Month: September 2010

Review: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

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This is the third Sarah Waters book I’ve read this year, the other two being Affinity and Fingersmith, and I think this one is my favourite. I seem to be in the minority though, as I’ve seen some very mixed reviews of this book.

The Little Stranger is set in Warwickshire just after the end of World War II. When Dr Faraday is called to Hundreds Hall, home of the Ayres family, to treat their young maid, he can’t help noticing that the house has deteriorated since he was last there as a boy. Striking up a friendship with Mrs Ayres and her daughter Caroline, Dr Faraday begins to spend more and more time at Hundreds – and becomes involved in a series of increasingly strange and terrifying events.

This is a typical haunted house story, yet it was psychologically fascinating, very suspenseful – and genuinely spooky. I always find poltergeist-type phenomena very disturbing to read about and there’s plenty of that in this book, from moving furniture and inexplicable fires, to tapping noises, ringing telephones and mysterious handwriting that appears on the walls. I had to avoid reading this book late at night because I knew it would scare me if I did!

I have said before that I think one area where Sarah Waters really excels is in creating believable and vivid settings for her stories. She has done this to perfection in the two Victorian novels that I’ve read, and does it again here with her portrayal of life in post-war Britain – the class system, the economy, housing, medical care and the introduction of the NHS.

Another thing I loved about this book is that it’s not immediately obvious what’s going on, which allows the reader to be a detective. Is Hundreds Hall really haunted? Is there a rational explanation for the supernatural occurrences? Or is someone playing a cruel trick? And if it is a trick, who is responsible for it? I think I suspected every character at some point in the novel! Then there’s Hundreds itself, which is almost a character in its own right – perhaps the most important ‘character’ in the book. It seems to be symbolic that as the house falls further into neglect and disrepair, the Ayres family themselves begin to fall apart one by one.

I was hoping that by the end of the story everything would become clear. However, after finishing the book I am still no closer to knowing exactly what had happened at Hundreds than I was at the beginning. The final few chapters of the book are very ambiguous and leave the story open to interpretation. It was slightly frustrating not to be given all the answers, but in the end it didn’t really matter because the story was wonderful anyway – and even a few days later I’m still thinking about it and wondering whether I’ve interpreted things correctly.

Unless you really don’t like ghost stories, I would recommend The Little Stranger as a great, spooky read, perfect for the RIP challenge or for Halloween.

Bleak House Readalong: Chapters 20-32

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I didn’t post my Bleak House Readalong update last Wednesday as it was Book Blogger Appreciation Week, so in this post I’ll be discussing Week 4: Chapters 20-25 and Week 5: Chapters 26-32.

*Please note: If you haven’t read as far as chapter 32 of Bleak House, you may encounter spoilers in this post.*

In the first 19 chapters of the book, we were introduced to a bewildering number of characters and storylines. As I mentioned in my previous update, the story had so far felt disjointed and slightly confusing. In these next few installments though, things finally start coming together and the story is beginning to get really interesting. There were still a few new characters (the Smallweed family, Mr George, the Bagnets and Mr Bucket the detective), but I think we’ve met all the major ones now.

I won’t even try to write a full summary for these chapters, but here are a few of the more important plot developments: Charley, the orphan girl we met earlier in the book, arrives at Bleak House as Esther’s maid. Richard changes career (again! I wish it was really as easy as that) and joins the army. Everyone seems to be very interested in Captain Hawdon’s handwriting, Caddy Jellyby marries Prince Turveydrop, Esther becomes ill – and in Chapter 29, the identity of Esther’s mother is revealed! I was very surprised by this because, although I had already guessed who it was, I hadn’t expected to find out so early in the story and had thought it would come towards the end of the book.

So overall, I found these chapters much more compelling than the previous ones because it feels that things are actually starting to happen now. And this section ended on an exciting note, when one of the characters spontaneously combusts! There are still some parts where I’m struggling to stay interested (Chapter 25: Mrs Snagsby Sees It All – was there any point to that chapter?) but I think I’m going to enjoy the rest of the book.

You can see other readalong participants’ thoughts on Bleak House here.

Review: The Monk by Matthew Lewis

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The Monk, published in 1796, is an early gothic novel by Matthew Gregory Lewis, which completely dispels the notion that classics are dull and boring! While I wouldn’t say this was an easy read (due to the 18th century writing style and language you do need to concentrate) it was a real pageturner. I actually started to write this review when I was only halfway through the book and I was going to say that although I was enjoying it, I didn’t think it was a great book. Then, as I continued to read, I changed my mind. It is a great book and the best gothic novel I’ve read so far!

The book cover shown above is the Penguin Classics edition of the book. However, my copy of this novel is actually part of a four books-in-one anthology called Four Gothic Novels, which also includes The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, Vathek by William Beckford and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I’ve been reading the novels in the order that they appear in the book, but The Monk was the one that I had really been looking forward to reading.

The novel is set in a monastery in Spain, during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. The plot is very complex, but basically there are three main storylines.

The first storyline revolves around Ambrosio, the Monk of the title, who is highly respected within the monastery and attracts large crowds to his sermons. Ambrosio is regarded almost as a saint yet when a beautiful young woman called Matilda tries to seduce him, he is tempted into breaking his vows. After succumbing to this first temptation, Ambrosio goes on to commit one crime after another, each worse than the one before.

We are also given a long account of the adventures of the young Marquis de las Cisternas. When the Marquis rescues a baroness from a gang of bandits, he is invited to accompany her to the Castle Lindenberg in Germany where he meets and falls in love with her niece, Agnes – and learns the legend of the Bleeding Nun. Finally we follow a friend of the Marquis, Lorenzo de Medina, who also happens to be the brother of Agnes. When a young girl from Murcia named Antonia arrives in Madrid, she and Lorenzo fall in love – but things don’t go smoothly for the pair and Antonia soon finds herself in serious danger.

At first it seemed that Agnes and Antonia’s storylines were unrelated to the Ambrosio and Matilda plot, but I soon began to see how cleverly Lewis was weaving the threads of the story together. Ambrosio is a complex character and his downfall was fascinating to read about. Some of my favourite passages were those which gave us an insight into the different facets of his personality.

He pronounced the most severe sentences upon Offenders, which, the moment after, Compassion induced him to mitigate: He undertook the most daring enterprizes, which the fear of their consequences soon obliged him to abandon: His inborn genius darted a brilliant light upon subjects the most obscure; and almost instantaneously his Superstition replunged them in darkness more profound than that from which they had just been rescued…The fact was, that the different sentiments with which Education and Nature had inspired him were combating in his bosom: It remained for his passions, which as yet no opportunity had called into play, to decide the victory.

Some parts of the book are quite gruesome and disturbing, and the passages which describe the sufferings of Agnes and Antonia are horrifying. I thought the final chapter of the book was stunning. There were several different ways the story could have ended, but the ending Lewis chose was absolutely perfect.

This book has almost every element of the gothic novel that you can think of: ghostly apparitions, haunted castles, ancient monasteries, bad weather, fortune telling gypsies, an evil prioress, dark dungeons and shadowy crypts, witchcraft, magic and pacts with the devil. It’s also very daring for the 18th century; with themes of murder, rape, incest, violence and torture, I can see exactly why it was so controversial in its day.

So don’t let the fact that the book was written in the 1700s prevent you from picking it up!

Recommended

If you enjoy this book you might also like The Italian by Ann Radcliffe which I read a few years ago. It’s very similar to this one in both the setting and the atmosphere (and anyone who was put off Radcliffe by the long scenic descriptions in The Mysteries of Udolpho will be pleased to know there are a lot less of those in The Italian).

Review: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

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After hearing so many good things about Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce mysteries, I had high hopes for this book – and I wasn’t disappointed. It was every bit as enjoyable and delightful as I had been told it was.

Eleven year old Flavia de Luce, who wears her hair in pigtails and rides a bike called Gladys, most be one of the most unusual detectives in fiction. Her biggest passion is for chemistry – and more specifically, for poisons. She loves nothing more than spending time conducting experiments in her own fully equipped laboratory and her heroes include famous chemists such as Marie Paulze Lavoisier, Robert Bunsen and Henry Cavendish.

When a dead bird with a rare stamp impaled on its beak is found on the de Luces’ doorstep, Flavia is puzzled by the effect the discovery has on her father. Later, Flavia finds something much more sinister in the cucumber patch and when her father is accused of murder, she becomes determined to clear his name.

Although this wasn’t a particularly complex mystery, it was an interesting one, involving magic tricks, a sheet of Penny Black stamps and a slice of custard pie. There were parts of it that I could figure out quite easily but others that took me by surprise. I don’t often read mysteries anymore, but this book reminded me of exactly why I used to love them! However, the mystery itself is only one element of this book. I think due to the characters and the setting (which includes all the little period details that place the story firmly in 1950 and perfectly capture a small village atmosphere), this series could appeal even to non-mystery lovers.

The main reason I enjoyed this book so much was Flavia herself. She really is a wonderful character, innocent and lovable one minute, ruthless and vengeful the next (at the beginning of the book she runs away in tears when her sisters Ophelia and Daphne taunt her by pretending she’s adopted – and then proceeds to inject poison ivy into Ophelia’s lipstick). The chemistry aspect of the book particularly interested me as I have a degree in chemistry myself – although I was never as passionate as Flavia about the subject! She seems to have a PhD level grasp of the subject already. And her sphere of knowledge also encompasses literature, history, film and music. She’s so incredibly clever and independent that it’s easy to forget she’s only supposed to be eleven. There’s no way you would expect a real child of that age to speak or behave the way Flavia does – and yet somehow, in a strange way, I was able to overlook the fact that she’s so unrealistic and could accept her as a plausible character.

I’ve seen comparisons with Nancy Drew and Harriet the Spy, but while I was reading this book I was also reminded of Enid Blyton’s Five Find-Outers series, which was also set in a small English village in the 1940s/50s and featured a group of children who always solved the mystery before the village policeman. I have no idea if Alan Bradley would have been inspired by those books at all, but there are definitely some similarities.

I loved this book and now I can’t wait to read The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag!

BBAW: Unexpected Treasure

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I knew I wouldn’t be able to participate fully in Book Blogger Appreciation Week this year because I’ve been ridiculously busy recently, both at work and at home, and just haven’t had time to prepare anything. Today’s question, though, is one that I really wanted to answer:

Wednesday—Unexpected Treasure
We invite you to share with us a book or genre you tried due to the influence of another blogger. What made you cave in to try something new and what was the experience like?

Looking back at the list of books I’ve read so far this year there are quite a few that I probably wouldn’t have thought of reading in the days before I started blogging. I used to stay very much within my own comfort zone and while there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that, as long as you’re enjoying what you’re reading, it did mean I was missing out on a lot of great books and authors. I had never considered reading Georgette Heyer or Sarah Waters, for example, before I saw so many other bloggers reviewing their books. I would probably also never have been aware of Persephone books; I’ve now read and loved three of them and have another two waiting on my shelf.

Going back to the question above, the biggest plunge I have taken into something new is when I decided to try an entirely new medium: the graphic novel. Before I began blogging, I had never even thought about reading a graphic novel. I didn’t have any prejudices about them; it had honestly just never occurred to me that I might enjoy one – and I had no idea how popular they were until I saw so many of them being reviewed on such a lot of blogs. So, this summer I finally read my first graphic novel (I should really call it a graphic memoir) which was Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. I don’t want to thank one individual blogger for bringing that book to my attention, because I had seen it mentioned by so many people, but all of you who said it was the perfect choice for a novice graphic novel reader were completely right! I haven’t had a chance to read another one yet, but I’m glad I now know that there’s no reason for me not to read them.

Thanks to everyone who has influenced my reading and encouraged me to try something new!

Short Story: The Vampyre by John Polidori

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As I’m hoping to read Dracula soon, I thought it might be a good idea to also read one of Bram Stoker’s influences – John Polidori’s The Vampyre. This short story is considered to be one of the first vampire stories in literature and the first to portray a vampire in the way we would recognise today. I have actually been interested in reading this story since I read The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and was intrigued by the references to the vampire Lord Ruthven. (If you’ve read The Count of Monte Cristo you might remember the scene where the Countess G- is remarking on the Count’s pale skin and nicknames him ‘Lord Ruthven’.)

The origins of The Vampyre are fascinating. John William Polidori was Byron’s personal physician and in 1816, went with him to Switzerland. At the Villa Diodati, on Lake Geneva, Byron and Polidori were joined by the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, his future wife Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her stepsister Claire Clairmont, and decided to amuse themselves by writing horror stories. Mary began work on what would become Frankenstein, and Byron wrote the beginning of a vampire story (which survives today as Fragment of a Novel) based on the various vampire myths and legends. Although Byron abandoned his vampire story, Polidori took inspiration from it and The Vampyre was the result. Unfortunately for Polidori, The Vampyre was wrongly attributed to Byron, despite Byron’s attempts to set the record straight.

As a story, it really isn’t very satisfying. Our narrator is a young Englishman called Aubrey, who travels to Rome with his acquaintance, the nobleman Lord Ruthven. The more time he spends with Ruthven, the more Aubrey begins to distrust him and to realise that Ruthven is not what he seems… The plot is so thin that there’s not much more I can tell you without spoiling it – although really, there’s nothing to spoil as the story is very predictable (for the modern reader anyway – I’m sure it would have been more compelling at the time when it was first published).

The Vampyre is interesting historically because of its portrayal of Lord Ruthven as a mysterious, pale-faced aristocratic figure who preys on innocent young ladies, which is the way many future vampires would be described (the vampires of folklore had generally been described as hideous-looking monsters). If you’re interested in how vampire stories began and how they evolved over the years, this is worth reading. If you’re just looking for a good short story to read, you might be disappointed with this one.

Read The Vampyre online here

Byron’s Fragment of a Novel is also available online and is so short it only takes a few minutes to read. It’s a shame he decided not to continue with this, as I think it had the potential to be much better than The Vampyre. I’ve read a few of Byron’s poems but this is my first experience of his prose and even based on such a short sample of his work I find his writing superior to Polidori’s.

Read Fragment of a Novel online here


John William Polidori (1795-1821)

Bleak House Readalong: Chapters 14-19

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I’m a few chapters ahead of the readalong schedule again, but this post is based on my thoughts at the end of Chapter 19.

*Please be aware that this post may contain spoilers*

It’s week 3 of the readalong, I’m more than 230 pages into my edition of Bleak House, and Dickens is still introducing new characters and new storylines in every chapter!

In this week’s installments, Esther accompanies Caddy Jellyby to the dancing school where her fiancé Prince Turveydrop works. We also meet his father, Mr Turveydrop, who is always talking about the importance of ‘Deportment’ – very annoying! In chapter 15, Mr Skimpole reappears with news that the debt collector Mr Neckett has died, leaving his three children orphaned. The oldest girl, Charley, is taking care of her brother Tom and the baby Emma, as well as going out to work.

The Snagsbys invite the Chadbands for tea and Mrs Chadband turns out to be a face from Esther’s past. Richard changes career again, deciding he wants to be a lawyer this time. And on a visit to Mr Boythorn, Esther encounters Lady Dedlock, who seems strangely familiar although she’s sure she’s never seen her before.

There are an unbelievable number of characters in the first 19 chapters of this book alone! Luckily, I haven’t had too much trouble remembering who they all are. At the moment it’s difficult to tell which of the characters will play a major part in the story and which won’t. Maybe they all will!

As I mentioned last week, I prefer the chapters narrated by Esther to the others, as they are easier to follow. However, we are now starting to see some indications that Esther is not being completely honest with the reader and is choosing what she does and doesn’t want to tell us (usually in relation to a certain young surgeon called Mr Woodcourt).

“For I was so little inclined to sleep, myself, that night, that I sat up working. It would not be worth mentioning for its own sake, but I was wakeful and rather low-spirited. I don’t know why. At least, I don’t think I know why. At least, perhaps I do, but I don’t think it matters.”

I’m enjoying the book but it still feels quite disjointed and confusing. It still seems that storylines are being started and then abandoned just as they’re starting to get interesting, and characters are being introduced then disappear for several chapters at a time. I’m sure that when things start to come together later in the book I’ll be able to appreciate the importance of these early chapters more. I think I just need to be patient!

More posts on the Bleak House readalong here.