UGLIES By SCOTT WESTERFELD (A REVIST)

YOU LIKE IT DARKER by STEPHEN KING (REVIEW)

quickly: a perfect collection of stephen king short stories (men with unearthly talents / madness and murder / stolen lifetimes / psychic dreams and punished deeds / balancing bad luck and good / grandpa’s still got it / an unseen invasion / angels on airplanes / dogs are friends, gators are not / strollers full of rattlesnakes / gentleman scientists / a man with all the answers).

Well yes, Stephen, I *do* like it dark. What a delightful page-turning collection of short horror stories with a wide range of subgenres… detective suspense thrillers… sci-fi alien invasions… and even a couple of heartfelt dramas.

My favorites were Willie the Weirdo (a grandfather and grandson share a suspiciously strange connection), Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream (a nightmare gives an old man hell in real life), On Slide Inn Road (a family encounters a couple of hoodlums on an abandoned backroad), The Turbulence Expert (a man uses his perception to change fate), Rattlesnakes (a man on vacation grieving the death of his wife becomes entangled with a haunted woman), and The Answer Man (three encounters with a man who knows everything changes one man’s experience of life and time).

I’ll have to admit this is my first King read (and a perfect introduction) though I’ve seen all the movies, shows, and miniseries based on his work. On paper, like on-screen, the stories felt distinctly American™. Like the feeling of eating a double-meat cheeseburger and fries, then washing it down with a ridiculously gigantic can of Coke. Fast, but filling, and oh-what-fun my taste buds had (though my arteries may clog if I overdo it…).

★★★★★ So fun.

THE VIOLIN CONSPIRACY by BRENDAN SLOCUMB (REVIEW)

quickly: a young black master violinist has his fiddle stolen just before a world-class championship (grandma’s favorite grandson / families that prey / great-great-great-great grandfathers / traffic stops and crooked cops / SLAVERY! / italian masters (of music, of plantations) / hidden treasure and family secrets / lawyers, lawsuits, and legacies).

A praying grandmother can work wonders for a family. The story is anchored by Ray and his violin, but he is here because of Grandma Nora and her appreciation of lineage and legacy. While Ray is surrounded by family members who constantly demoralize him, Grandma Nora reminds him to be loving and respectful and to honor his gift—music. The conflict commences when Ray realizes his beloved violin has gone missing, and there is a multitude of leads… the new girlfriend? his money-hungry family? the family who used to enslave his great-great-grandfather?

The writing is easy and open. The kind of reading you can do on a Sunday afternoon, or a long car ride. Doesn’t require too much mental work to stay with the story. There’s a little bit of thrill, a little bit of crime and mystery, and even a little bit of romance. It is also very honest about the discriminatory treatment of black people in music and in world society. And, as with every truly American story, The Slaves come back to remind us that they were here. An enjoyable read!

★ ★ ★ ★

THE BOOKS OF JACOB by OLGA TOKARCZUK (REVIEW)

quickly: it’s a jewish cult in 1700’s poland (an astral traveling matriarch accidentally floating above all of existence / a man who prides himself on being no one and knowing nothing, a simpleton, yet attracts followers from all over / prophetesses who see prophecies fulfilled / sects that are cults that are sects that are cults / a security detail made entirely of women).

this book is as long as life, and just as monotonous, which is what makes it all the more enriching. it is truly a world and a time, encapsulated in 961 pages. it is a true story, with a thin glaze of magical realism drizzled on top. it reads like the bible (or should i say the Torah), slow, dry, and impactful. it is crowded, like a city street during lunch hour, but if you follow Yente and Jacob through the story, you’ll never get lost. 

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS!

Some personal context… this is the first Big Book I’ve read since reading Infinite Jest back in like 2015. I’ve read a handful of books randomly from 2016-2022, going years sometimes without reading a full book. I was gifted a set of Goosebumps books by a friend last Christmas and the nostalgia inspired me to get reading again. 

I went from Goosebumps to Fear Street to some brilliant new fiction (Sacrificio by Ernesto Mestre-Reed, The Boatman’s Daughter and The Hollow Kind by Andy Davidson). THE BOOKS OF JACOB is the longest book I’ve read in years, and it was almost nothing I thought it would be. After the delicious but “short” novels I’d been reading lately, I was craving the truly immersive feeling of that could only be captured in a 900+ page book. 

The synopsis excited me immediately: JEWISH CULT IN 1700s POLAND! BASED ON A TRUE STORY!

Now by no means do I have any serious education of Jewish culture. I’ve watched movies, read some books, but I am not versed. However, with the level and detail of writing that Tokarczuk achieves in this work (much of it based on fact), it made real some of the things that only existed in my mind as fragments of information. 

The entire story is broken up into books, books are broken up into chapters, and chapters each have their own subsections. Most of these subsections are prose, some are letters, and others are ‘scraps’ or behind-the-scenes moments captured by Nahmen, Jacob’s most faithful follower. 

THE BOOK OF FOG, is the opener. It sets the scene and introduces you to a network of characters that Jacob will soon be at the center of. 

THE BOOK OF SAND, sees families start to form, and Yente turns into a goddess of the air as she astral travels through time and space. Jacob is introduced and we see his travels (culturally and geographically). His followers witness ‘the great spirit’ descending into him, causing his entire body to shed. This book is filled with miraculous stories and acts.

THE BOOK OF THE ROAD, sees Jacob leading his followers into a new land, and initiating some of his followers by secret rituals. Their practices make them enemies of local Jews and they are soon pursued by The State. Jews issue curses against them, and Jacob sends curses back. 

THE BOOK OF THE COMET, sees a comet that appears, with many seeing it as an auger of end times. More rituals. The Shekinah, feminine goddess, is witnessed descending into a gold statue, plague erupts, and Jacob and his followers are held for questioning in regards to their religious practices, eventually banishing him to prison in a monastery. This is where Jacob starts to fray.

THE BOOK OF METAL AND SULFER (my personal favorite for some reason?), sees Jacob sent to prison, yet his followers still cling to him, setting up a village around him. They all wait for the Shekinah to appear from a painting in the church monastery where he is being held. Jacob is ill, a lot, getting older and losing his glow. He is not himself sometimes. Eventually, war breaks out, giving Jacob an opportunity to negotiate his freedom. 

THE BOOK OF THE DISTANT COUNTRY, Jacob once again enters a new land, lord of a castle now, where he lives on the lower floors as an old ailing man. The toll of prison manifests in his body. His practices alarm some and enamor others. This book sees the death of Jacob. 

THE BOOK OF NAMES, is almost a denouement, biblical style, rife with anecdotes of the deaths of Jacob’s closest followers, and some of their children. Yente, the goddess, closes the story from high above us, somewhere in the afterlife.

In all, I was moved by the beautiful lacing of Jewish lore and mythology throughout the story. I found Jacob to be repulsive, arrogant, wise, contradictory, and ridiculous. Not much different from today’s cult leaders. He eventually endures that long hard ego death that only the body can devise. Throughout the story we see women who guard the knowledge of paternity, all women guards, Yente who knows all, Hayah the Prophetess who sees all, the holy trinity’s fourth part—the great divine feminine, and so on. I found the magic of the feminine, the resistance to “tradition”, and the movement of a people, to be incredible to read about. 

I understand and sympathize with those who say they couldn’t read past the first half and were confused and lost in the sea of characters, especially when the main characters decide to switch names mid-story. 

A SECRET: There are really only two names to keep up with in the story. Yente, and Jacob. Yente is easy to remember… she is Jacob’s grandmother, and she is also the sky, the wind, the air, and the ether. She is everywhere at all times, at any time, like God. So it’s hard to lose her in the story. Then there’s Jacob. The star upon which all other stars orbit and constellate. If you watch them throughout the pages, all others move around him, forming the loose, lingering, and prescient story arc that only life can form. Everyone else can be identified by their actions.

OUR SHARE OF NIGHT by MARIANA ENRÍQUEZ (REVIEW)

quickly: a father tries everything in his earthly and unearthly power to prevent his son from inheriting a legacy of horror (abuse from the one who loves you most / blessed curses and buried secrets / bisexuality so powerful it’s omnisexual and omnipotent / chalk circles and pits of bones / closed doors opening / evil grandparents with old money / haunted houses with locked rooms / like father, like son / Lord of Doors, Signs, and Symbols / missing limbs and missing mothers / people lost in the darkness / something dark in the woods).

The story begins with a young Gaspar being spirited away by his migraine-stricken father Juan, and it follows him through his adolescence, as his father tries to keep him safe from their own evil family—by any means necessary. These people are not Disney© evil by the way, these families that include Juan’s in-laws, known as The Order, are vicious, kidnapping, human trafficking plutocrats. They practice a philosophy of magic where darkness begets darkness, and in that darker darkness they reign. They cage children, abduct and torture strangers, and will even spill their own blood to conjure chaos. Unfortunately for The Order however, their ability to render magic from their dark deeds is almost useless without a medium. 

★★★★★ Fantastic horror.

This was a book I read in March of 2024 after seeing it on a list from @bloodmaarked!

To Juan’s disappointment, his young son is showing signs of becoming a powerful medium at a young age, making him susceptible to the deplorable whims of The Order. To keep young Gaspar protected, he must also keep Gaspar ignorant to the powerful magic and sorcery flowing through his blood. As so often happens in families filled with trauma and secrets, the repression of Gaspar’s powers will cause him to be an overly sensitive and deeply emotionally wounded child who has a habit of walking backward into the traps his father works ceaselessly to keep him unaware of.

In time, it will be revealed to Gaspar that Juan is a Great and tortured medium; the vessel of a dark, powerful, and ruthless force known by many as The Darkness. The Darkness is an old god, often presenting itself as a massive black cloud of energy, and makes its power known through tragedy, bloodshed, foreknowledge, and the locking and unlocking of doors to other realms. This ‘demented’ and ‘savage’ force blesses whatever it curses and can mark its followers by wounding them with its golden talons. If you were to reach into this black cloud, you’d pull your arm back to find that your hand has been cleanly amputated and cauterized. Eaten. You may also wake up the next day, marked, with the ability to unlock locked things, or sense people before they appear. 

Meanwhile, until Juan’s truth is revealed to his son, Gaspar must learn to grow up with two versions of his dad. One version of Juan is the kind, serious, wise teacher. The other Juan, the dark version, is irrational, voracious, bloodthirsty, and almost evil. Though Gaspar has no knowledge of the powerful magic that flows within him and his father, he has an uncanny understanding that there is something lying beneath the surface of the waking world of reality. Sometimes he even finds himself opening doors no one else can open. No one but Juan.

By the time Gaspar reaches adulthood, he grows up to be just like his father… exceptionally powerful, stunningly beautiful, and outrageously unpredictable (maybe even a little bi too). The final phase of Juan’s elaborate plan to destroy The Order is set into motion by his death, leaving it up to fate, Gaspar, and those who love Juan and his son, to hopefully and finally, close the door to evil for good.

This is sophisticated, detailed, high-level horror, with excellent dialogue and conversation about family, community, lineage, capital, sex, grief, despair, power, and action—and by action I mean forming a well thought out plan and doing what it takes to see your plan through. 

THE SHARDS by BRET EASTON ELLIS (REVIEW)

quickly: a group of rich white friends are too high to notice that the new kid may be a serial killer (an imaginative young writer / a vain but popular group of friends / a new kid with a dark past / valium for breakfast, weed for lunch, ‘ludes for dinner, cocaine for dessert / boys, boys, boys / endless supplies of sex, drugs, and rock and roll / hippie cults hiding in the hills / blood sacrifices and bodily ‘arrangements’ / ‘there’s someone in the house’ / where are the adults??!)

For just a moment, I was a young, hot, high, and wealthy white seventeen-year-old in ’70s-’80s Los Angeles… My parents are never home, every day is an orgasm, and I have all the drugs and euphoria I want. In my endless pharmaceutical high, a serial killer is playing mind games with my friends and me, and I’m barely sober enough to notice it is happening.

That is THE SHARDS. I am confident that if I were to give this hardcover copy a good shake, either a quaalude, a Valium, or a mist of fine white powder may loosen itself from the bindings. These are the substances that seem to hold the story and its characters together. There’s also a hearty scoop of graphic, disturbing, deranged, stomach-churning violence… a stark contrast to the ultra-sweet lives of these young rich kids. The reality of these brutal slayings is what makes the kids’ dissociation all the more real.

★ ★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS!

Some personal context… this isn’t the book I originally planned on reading after “HUMAN SACRIFICES” by María Ampeuro, but it was actually the perfect follow-up. The world of the characters in María’s stories were soaked in the harsh realities of capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. What better pairing than a story on the other end of the spectrum… rich white kids with Daddy’s money made from exploiting others!

This is my first Bret Easton Ellis book. All I knew about the guy before reading this was that he wrote AMERICAN PSYCHO. I’ve seen the movie, but I’ve never read the book. I actually owned the book for years, and it was destroyed in a flooded storage facility. Nevertheless, I ended up meeting Bret Easton Ellis’s work anyways. Not because I sought out his penmanship, but because, as tends to happen, I just had a good feeling about the book based on the cover, description, and number of reviews.

This book made me feel poor and ugly, and I think that was the point!

This is a story about a story. The book opens with a prelude in present-day LA as our narrator, Bret Easton Ellis, is driving around and sees an old classmate, which ignites panic within him. 

From there we are sent back to the summer before Bret’s senior year begins. He is a closeted bisexual man in love with his best friend Sarah, who is dating his good friend Thom (whom he is also in love with). He doesn’t seem to be in love with his girlfriend Debbie at all. An idyllic summer spent third wheeling with Susan and Thom ends once school starts and a new guy is introduced at the morning assembly… Robert Mallory. 

Immediately, Robert gets under Bret’s skin. Bret remembers seeing Robert months before he moved to L.A., at a movie theater, but Robert’s consistent denial of this drives Bret crazy. Taking time off from the different guys at school he is secretly intimate with, he decides to follow Robert after school one day. Robert catches him in the act of tailing him and any chance they had at a friendship is ruined. From here on out, it’s a game of cat and mouse between the two. (Or maybe mouse and mouse?)

The first major OMG moment is the death of Matt (a consistently stoned hottie), one of Bret’s ‘intimate friends’. 

As Bret watches Robert ease his way into the various friend groups on campus, he begins to see a side of Robert that is only noticeable from a distance… he notices the silent calculations that Robert is constantly making as if Robert is devising some secret masterplan. It’s then that Robert begins taunting Bret, dropping hints that he knows about the relationship between Bret and Matt. It’s also then that Matt starts receiving mysterious phone calls and notices that someone has stolen his pet fish and rearranged his room. In a state of psychological anguish, he accuses Bret of being behind it, due to some ‘gay’ obsession with Matt. Soon after, Matt turns up dead. Missing for several days, then found dead and mutilated in his own backyard. 

Bret meets with Matt’s father and learns the horrid details of Matt’s death. This makes the outlines of what Bret may be dealing with become more real now. No one cares about Matt’s death enough to notice the pattern that is forming. News articles begin to appear, daily, about missing girls, missing pets, mysterious home break-ins with furniture being rearranged, and late-night attacks. The police eventually put together a profile for a killer they are calling The Trawler. There are hints that he may be connected to a roving group of Manson-esque murder hippies that are terrorizing LA.

Bret makes the decision to divide himself between a true, hidden Bret, and a false, public Bret. Public Bret will play the role of a model student and boyfriend, while private Bret investigates Robert Mallory, whom he believes to be The Trawler. Valium, Quaaludes, and marijuana form the wall between the real and fake Brets. (Imagine someone breaking into your home, and you pop a pill and hide in a closet, falling asleep, and just hoping they pass you by.) Cue an endless string of parties, conversations, car rides, class assignments, and missed calls from Debbie (and The Trawler) that Bret floats through.

Fast forward past more missing women, Bret following Robert Mallory through the streets of LA, Bret being followed by a mysterious van through the streets of LA, Bret being taunted by The Trawler, Bret meeting with Robert’s aunt and finding out about Robert’s dark past, Bret breaking into Robert’s second home, Bret sleeping with Debbie’s dad, and Bret’s numerous attempts at telling someone what may be happening with Robert and being called crazy, etc. 

Eventually, we reach the foggy climax. After Debbie goes missing, Bret is convinced that Susan is the Trawler’s next victim. Robert’s next victim. He decides to take matters into his own hands. That night, Susan and Thom are attacked at Susan’s home by a masked assailant. Susan bites the assailant and he runs out (but not before disfiguring Susan’s breast, and Thom’s leg). Robert comes to the rescue, getting them help, and then heads back to his apartment. Bret arrives at Robert’s apartment soon after and a fight ensues that leads to Robert jumping to his death. Bret is alive and tells a version of the story that exonerates himself, and there is no one to dispute it. 

It is only in the denouement that it is revealed that Bret was the attacker that night of Susan and Thom’s attempted killing… and this is where I started to come down off the story’s canna/lude/coke/valium high… We find out that Bret is Susan and Thom’s attacker after Susan recognizes the bite mark she left on her attacker’s arm, casually peeking out from Bret’s long sleeve Polo. He breaks her hand and threatens her, to keep her quiet. (It’s only years later that Bret finds out Susan immediately told Thom about what she saw on Bret’s arm).

Coupled with this jarring reveal, we are also told (through a letter written to the press) that The Trawler is neither Bret nor Robert. The Trawler is independent of both young men but is indeed a part of the cult roaming the hills of LA. They claim that Robert Mallory was ‘their God’, and the mutilated bodies were ’sacrifices’ given to ‘the God’. Then I just sat with the book closed and wondered what I had just read.

I went back and forth on whether I felt this deserved 4 or 5 stars (like my opinion matters LOL). What gives me doubt is the execution of the ending. As bulky of a book as THE SHARDS is, the writing was actually pretty easy to follow. It flowed frictionlessly from one page to the next. I didn’t even mind all the extraneous storylines because they flowed, and added flesh to the characters. However, the last few chapters ended in such an odd package of revelations and reveals that it almost seemed as if a different writer had tried to finish the story with Bret’s voice.

Now, I must also say, that after reading the book I did a lite Google search on Bret Easton Ellis, just to see what he’s up to today. Unsurprisingly, he seems to be exactly the man I’d expect him to be after growing up as a well-to-do SoCal private school kid (i.e., his book White, 2019). He has not escaped the haze of privilege and wealth, that tends to blind those with his upbringing, from the complex harsh multi-ethnic multi-cultural struggles of the world. I wasn’t disappointed though. Just confirmed. Only a privileged asshole could write so excellently about vanity, insecurity, and recreational pharmaceuticals. 

JULIA by SANDRA NEWMAN (A REVIEW)

quickly: a woman’s daring sex life in a totalitarian regime leads to confinement and freedom (this is a man’s world / cameras and monitors everywhere / facetime before Facetime™ / overalls and soot / a boot in the face / thought control / see nothing, say nothing / “no touching” / people disappear / yes means no / hate means love / Big Brother becoming Big Father / cheese like rubber, bread like leather / child spies / handsome airmen in handsome uniforms / dark windowless underground prisons / government-sponsored torture / nightmares turned reality / all regimes are the same).

This is a retelling of George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984, from the perspective of the character Julia. Though the landscape was familiar it felt like there were so many new elements to explore, thanks to Newman’s refocusing of the story’s lens. The gray days, civil self-censoring, and grand governmental illusions are still there, but what Newman highlights is a world that is not just anti-women, but anti-Feminine. The daily assault on women and the collective feminine (those faculties we need dearly for introspection, intuition, reception, caretaking, community, and creativity) is relayed to us through Julia’s own story of growing up watched (and touched and used and forgotten). No women’s rights, but no poetry, thinking, feeling, remembering, loving, or caring either, says Big Brother, always watching. 

With this new view of the story, the smell of blood is sharper (on the street after a bomb tears off a child’s arm, or in the dungeons where they torture pregnant women and the elderly). The design of Big Brother’s Love (Hate) is clearer (double, triple, and quadruplethink… every relationship is a set-up). The heartbreakers are the moments when the wizard’s curtain is pulled back and the evil isn’t anything special… just a man. Made of flesh and feelings just like any other living thing. Subject to thirst, hunger, pain, aging, and death. How despairingly bleak it is to realize that the causes of your and the world’s tragedies are men who make decisions like kids fighting over toys on the playground. 

★★★★

"Blake would say that there are some places in the Universe where the Fall has not occurred, the world has not turned upside down and Eden still exists. Here Mankind is not governed by the rules of reason, stupid and strict, but by the heart and intuition. The people do not indulge in idle chatter, parading what they know, but create remarkable things by applying their imagination. The state ceases to impose the shackles of daily oppression, but helps people to realize their hopes and dreams. And Man is not just a cog in the system, not just playing a role, but a free Creature."

Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

THE EMPUSIUM by OLGA TOKARCZUK (REVIEW)

quickly: a sickly young engineering student hopes to find healing in a scenic mountain valley village where mysteries abound (gentleman’s houses / noises in the attic / spying eyes / fear of being seen / sex dolls and shrooms / wine at dinner time / men who think women are a different species / obscuring the vision, to see more clearly / long walks around the park / those looked upon by venus and jupiter / the soul as the weakest point / the inferior superiority of men).

The story opens like a Wes Anderson film, set in 1913 Poland, in a valley between two mountain ranges with air that is mythologized to cure the infamous tuberculosis. Before our dear Mieczysław can be cured, the malaise of life at the Gentleman’s House (where men smoke cigars with their weakened lungs, and talk at quite some length about the “lesser” minds of women) becomes a mire of shadows and secrets waiting to be unraveled. As expected, this idyllic 1900s mountain town is more than it appears to be. At night, after many men have imbibed in the psychoactive “schwärmerei”, the landscape seems to stare back at the onlookers. Every fall, men die violent and mysterious deaths, as if the surrounding forest is eating them and spitting them back out. As the summer season ends, Mieczy’s anxious concerns of being ‘seen’ intensifies.

★ ★ ★ ★ Mysteriously seductive.

Slowly, just as calmly as summer gives way to the decaying color bomb of autumn, this slow burn of a “health resort horror story” ends in a flush of fire. What begins as a medical retreat for our anxious and gentle-spirited protagonist evolves into an awakening of sorts upon the discovery of a cure for an ailment Mieczy had long been prepared to disregard as a permanent inconvenience. Mieczy will discover something that no amount of men’s postulations could destroy, and it is fantastic to watch. The astrology tidbits are delicious, and always a delightful discovery to happen upon when reading Olga’s work (as in The Books of Jacob, and Drive Your Plow…). The world of this story is both scenic and seductive… like a carnivorous plant that slowly digests you as you are hypnotized by its beauty. 

You walk with Mieczy up the steep incline of a forested mountain, always wondering where the path is taking you, until suddenly you reach the peak and overlook the edge at the marvelous view down below. A soft, then hard, autumnal horror story with an ending that would make J. K. Rowling’s eyes bulge as she combusts and then evaporates. 

HIDDEN PICTURES by JASON REKULAK (REVIEW)

quickly: a recovering addict gets a new job babysitting a haunted five-year-old. (a young woman trying to live a sober life / a child with a questionable existence / homes that come with guest houses and hidden gardens / disturbed suburbian parents / physical and spiritual battles with sobriety / weird and quirky superstitious neighbors / wickedly beautiful artwork from the spiritual realm / gardeners who make you want to break rules)

not too shabby. not too complex either, honestly. the tone sits firmly in the mystery genre, for me. the ghosts in this story don’t scare or thrill me, but they don’t bore me either. stephen king is quoted on the back cover as saying “the language is straightforward”, and that is absolutely correct. not much poetry or soul to the writing, but it was a full story! it was compelling enough to pull me to the end, but not my favorite ending. it has the kind of ending that you find in most “B” level thrillers (which is no shade, i love b-movies). the ending is a resolution, but it doesn’t take my breath away.

★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS!

Some personal context… after a reading sprint that began sometime in March, I spent the past few weeks with THE BOOKS OF JACOB. It is a tome of a book, 900+ pages, and the most time I’ve spent with a book in years. It was an interesting and detailed world to be in, but I couldn’t wait to get back to the thriller/mystery/horror genre, and HIDDEN PICTURES is my return. I read it in less than 24 hours. 

The artwork really pulled me in, and wasn’t as gimmicky as it could have been.

The story opens up with Mallory reflecting on a paid health study she participated in which involved her being blindfolded in front of a group of men. She was instructed to raise her hand if she felt eyes on her, testing her ability to sense the male gaze. She was insanely accurate, telling the instructor that she felt a buzz in her mind whenever she sensed looks. The instructor offers to do more research with her, but Mallory trades her phone for Oxy and the lady is unable to reach her.

After this, we are immediately thrown into the present where Mallory is now sober and has been for 18 months. She is preparing to interview for a babysitting job with The Maxwells, youngish parents living in an affluent suburban enclave. After an awkward and stressful interview that involves her pulling out a piss test to prove her commitment to sobriety, she is hired. Caroline, the Mom, says they believe in giving people second chances, but you learn fast that you can’t believe anything they say.

Soon enough, five-year-old Teddy has formed a close bond with Mallory. The creepy pictures he draws always seem to show an entity hanging around him that no one else can see (but Mallory can sense). Teddy’s mom brushes the pictures off and tells Mallory not to encourage him. After the quirky next-door neighbor tells Mallory about the ghost stories surrounding the guest house where she lives, she eventually convinces herself that her guest house is haunted and the ghost is speaking through Teddy. Half right.

Of course, her pursuit of this tightens the underwear of The Maxwells, and so she begins to investigate under the radar. She enlists the help of The Maxwells’ gardener whom she’s told that she was a local student (and not a recovering person being given a second chance to get her life on track). Fast forwarding past the awkwardness of living with a married couple whose marriage is a thin facade of happiness, the “hauntings”, the creepy photos with the Samura-like girl in them, Mallory trying to confront the super rationalist parents about the supernatural realm, and Mallory trying to make contact to the ghost by ouija board… eventually the ghost jumps into Mallory’s body while she is napping and causes her to draw all over the walls of The Maxwell’s pristine white walls.

The rest is a loud and gory climax with a small scoop of falling action on the side. The parents fire Mallory because of the “artwork”, attributing it to some sort of mental break caused by recovery, and they give her 48 hours to get out. Alex, the gardener, is told about her true background as a recovering addict (but still wants to help her). She miraculously solves the mystery at the last minute and proceeds to do the dumbest thing that characters can do in a mystery/thriller… confront the bad guys with no backup, collateral, witness, or weaponry. The Maxwells reveal their devilry… they are kidnappers who stole a little girl and made her disguise herself as a boy. The child’s real mother, whom Caroline Maxwell killed, is who has been haunting little Teddy.

Caroline Maxwell plans to kill Mallory by drug overdose, but she’s saved by Ted Maxwell who secretly hates his kidnapping murderess wife (but has done nothing but enable her). A delusional Ted is killed by Caroline, in the midst of some pipe dream of him running away to some foreign land with Mallory. A chase ensues, with Mallory running into the woods with Teddy and hiding in a tree. Just as Caroline has hunted them down, the spirit of Teddy’s dead mother possesses her, getting Teddy to kill Caroline with an arrowhead conveniently found earlier in the story. 

That’s how most elements of this story felt. Convenient. The end, while loud and gory, seemed staged. Like I could see the beginning from the end. All the little easter eggs stood out like they had billboards above them pointing out “CLUE HERE”, or “FORESHADOWING”. Yet, I still enjoyed it. Like I would an R.L. Fear Street book. Three stars, but a high three. 

ADDENDUM: seeing from other reviewers how this author's work includes, deceptively, various ideologies used to other and vilify trans children and their parents (which makes me think back to that errant Harry Potter reference). Unfortunate and gross. Knowing makes the work even cheaper than it already was. Keeping my same rating, which was written and determined before I found out. I will definitely be more critical in the future.

BELOVED by TONI MORRISON (REVIEW)

quickly: a self-emancipated woman is tormented by her past long after she’s made it to freedom (an ex-slave who has slavery living inside of her / children born in the shadow of trauma / a grandmother who can smell the future on the wind / jealous daughters who speak their minds / a house haunted by the dead / stolen milk and blessed berries / blood magic / the deep dark evil of slavery)

what a wild, lush, furious nightmare of a story. this is the story of Sethe, how she escaped slavery, and how she ended up in a house haunted by the ghost of a dead child. this is truly a southern gothic horror tale in every sense. there are psychological and physical traumas, some obtained from slavery and its perpetrators, some obtained from attempts at resisting slavery. there is magic, not the stereotypical “voodoo/hoodoo”, but something older, darker, and less defined. there’s injustice, southern lands, hard times, etc. at first, toni’s writing is like a dense forest, but once you find your footpath, the journey will carry you forward. 

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS!

Some personal context… I’ve been on the hunt for truly thrilling stories that take my breath away and Toni Morrison’s work did more than that. This read was preceded by “The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson. I chose it based on it being a classic of gothic horror, a sub-genre I love. I was disappointed by its lack of thrill, passion, or anything, other than Eleanor’s unraveling. 

Enter Toni Morrison. This is my first read by the late and great author, and it couldn’t have been any more perfect of an introduction for me. I’ll never hear “southern gothic” without thinking of BELOVED, which should be the staple of the genre (sorry, not sorry, Shirley J.). Rarely have I heard this work referred to as such. (If I had, I probably would’ve read it earlier.) I almost feel ‘honored’ to have read this book, though I’m not sure why. Maybe something to do with this incredible black writer penning a story so beautifully terrifying that people forget to call it ‘horror’. Maybe because she met and exceeded what I expected, exceeded what popular culture has had me to expect, and embodied that uniqueness that comes with being called Great.

We begin in a mess of spite and timelines. A blurred view of the world, and everyone in it. From 124, the home at the center of the story, we meet Sethe and the rest of her family who are, and are not there. We are given a brief survey of all that has occurred or been endured, from people running away to a haunting being born from the death of a child. Then, Paul D, a man she hasn’t seen in years, has found his way to her.

Time is layered in this story… at times in the present, at times in the past, sometimes glimpsing the future. Morrison moves through lives and their perspectives in a God-like fashion, without warning, but with the knowledge of all things that have occurred or will come. The way she gives details and expounds on storylines can be unsettling, at first, like coming into a dense and thick forest. Without some studying of what lies before you, it can be easy to get lost. She is a writer who gives glimpses of things before unveiling a fuller truth that towers and shadows and swallows. Sometimes these glimpses of the plot can seem like you missed something, but, artfully, the revelations in future pages have a way of connecting past pages, to form a continuous story.

From behind the eyes of Sethe, her daughter Denver, and Paul D (Sethes old friend and new lover), we come to know the history of Sweet Home (the plantation the family is from) and the history of the people who left it. Through their memories and inner reflections, they relay all we need to know about who they are and why. 

In short, they belonged to “good” white people, but things changed when their owner died and others came in to rule over them. Going from being treated like dogs, to being treated like less than that, prompted them to head to freedom. Most of the core trauma of this story is sourced in that transitional period between their old master passing away and them becoming their own masters out of desperation and survival.

Throughout this story, poetically, are piercing observations, questions, and philosophical dilemmas about slavery and the white supremacy and capitalism supporting it. Toni illustrates quite sharply how monstrous this process of dehumanization is, and how profoundly evil these acts of violence were. So evil in fact, it seemed to spread throughout the entire white race, able to make itself disappear and become known at any time, even in the most “good” of whites. It is an evil so big it seems impossible to have existed (and still exist). Like its appearance should have ended the world, like some demonic apocalyptic revelation from The Bible. (A Bible that has not served the slaves well, and Toni captures this black theological resentment perfectly.)

One of the most disheartening moments is when Grandma Suggs, renowned backwoods high priestess, forgoes her ‘gift’ of preaching. After living a tormented life and finally making it to a place where she is hers, she was collapsed by the intrusion of white men into her seemingly sanctified space. Their privileged appearance and sudden disruption cause Grandma Suggs to question all of existence, finally realizing, that there is no promised land. There are no sacred spaces for them. Maybe no God for them either. She forgoes preaching and spends the rest of what little time she has, thinking about colors. Something she never had time to do as a slave. When asked if she was “punishing God” by not preaching his word, she responds, “Not like He punish me”. 

Sethe is troubled by the child that she killed, a child that has haunted 124 since she died. Paul D is able to rid the house of the spirit, but that only leads to it manifesting in physical form… a girl named Beloved. She appears out of the river one day, sick and dying, and Sethe nurses her back to life. After gaining strength, Beloved proceeds to wreak havoc on relationships and resources. It takes Denver, Sethe’s daughter, to gather the community to rid the house of Beloved, the beautiful demon born of crimes against the flesh. 

That is the story. And I am reducing it to fumes for the point of this commentary, but it is such a rich reading I’m not really spoiling anything. This brief summarization and my recounting of a fraction of my reflections is pale compared to the full color of Morrison’s masterpiece. 

Also, I must say, the Everyman’s Library binding is BEAUTIFUL and comes with useful chronologies and a short biography of the author—and it is well bound! So much better than the penguin hardcovers I see in the library sometimes, which are often too tightly sewn. Just a random note. 

And again, I am HONORED to have read such a masterful work of horror and to have experienced this world built by Toni Morrison’s words. There’s an Everyman’s Library hardcover Song of Solomon, so maybe I’ll read that soon.