful.
2) What a terrible title.
3) Pronzini? Ahhhahahah!
4) *reads the first paragraph of the inner flap * Set in Victorian-era San Francisco! Yes, I’m reading this.

I may have been a leeeeetle biased going in. But nothing prepared me for the accuracy of my first impressions.

Except vast experience in Being Right, of course.

Story! Let’s start with John Quincannon, Male Lead, and his views on his attractive-but-widowed business partner:

“She was not a beautiful woman, but at thirty-one she possessed a mature comeliness that melted his hard Scot’s heart.”

That, my friends, is what some assholes  call a “neg” – the ostensible compliment that hides a criticism. Also, the descriptor “Scot” shows up 3 more times in the first chapter, just in case you didn’t catch it the first time around.

Other things you might have missed because you are stone-blind and have the mental capacity of a thimble:

• A mental map of 1890-something San Francisco. Don’t worry, this book will provide you with one! “Quincannon walked to Terrific Street, as Pacific Avenue, the district’s main artery, was called, turned into an alley, and entered a large building mid-block.” Good job making me not care at all about your whorehouse scene, Authors, because I’m too busy trying to navigate your commas.
• A definition of American Victorian slang, such as “yegg.” 
• Murderous hatpin-using pickpockets 
• Sherlock Holmes in the flesh

Sadly not this flesh.

Let’s define the word “yegg.” OH WAIT, we can’t, because unlike other, more obvious words (::coughbughousecough::) that are used in context over and over again – and defined on page 245 just in case you missed it – this one word is never explained.

Moving on to the hatpin-wielding pickpocket. This girl’s MO is to find a likely-looking victim in a crowd, jab him viciously with a hatpin, then cut his purse. Okay, I’ll buy that.  But what I will not buy is that your victims wouldn’t know the difference between an attack of biliousness and a jab with a sharp, supremely unhygienic object, to the point where a guy would die in short order of what he thought was a stomach problem. How deep did can one poke a hatpin without someone noticing blood?

It turns out that Sherlock wouldn’t have been a surprise if I’d read more than the first paragraph of the bookflap. And to be honest, I’d probably have put it back; after my experience with Death Comes to Pemberley, I’ve given up on pastiche.

One final quote because I just. can’t. stand it:

“The open-air California Market, known far and wide as San Francisco’s ‘entrepot of foods,’ ran for an entire block from Pine to California streets between Montgomery and Kearney.”

Oh good. Next time I’m up there, I’ll be sure to think about how everyone in the Middle Ages used to know what an “entrepot” was.  [Spoiler: it’s a trading post.]

The worst part about this book is that the authors have not only 40+ years of writing experience and 35+ published novels between them, they also have a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. EACH.

You’d think they would know how to set up some tension, create interesting characters without having to borrow them from somewhere else, and maybe add a plot twist so that it wasn’t the wife who did it.

Are you kidding me?

THE WIFE?!?

3 of 11 Poorly Plotted Pastiches*



*Don't get all excited, Authors. That third star is only because I got to spend an hour downloading Sherlock gifs. 

How to be a Woman - Caitlin Moran

"The British version of Tina Fey's Bossypants." - VanityFair.com

I'mma stop you right there, VanityFair.com and the rest of the publishing world who just wanted to rope in the Americans who haven't ever heard of Caitlin Moran. No, you don't get to finish. Bossypants was fantastic and I enjoyed it immensely, especially because I listened to Tina read it to me through the magic of audiobooks. I have a fierce attachment to Tina Fey born of 1) her Sarah Palin impression, which made the 2008 election bearable for this displaced Alaskan*, 2) how smart she is, and 3) how much I secretly suspect that I am a lot like Liz Lemon, only less funny and with a cat. I also suspect that most single English-speaking women in their 30's feel the same way, with or without the cat.

But this book? This book isn't just a very funny memoir with some stuff in it about how women are viewed and how that viewpoint is bullshit.

This book is a MANIFESTO. Germaine (Sodding) Greer factors heavily into Moran's fundamental childhood reading, and what she (Moran) is doing here is reminding those of us with XX chromosomes that there are two sides to the Woman Coin, and that as long as we - the bearers of the XX - are happy and mostly healthy with a variety of experiences at our back - OR NOT - that's what matters. And she's doing it while making me a friend of mine snort boxed Trader Joe's wine out of my her nose.

I don't know if you've noticed, fellow lady-readers, but there doesn't seem to be a manual on womanhood. There's a sociological expectation of certain actions and behaviors, but I think we can all lift our glasses and do a little laugh-sigh a little along with 13-year-old Caitlin when she says, "Oh God, I just don't have a clue. I don't have a clue how I will ever be a woman."

My little brother THB (as christened by my friend Jasmin and standing for Tika's Hot Brother - this is a story for another time) recently asked me why I keep saying I'm a strident/raging/rampaging feminist - being a feminist is so... aggressive, he said. So... unattractive. Instead of exploding, I asked him if he thought women should have the same pay, rights, and opportunities as men do, and of course he said yes because I raised him right. And then he said, "well, I suppose that makes me a feminist too!" I nearly cried on the spot.

One single, solitary, corn syrup tear.

But back to the book. It's hilarious. It's insightful. It's informative. It's HIGHLY opinionated, but since I agree with pretty much everything she says, that's ok.

I woke up at 4:30am the other day to finish reading this. It's that good.

10.5 out of 11 British Swear Words I Will Now Incorporate Into My Vocabulary

*Yes, I grew up in Juneau, and NO, you can't see Russia from my house OR the Governor's Mansion. There's a sodding great mountain in the way.

Cinder - Marianne Meyer

Oh, dystopian re-telling of a fairy tale, how I was prepared to snub my nose in the air at you! How prepared I was to skim your pages, picking out parts of the Cinderella story, identifying characters as this or that archetype, and then pan you in the end as Yet Another Dystopian Re-telling of a Fairytale,

/EYEROLL.

And at first, you didn't (or did?) disappoint. Here was that same weird use of sentence fragments, the hating of which makes me a huge hypocrite because it's okay in my published-only-on-the-internet writing but not in a BOOK. With PAGES (or maybe e-pages - and hopefully a COPY-EDITOR who is trained to spot sentence fragments posing as stream-of-consciousness writing.) In fact, when I came across the Sentence Fragments of Potential DNF, I flipped immediately to the dust jacket to see if... yep, a first novel.

First time authors, STOP DOING THIS. And the rest of you, too, unless it is for emphasis and please only once per chapter at a maximum.

And then the story got rolling and it was fun and I stopped muppet-flailing over grammar (which is how you know I actually liked it). Cyborgs, an evil stepmother (natch), one good stepsister a la Ever After, and a prince-sometimes-in-disguise! People who actually die of the scary disease!

Meyer doesn't just walk the fine line between re-telling and re-packaging; she dances along it like a tightrope walker  from Cirque du Soliel. Not every character is recognizable from the original (or Disney) story, and the world-building is done with plausible elegance. The biggest quibble I had - once the sentences started having a proper structure as sentences should - was that it's set in Future Shanghai, but there was very little actual Chinese culture folded into the story; I would have liked to read more about how Meyer envisions Chinese culture adapting (or NOT adapting) to the future she has created.

As an added bonus, it's book #1. If there's one thing I like, it's seeing "Book 1" on the cover of a book I thoroughly enjoyed.

8.5 of 11 Creepy Moon Queens

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern

Soooooo this book is all about atmosphere. It's beautifully conceived, and the author is clearly super-creative, which I am... not. At all. This is why I majored in art history instead of art. I like the scribblings and paint splashings of other people, but not my own.

Pretty sure this is how Raych's Sister of the Art paints.

Did you ever get into the FIMO/Sculpy clay thing? People were making all of these incredibly elaborate creations, and I was the kid in the back going, "lookit what I made!" and my mom would be all, "oh... that's a nice mud-colored blob, dear. What is it?" And I'd answer, "it's a RAINBOW!"

This is how I feel criticizing highly imaginative work. But someone's got to before Pinterest goes all crazy with The Night Circus-themed weddings, y'know? Oh, wait...

With all of that said, I feel like it was missing... something. Like maybe actual main characters? The Circus itself was uh-mazing, and all the secondaries were wonderfully realized, and the whole thing just oooooozed imagination like... I dunno because I'm not imaginative.

But I didn't dig the love story, ducklings, and I don't know why because I luuuurve a good tragic love story. Except it wasn't tragic and I felt like the lovers didn't really love one another so much as they loved their images of one another, and that always ends in tears.

I am totally That Girl who Side-Eyed this book.

6.5 of 11 flaming cauldrons full of ghosts

Feeling Sorry for Celia - Jaclyn Moriarty

The best part about this book is the lovely relationship Elizabeth has with her mom. They are witty with one another but not too witty: 

Elizabeth to her mother:
P.S. I just realized that I told you we drank your Bacardi. Do you want me to cross that bit out? Everyone was saying I should refill the bottle with water so you wouldn't know...

Elizabeth's mother to Elizabeth:
I can't wait to meet your new friends. Please tell them not to put water in my Bacardi.

Amen, sister! There's no excuse for watered-down booze.

It's told entirely through letters and notes; notes between Elizabeth and her mom, her new pen pal from the school 3 blocks over, her best friend since childhood, and a scattering of groups that I clearly recall getting letters from myself when I was a teenager, such as the aptly named Association of Teenagers and the COLD HARD TRUTH Assn. 

Nearly all of the individual letters are rather short, which means I read it so fast the pages may have been smoking when I was done. It's tough to stop when you just careen from paragraph to paragraph.

You know how some people are charming just underneath their skin? You have to get to know them for a minute, and in that minute you're kind of like, "hmm... I don't... know... about you, you curious little thing..." and you raise your eyebrow in their general direction (if you're genetically blessed with a raise-able eyebrow, which I - to my GREAT disgust - am not). And then you blink and suddenly it's been 3 hours and your face hurts from smiling so much. 

That's this book. 

7.5/11 Letters to Santa

The Moonstone Part 4 - Cry Because It's Over!

HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS.

I dunno how Alice decided to break up the readings for this thing, but way to go on that one, lady.

H'okay, so. When last we met - which for me was not very long ago so I won't blame you if you missed my Part 3 post - Franklin had walked out of a fight with Rachel and said he "saw her and heard her no more," and we were all, OMG NOOOOOO!!! Because Godfrey turned out to be a money-grubbing douchenozzle and Rachel deserves someone nice even if she's not Marian.

So Ezra Jennings* comes back into the story with his piebald hair (?!?) and Mysterious Past and turns out to be quite a decent fellow, thankyouverymuch. Admit it - you suspected he somehow was behind all this for a hot second. Those piebald gipsy people are not to be trusted! But mostly because they try to save people from fevers by dosing them with brandy, quinine, and ammonia. How did we ever survive as a species before modern medicine, I ask you? And he has anecdotal evidence that Franklin's actions on Rachel's birthday night are due to opium because, you see, HE takes opium (it's totally medicinal!) so he would know. And he's writing a thingy on how the brain works, which must have sounded like  Fuck yea, SCIENCE!!! to the Victorians but at which I must admit I sniggered quite a lot.

But because this is fiction, they are able to recreate the moment and Franklin does indeed steal a bauble from the dresser and Rachel watches because she'll do anything - anything! - to clear his name, but after re-creating the scene up to the taking of the diamond, Franklin falls asleep on the couch.

So much for THAT theory. It is worth pointing out here that Betteredge has decided he dislikes Ezra Jennings - who has refused to accept the sovereignty of Robinson Crusoe - and so pesters him hilariously throughout. Oh, Betteredge.; I suspect that you and Miss Clack would have had great fun trading quotations from your respective holy books at one another, had you ever met.

But wait! All is not lost! The diamond is still in the bank - and once again the Victorians get the drop on us because we don't really understand pawning things to banks in this day-and-age or how that works, and Wilkie is of very little help explaining this so it must have been one of those Things that Everyone Understands kind of like parliamentary procedure or Bubble Tape gum. Sgt. Cuff has come back from his roses and written the name of the guy he now thinks did the deed on an envelope and given it to Franklin, who isn't supposed to open it until Franklin figures it out himself. Way to be a dick, Cuff.

So they go to the bank and watch the handoff of the diamond but everyone sees something different and they end up in the room of an inn where there is a dark-complected sailor dead in the bed and when his true identity was revealed this is what I said:

And then he turned out to be even MORE of a dickbag than we previously thought - what with the trying to marry people for their money and whatnot - because he was keeping a woman out in the country and giving her jewels and a house all in her name with the money from some kid's trust fund.

So, it was Godfrey all along, and he'd have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those damn kids Indians! Which in retrospect, I could have picked up on had I not been so excited by the myriad possibilities that Wilkie put before me; it became clearer that Godfrey needed money once he and Rachel broke up. BUT that is the mark of a great writer! Hiding things in plain sight! Distraction and obfuscation! Lady Verinder and Betteredge foreverrrrrr!


Damn, that was a good book. Wilkie Collins, I bow to you.

This book gets 11 of 11 Moonstones**



*NOT the ugliest name in all history. Oh Wilkie, have you forgotten SIR PERCIVAL GLYDE?!?
**Not actual moonstones. And no, that joke doesn't get old.

The Moonstone, Part 3 - Paging Mr. Mesmer?

Well THAT was a surprise!

Let me back up a bit. First, Miss Clack grew decidedly more distasteful after last week's delightful Clack Tracts and the tossing-into-hansom-cabs thereof. She didn't attend Lady Verinder's funeral because she disapproved of the rector giving the service, then scorns Rachel for reaching out to her as a cousin and as a friend because Rachel should have been turning to God in her time of trouble.

I did chortle that Clack left Rachel - or will leave Rachel - one of those ridiculous books in her will.

And let's talk about Rachel, SHALL WE? Because somewhere between saying "yes" to Godforsaken Godfrey and coming back into the picture, girl grew a spine. It's a good look on her!

But again, I skip ahead. So the lawyer (Mr. Bruff? I'm on a train and my book is in my bag waaaay over therrrrrre and I am lazy!) has a narrative that basically says he took care of Rachel and Clack was annoying. Then Franklin comes back in - this time as a narrator - and he goes to Rachel's house and sees Betteredge who takes him to Limping Lucy, who despises Franklin because who should have had Rosanna Spearman's love? I think we all know!But Rosanna's letter leads Franklin to the box in the Shifting Sands - which, lest we forget, never gives up its secrets *except this one so maybe JUST ONE MORE because true love can never die LucyandRosanna4Ever* and the nightgown is there and it's FRANKLIN'S.

Here is where modern audiences are - for once - more shocked than Victorian ones, I think. Because what man wears a nightgown? Even drag queens probably wear shorts-and-shirts or at least a sweet Vicky's Secret sleeper to bed nowadays.

I hate that he looks better in this than I ever will. 

So hum. Franklin's nightgown, and Rosanna's secret is out and she is therefore absolved of any lingering guilt.

And then Rachel spills HER beans and reveals that it was Franklin the WHOLE TIME.

And ok, here's where we delve a little into the first time I read Wilkie, which was for a senior-level Brit Lit seminar in college. Our be-foreheaded patron author was, apparently, *way* into mesmerism. It shows up briefly in The Woman in White in the relationship between the fabulous FOSCO and his wife, although the word itself is never used. And here again in The Moonstone (no actual moonstones) we have a character acting completely out of character and to a higher degree even than Madame FOSCO ever did.

I'm not 100% sure about this, ladies, but I'm pretty sure that our dear Franklin wasn't acting under his own steam.