Reading Saturday
Oct. 20th, 2018 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhIt's October! A most wonderful month, but more importantly, the month I save up all my horror reading for, so I can indulge in five weeks of ghosts, serial killers, and all other sorts of creepy crawlies. Here is some of what I've been reading so far. (Only some because I am terribly behind on writing up my reviews; I will catch up eventually!)
Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage. A horror novel with an absolutely killer cover. Unfortuntately the book itself did not live up to such heights. Baby Teeth falls into the "inexplicably evil children" genre of such classics as The Bad Seed, The Good Son, The Other, The Omen... man, there's a lot of movies about creepy kids, aren't there? But I can't complain – I love them all.
In Baby Teeth we're dealing with Hanna: seven year old only child of wealthy, liberal parents Suzette and Alex. Hanna is mute, despite having nothing physically wrong with her and clearly understanding spoken language. She'll even write out answers to school questions, though she won't use writing for normal conversational communication. Suzette is convinced that Hanna can talk, she just refuses to for reasons of her own. Suzette also becomes increasingly certain that Hanna hates her, wants her gone, and eventually is even attempting to murder her. Unfortunately Hanna never misbehaves in front of Alex, whom she adores, leaving Suzette to wonder the problems are real.
All of this perfectly suits me for some Halloween reading, and despite the problems I'm about to list, I do want to say that the story sucked me in and I had a hard time putting the book down; I think I read the whole thing in two days. I also liked that Suzette has Crohn's Disease. It's not often that you see a character with a disability where the book isn't about the disability, so that was refreshing.
My first problem is that the POV alternates each chapter between Suzette and Hanna. This instantly ruins any suspense the story would otherwise have – is Hanna evil? Does she hate her own mother? Is Suzette imagining everything? – since we know the answers to all these questions from the first page of Hanna's POV. Baby Teeth would be so much scarier if Hanna's chapters had simply been cut out.
The second major problem is that Baby Teeth can't quite decide if it wants to be a horror novel or a serious thriller. 90% of the book sits pretty firmly in the same territory as the movies I listed above, the kind of thing where there's no realism expected and no explanation offered (beyond silly ones like 'he's Satan's offspring!') for why the kid is evil. But then Stage bobbles the end, trying to swerve into a more sober examination of serious mental illness in children, which just doesn't fit at all with the story as told so far. (Also, "psychopath" is the term used by the specialists the parents eventually consult, though as far as I'm aware that's not a real diagnosis one can receive.) I personally am not offended by the horror genre's vilification of mental illness, but it simply doesn't work to mix the extremes of the trope with realism. In real life, those with serious disorders like schizophrenia are far more likely to be the victims of violence, and you can't acknowledge that for a chapter and then immediately swing back to "Now the little girl has a knife!!! Scary!!! :DD" Talk about mood whiplash.
Finally, the ending didn't work for me at all. I'm pretty sure Stage was going for a "the killer wasn't really dead after all!" type jump-scare which ends many a beloved slasher flick, but here it just felt like the story was unfinished. It wasn't a cliffhanger so much as abrupt and unresolved.
I was very much looking forward to reading Baby Teeth, and while overall I can't say it was a bad book, it could easily have been so much better.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell. A novel set in Victorian England about a haunted house. The story is told in three layers. First, we have an insane asylum in the late 1860s, where an unnamed woman with no memories is accused of being a murderer. Second, in 1865, Elsie Bainbridge is newly married, newly widowed, and newly pregnant. She is sent to her late husband's country estate for her period of mourning and confinement, and soon finds it to be an unsettling, mysterious place. Finally, in 1635 in the same country estate, Anne Bainbridge is wonderfully happy with her up-and-coming husband and healthy children. The only problem is that her use of herbal medicines has started rumors that she's a witch. The silent companions of the title emerge in several of these layers: a bit like life-size cardboard cutouts, but made of wood and paint and distressingly realistic, they appear to move by themselves throughout the house and exude feelings of hate and terror.
Quite the creepy set-up! Alas, the writing simply didn't work for me. There's nothing specifically wrong with it, but I didn't feel drawn into the book. I never emotionally engaged with any of the characters, and the historical setting didn't feel well-researched. It was all just a bit shallow and unpolished. I'm not sure the three-layer structure worked, either; the insane asylum frame-story in particular never added anything to the whole.
It's not a bad modern take on gothic horror, and I do have to admit that I absolutely loved the eventual resolution of why the house was haunted, but overall the plot needed a writer with a defter hand.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
The General Theory of Haunting by Richard Easter. A haunted house novel that reads more than little like an off-brand 'The Haunting of Hill House'. Here too we have a house with inexplicable powers and a set of people with just the right skills necessary to solve the mystery. In this case it's Marryman Hall, a large Regency-era house isolated deep in the English countryside. When a publishing company needs to rent a location for their New Year's Eve 2018 party, Marryman Hall just happens to be conveniently available. Unfortunately a snowstorm closes the roads, and only six employees actually make it to the party. There they find themselves alone with the hall's butler and completely cut off from civilization: no cellular service, no internet, not even a TV. What to do but explore the odd noises coming from the house, which begin to escalate into words, footsteps, and visions? Particularly once they learn Marryman Hall was specially constructed to summon Patience, a previous Lord Marryman's wife, back from the dead. Luckily this publishing company specializes in Christian literature, New Age spiritualism, and physics (no, such a weird combination is given no real explanation), so they basically have every angle on the supernatural covered. Each person also has some dark secret – barely functional alcoholism, grief for a dead child, a secret marital affair, etc – all of which of course come into play as the story progresses.
It's a fine book (I mean, it's not as good as Shirley Jackson, but that would be an unfairly high bar to apply to all new horror novels) if not particularly memorable, but then Easter has to ruin it by trying to provide an logical explanation. Which he does through an, um, extremely unique understanding of quantum mechanics:
Could it be, Bishop, that Angels are quanta?
I have combined magic with science, and I have done it here at Marryman Hall. I have done it to find my beloved Patience because I believe part of her can be found, in the quantum.
DEAD PEOPLE ARE IN THE QUANTUM, YOU GUYS. The word "quanta" is used so often in The General Theory of Haunting that it ceased to have any meaning. Particularly because it's often used as though quantum were a place, which is not remotely how science works. Why do authors feel the need to pretend that their supernatural stories are plausible? Just tell me it's a magic house that summons magic ghosts and I will be very happy! Instead I can't help laughing at this extremely silly and inaccurate evocation of physics.
Anyway. If you have a higher tolerance than I do for Hollywood Science, you might enjoy The General Theory of Haunting. There are a few genuinely scary scenes, and I did like the eventual resolution of the mystery; it left more than a few plot holes gaping open, but it was a take on the haunted house genre that I've never seen before. For my part though, I'm forever going to giggle at "angels are quanta".
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage. A horror novel with an absolutely killer cover. Unfortuntately the book itself did not live up to such heights. Baby Teeth falls into the "inexplicably evil children" genre of such classics as The Bad Seed, The Good Son, The Other, The Omen... man, there's a lot of movies about creepy kids, aren't there? But I can't complain – I love them all.
In Baby Teeth we're dealing with Hanna: seven year old only child of wealthy, liberal parents Suzette and Alex. Hanna is mute, despite having nothing physically wrong with her and clearly understanding spoken language. She'll even write out answers to school questions, though she won't use writing for normal conversational communication. Suzette is convinced that Hanna can talk, she just refuses to for reasons of her own. Suzette also becomes increasingly certain that Hanna hates her, wants her gone, and eventually is even attempting to murder her. Unfortunately Hanna never misbehaves in front of Alex, whom she adores, leaving Suzette to wonder the problems are real.
All of this perfectly suits me for some Halloween reading, and despite the problems I'm about to list, I do want to say that the story sucked me in and I had a hard time putting the book down; I think I read the whole thing in two days. I also liked that Suzette has Crohn's Disease. It's not often that you see a character with a disability where the book isn't about the disability, so that was refreshing.
My first problem is that the POV alternates each chapter between Suzette and Hanna. This instantly ruins any suspense the story would otherwise have – is Hanna evil? Does she hate her own mother? Is Suzette imagining everything? – since we know the answers to all these questions from the first page of Hanna's POV. Baby Teeth would be so much scarier if Hanna's chapters had simply been cut out.
The second major problem is that Baby Teeth can't quite decide if it wants to be a horror novel or a serious thriller. 90% of the book sits pretty firmly in the same territory as the movies I listed above, the kind of thing where there's no realism expected and no explanation offered (beyond silly ones like 'he's Satan's offspring!') for why the kid is evil. But then Stage bobbles the end, trying to swerve into a more sober examination of serious mental illness in children, which just doesn't fit at all with the story as told so far. (Also, "psychopath" is the term used by the specialists the parents eventually consult, though as far as I'm aware that's not a real diagnosis one can receive.) I personally am not offended by the horror genre's vilification of mental illness, but it simply doesn't work to mix the extremes of the trope with realism. In real life, those with serious disorders like schizophrenia are far more likely to be the victims of violence, and you can't acknowledge that for a chapter and then immediately swing back to "Now the little girl has a knife!!! Scary!!! :DD" Talk about mood whiplash.
Finally, the ending didn't work for me at all. I'm pretty sure Stage was going for a "the killer wasn't really dead after all!" type jump-scare which ends many a beloved slasher flick, but here it just felt like the story was unfinished. It wasn't a cliffhanger so much as abrupt and unresolved.
I was very much looking forward to reading Baby Teeth, and while overall I can't say it was a bad book, it could easily have been so much better.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell. A novel set in Victorian England about a haunted house. The story is told in three layers. First, we have an insane asylum in the late 1860s, where an unnamed woman with no memories is accused of being a murderer. Second, in 1865, Elsie Bainbridge is newly married, newly widowed, and newly pregnant. She is sent to her late husband's country estate for her period of mourning and confinement, and soon finds it to be an unsettling, mysterious place. Finally, in 1635 in the same country estate, Anne Bainbridge is wonderfully happy with her up-and-coming husband and healthy children. The only problem is that her use of herbal medicines has started rumors that she's a witch. The silent companions of the title emerge in several of these layers: a bit like life-size cardboard cutouts, but made of wood and paint and distressingly realistic, they appear to move by themselves throughout the house and exude feelings of hate and terror.
Quite the creepy set-up! Alas, the writing simply didn't work for me. There's nothing specifically wrong with it, but I didn't feel drawn into the book. I never emotionally engaged with any of the characters, and the historical setting didn't feel well-researched. It was all just a bit shallow and unpolished. I'm not sure the three-layer structure worked, either; the insane asylum frame-story in particular never added anything to the whole.
It's not a bad modern take on gothic horror, and I do have to admit that I absolutely loved the eventual resolution of why the house was haunted, but overall the plot needed a writer with a defter hand.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
The General Theory of Haunting by Richard Easter. A haunted house novel that reads more than little like an off-brand 'The Haunting of Hill House'. Here too we have a house with inexplicable powers and a set of people with just the right skills necessary to solve the mystery. In this case it's Marryman Hall, a large Regency-era house isolated deep in the English countryside. When a publishing company needs to rent a location for their New Year's Eve 2018 party, Marryman Hall just happens to be conveniently available. Unfortunately a snowstorm closes the roads, and only six employees actually make it to the party. There they find themselves alone with the hall's butler and completely cut off from civilization: no cellular service, no internet, not even a TV. What to do but explore the odd noises coming from the house, which begin to escalate into words, footsteps, and visions? Particularly once they learn Marryman Hall was specially constructed to summon Patience, a previous Lord Marryman's wife, back from the dead. Luckily this publishing company specializes in Christian literature, New Age spiritualism, and physics (no, such a weird combination is given no real explanation), so they basically have every angle on the supernatural covered. Each person also has some dark secret – barely functional alcoholism, grief for a dead child, a secret marital affair, etc – all of which of course come into play as the story progresses.
It's a fine book (I mean, it's not as good as Shirley Jackson, but that would be an unfairly high bar to apply to all new horror novels) if not particularly memorable, but then Easter has to ruin it by trying to provide an logical explanation. Which he does through an, um, extremely unique understanding of quantum mechanics:
Could it be, Bishop, that Angels are quanta?
I have combined magic with science, and I have done it here at Marryman Hall. I have done it to find my beloved Patience because I believe part of her can be found, in the quantum.
DEAD PEOPLE ARE IN THE QUANTUM, YOU GUYS. The word "quanta" is used so often in The General Theory of Haunting that it ceased to have any meaning. Particularly because it's often used as though quantum were a place, which is not remotely how science works. Why do authors feel the need to pretend that their supernatural stories are plausible? Just tell me it's a magic house that summons magic ghosts and I will be very happy! Instead I can't help laughing at this extremely silly and inaccurate evocation of physics.
Anyway. If you have a higher tolerance than I do for Hollywood Science, you might enjoy The General Theory of Haunting. There are a few genuinely scary scenes, and I did like the eventual resolution of the mystery; it left more than a few plot holes gaping open, but it was a take on the haunted house genre that I've never seen before. For my part though, I'm forever going to giggle at "angels are quanta".
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
