Number 80 - Gideon Falls Book 2: Original Sins

 

The second volume, collecting issues 7 through 11 of this continuing series by Jeff Lemire and stunningly illustrated by Andrea Sorrentino

As per my comments on the first volume, this book is gorgeous to look at.  It has a truly mind-bending plot. The art is amazing and the way the layouts are used as an integral part of the storytelling is remarkable to say the least.

There are some hints towards an explanation, and the apparently separate storylines are now officially merged.  

I've ordered book 3 already.  These books show how graphic novels can be just as valid a writing form as prose.  And they demonstrate tricks in the storytelling - use of layout etc. - that prose novels could never hope to emulate.

Number 79 - Small Pleasures - Clare Chambers

 

This month's book group book - I will admit I would never have picked this up of my own volition.

There's always a danger in giving a book a title like Small Pleasures.  It leaves the door open to so many possible attacks from reviewers if they don't like it.  

However it also opens to "This was no small pleasure" types of reviews. Indeed this book opens with 10 full pages of glowing reviews of that sort. I can't remember the last time I saw so many at the start of the book.*

Anyhoo.. what did I think of it?

This is definitely another book that's out of my  normal genre choices.

In the 1950s, a single 40 year old female reporter at a local paper is tasked with looking into an alleged virgin birth.  Her relationship with the family of the "miracle" child leads to the possibility of escape from the drudgery of her home life.

This isn't a book of overplayed, highly strung emotion.  Jean is emotionally repressed, still living at home caring for her elderly mother.  Her relationship builds slowly and steadily. Most of the drama is kept off screen and everything seems very cozy. The only high passion relationship that develops is kept off screen and revealed not to be all it was hoped for.

The language used throughout the book is very restrained and somewhat dated.  However, this serves to cement the 50's setting with remarkable accuracy.  This being a modern novel though, there are other themes present and Jean's attitudes do seem to be a few decades out of their time.

By and large she's a sympathetic creation.  We have full sympathy for her drudgery and the tedium of looking after her elderly mother.  The glimpse into her possible future when she goes on holiday is probably the least subtle moment in the book

Near the end of the book though, I almost started to feel that Chambers was just piling misery on poor Jean for the sake of it. How many ways can you throw hope at a character and then grab it back?  The ending is a gut punch, but one that the attentive reader might guess from the opening chapters.

It held my interest throughout. I did actually feel sorry for Jean at times. The tedium is maybe too realistically portrayed. I kicked myself for not being quite attentive enough to realise the relevance of the opening of the book until the end.

I'm not sure I'll read another Clare Chambers again in a hurry, but this does what it sets out to do and provides more than small pleasure on the way.  

*Actually I believe my copy of the Wasp Factory has a similar number of reviews before the book starts.  However, it hilariously includes as many bad reviews as good, and the bad reviews it lists are full of hatred. It was one of the things that made me read the book - the fact that it inspired as much hate as love.  For the record I loved it.

Number 78 - Talk - Kathe Koja

Non-supernatural teen drama is not my thing. High school arguments and who wants to go out with who are sub plots.  Not the lead story.

That's my normal thoughts on the genre.  Then along comes Kathe Koja again and writes a compelling and utterly absorbing little book like this where the most out there thing that happens is a fight at a town rally.

Lindsay is the school's queen bitch. She's used to  getting what she wants.  Kit is a quiet kid hiding a secret about his sexuality.  He's persuaded to try out for the school play - Talk - and finds himself cast in the male lead opposite Lindsay.

Lindsay has just recently dumped her jock boyfriend and finds herself attracted to Kit. Things are not going to go well. As you might guess from that cleverly designed cover, the play attracts a fair amount of controversy. 

The chapters are told in almost stream of consciousness narration from the POV of Kit and Lindsay alternately.  There are also inserts of script from the play.

The voices telling us the story are clearly delineated, you can tell them apart easily from the rhythms and word choices.  The story races along at a great pace and the more Lindsay fixates on Kit, the more tense things become.  

The ending happily doesn't shut down all the storylines.  Life rarely does this so it's nice to see this reflected. I wondered if the ex boyfriend had a more accurate gaydar than a straight guy would normally have. of course we only have his actions to judge him by as told through the two narrators and there's no way to  know if there's more to my pondering on that.

We feel real sympathy for the two leads. Despite Lindsay being the queen of the school, we know her thought process and why she does and says the things she does. We know she's heading for a big fall and the inevitability of that is the lead source of tension in the book, even ahead of the "will the play go ahead" storyline.

As YA dramas about school life and regular normal people doing regular normal things go, this is really very good indeed. It left me wanting to know what happens next.  That's always a good thing.

Number 77 - Monster Town - Bruce Golden

 

Now this was a lot of fun.

Dirk Slade is a washed up ex cop working as a private eye (what else could he be with that name) in Monster Town. Monster Town is where the movie monsters go to live when work in the movies dries up. It's the 60's so they're in a particular slump. I'm not talking about the actors who played the monsters.  In this reality, the monsters are real and play themselves on the screen.

When Dirk is called to investigate the disappearance of the son of Vladimir Prince (aka Count Dracula), it starts a chain of events in progress that he would never have predicted. 

His best friend, a local journalist, is murdered whilst following up a Godzilla big story. As well as the missing boy, he needs to avenge his friend's death and uncover the story.

Along the way he runs into the wolfman, the invisible man, Quasimodo, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a vicious gargoyle and others, and starts up a new romance with the beautiful wasp Woman, She has a sting in her tail.

It's all told in classic hard boiled prose. All short and sweet as a short and sweet thing, with similes galore.

It kept a grin on my face the whole time I was reading it.  This is a comedy that doesn't rely on telling jokes (although  there are some gloriously convoluted puns to be found) but on telling the ridiculous story as straight as it could possibly be told.

At only 120 pages it's a quick and very easy read.  For fans of the old horror movies, there are a ton of Easter eggs and sneaky references. It's not particularly deep and meaningful.  It's not meant to be.

If you want a droll, surreal murder mystery in a brilliantly realised setting, this is the book for you.  And it's on special offer over at the PS Publishing discount site.

 

Number 76 - Something is Killing the Children vol 1 - Tynion/Dell'edera/Muerto

 Another cheat read I picked up purely for the title. 

It is almost as subtle as the title suggests.  The plot, surprisingly, revolves around a monster killing children in small town America.

Enter Erica Slaughter, a mysterious monster hunter with a toy octopus that advises her along the way - not always reliably...

It's good fun to read.  There are shades of the story of Grendel and Beowulf. There are hints at a secret society she works for who may or may not be entirely working for the public good (even though she certainly is on the side of stopping giant monster eating children herself). Misunderstandings with the locals make her job more complicated than it should be.

The artwork ranges from pretty damned good to  wild and wacky to purely functional to not very good in places (what is with the boy's nose in the flashback to the first set of killings at the end of chapter 1?).  

The layout is occasionally confusing, switching randomly from individual pages to having to read straight across the double page spread as if it was one page.  

However those are minor niggles and I will be seeking out volume 2 for some more uncomplicated violent fun.

Number 75 - Spontaneous Human Combustion - Richard Thomas

 

This book was a pleasant surprise.  A few weeks ago the ARC dropped through my front door. I have no recollection of requesting it and, until it arrived I'd never heard of the author.

I'll never complain about receiving a free book though - and this did look pretty damned good, especially with that killer quote from Chuck Palahniuk.

The next question is of course, were the contents of the book as nice a surprise as receiving it in the first place?

Happily, the answer to that is a definite yes. 

These are literate and well thought out stories and the horrors are subtler and more refined than a lot of collections I own.

There are 14 stories (despite the back cover saying 15...)  and even the least good is rather fine in its own way. There are definite stand outs in the collection.

Clown Face is a scary clown story unlike any other that I've experienced.  It was the first story in the book to give me that little frission at the end.  As it's only the second story, that's not a bad hit rate so far,

The next story - Requital - also gave me that delightful little shiver. A man awakes time and again in a shack in the middle of a desert and is faced with different dangers each time.  As the story progresses, it becomes more nightmarish and strange.  It feels like a good episode of Black Mirror transposed to the page.

Open Waters has a similar Black Mirror feel. A man stuck on an island that proves to be so much more and less than it appears. I loved the ending to this (and the fact that the lead character's cat is called Isabella which was my Nanna's name). 

Nodus Tollens meanwhile, feels like an exceptionally good Twilight Zone episode. Be careful what you accept as a prize in a poker game.  You might get more than you bargained for.

In his house takes the form of a letter from a follower of the great elder being Cthulu himself. It's an effective ploy to creep out the reader. Lovecraftian fiction can feel cliched but this manages to feel new despite the the use of an overfamiliar trope.

This is a common thread throughout the collection.  A lot of the ideas flying about aren't new in the slightest, but Thomas's style means they stay interesting and fresh enough to avoid the cliché.  

Undone has to be mentioned for the bravery of writing a story in only one extraordinarily long sentence, a gamble that pays off as this one achieves an immediacy and urgency that drags you through at breakneck pace - and throws out some really great imagery as well.

How Not to Come Undone is a cracking little story about the symbiotic relationship between a pair of twins which is disrupted when the boy twin gains unusual powers. 

Hiraeth was a good story till the last page.  I'm afraid that ending didn't really work for me although I can see what he was going for and it's a brave choice to end it the way he does.  In the afterword he admits that it could divide the audience.  

The final story is the longest and also possibly the best.  A man is alone in a testing station, with only the occasional visits from the enigmatic Rebecca to relieve the monotony (stranded people is quite a common theme in this collection).  Through some interesting narrative choices we find out that he's a test subject for... something.  

This is a great collection of stories by a writer with a truly distinctive style to his writing. It's weird, surreal and occasionally pretty damned chilling. 

The book comes out in February 2022 and my recommendation would be that you go out and buy it when you can.   

Number 74 - Gideon Falls - Lemire, Sorrentino, Stewart

 

I'll be honest and admit that I picked this up just for the cover.  I think I'm getting pretty good at accurately judging books by their covers because this is a stunningly good piece of work.

Graphic novels like this really break through the stereotype that they're for kids and they're just comics.

This is an intelligently written and beautifully drawn story. It's got horror. It's got mystery. It's got great characters.  Just a hint (so far) of a possible conspiracy, and was there some science fiction thrown into the mix later on? 

The artwork is absolutely stunning.  Sorrentino uses layouts better than any illustrator I've seen in the last few years. Unlike some graphic novels I've read where I just skim over the pictures with no words in, in this book I find myself studying every panel as they each feel like an integral part of the storytelling rather than something to fill the page.  There are effects on the reader caused by this artwork that would be almost impossible to replicate in a text based medium.

We're introduced to two very different characters. Norton is a reclusive character living in the streets of a dingy city, obsessively collecting bits of trash.  the only person he really talks to is his therapist.  Father Wilfred a priest struggling with his belief who's moved to the parish of Gideon falls when the old priest dies. There he quickly becomes embroiled in the strange events happening in the town, especially those surrounding the Black Barn. Their stories run parallel with only the barn as a connecting factor until very close to the end of this volume.

I won't say what suddenly connects their stories - that would be an unfair spoiler. 

Volume two of this series is very high on my to buy list.  This series may well be the first graphic novels that I say prefer to Locke and Key - and from me that is almost the highest level of praise there is. 

Number 73 - Playthings - Alex Pheby

 

As regular readers will spot, this is my third Alex Pheby novel in the past 12 months. 

This is his second novel, written in 2015 so I'm a few years late. 

It's his first with Galley Beggar Press.  I do like these very plain but distinctive covers. These editions are also printed on a very nice grade of paper which adds a whole tactile experience to the books.  This one i found second hand and has clearly been read a couple of times before.  The binding seems remarkably durable for a paperback edition.  It's probably not an issue for most people but I do think it's a good sign when the publishers put as much work as GBP into making the physical item itself as good quality as they do.

As for the content, GBP are normally reliable in finding good, interesting novels.  This one is no exception.  It follows Judge Paul Schreber when he suffers a mental health incident in the street and is institutionalised against his will. This is based on a true life story.  Schreber is a famous name in the world of psychoanalysis and several studies have been made of him.

This is a fictionalised account of his third out of mental illness and incarceration. It's beautifully written, as Pheby's other two book have been. It gives what feels like a disturbingly accurate depiction of a mental collapse. 

In the blurb on the inside of the front cover, it says that it "unearths the roots of the great ills in the twentieth century, the psychological structure of fascism, the cancer of anti-semitism, and the abuse of institutional power". I definitely got the abuse of power, that's a clear and present theme in the book. I'm not sure I got the other themes quite as powerfully.  It's certainly a very strong narrative on institutions abusing the power they have on the inmates, also on the impact of an abusive childhood, but I'm not sure that a delusional man with an imaginary companion in the shape of a Jewish man he briefly knew as a child- who fills him in on the reality of his situation on a regular basis whether he wants to hear it or not (mostly not)- counts as comment on antisemitism in the 20th century and beyond. The Fascism theme might be clearer when the book has had a chance to settle in my head.

The ending of the book is something of an emotional hammer blow.  This book is going to stay with me for a while.

It's available from Galley beggar press through their website, or though the usual suspects online.  If you want beautifully written historic fiction which tackles deeper themes, This is a good place to look.