The Forest.....or??????????

In the Woods by Tana French


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
a cracking good Police Procedural...complete with Moody Detectives...a Cold Case that will not die...a truly dastardly Psychopathic (Twisted?) Sister......angst, ennui, political machinations..the whole gamut...but more than that, i saw it as a bittersweet meditation on the fleeting innocence of childhood, the uncertainty of memory, and the fragility of the nuclear Family.......

Exquisitely plotted and paced, this is one amazing book...auspicious for a debut

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The Coup of Coups (Couscous?)

Cages by Dave McKean


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
the best of the best of the best....even if you don't "like" Graphic Novels..this is a Masterpiece. Art/Creativity/Censorship..it's all here...Black & White and Color

The Help?

The Help by Kathryn Stockett


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
One in a line of Southern novels featuring "spunky" women....in this case, two black maids and a white college girl, returned home with "no prospects" (i. e. without a husband in sight). What sets this story apart from the rest is the project in which these three engage themselves....the truth about the lives of "colored" maids....THE HELP, as it were. a bold venture in 1962..in Jackson, Mississippi. A bold venture well told, with a minimum of hand-wringing, and only the requisite Stereotyping....The author is a dab hand at storytelling. I liked the characters who deserved such, and pitied the rest. This book won't set the world on fire, but is an enjoyable read..that left me thinking, again, about the destructive roles that Racism and Fear play in our lives..to this day.



..........and yet...Another

The Night Battles by M.F. Bloxam


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A pre-Christian fertility cult is alive and well in modern-day Valparuta, Sicily. The "Benandanti" still do battle with the "Melandanti"...in Night Battles..to ensure the success of the Harvest. I am in no way equipped to discuss the historical aspects of this book...so i point my finger in the direction of a title mentioned by the Author herself The Night Battles: Witches and Agrarian Cults in the sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries by Carlo Ginzburg....there is also a Website for this book.....http://thenightbattles.com....

the Paranormal aspect of this book? Not the Laurell K Hamilton variety..no hunky weres and vamps..herein you will find Folklore still liviing..lying close to the living bones...herein you will also find two seriously flawed characters (the Romance angle, if you will)
............Joan: a failed American academic, trying to come to terms with her trashed career, her own past, her mother's death, her childhood in Sicily, to which she's returned in a last ditch effort at meaningful work

............Chiesa....the Man-of-Mystery...the Archivist of Valparuta....at whose behest Joan has landed in this Sicilian backwater.....Chiesa..a man with more secrets than is healthy for anyone to bear...is he, or is he not an actual Benandanti? or is he a flunky for the local Mafia (which no one names directly)?

who is using who(m) here? to what ends? the mutual obsession precludes any Romance-of-the- Doomed...in other words...HOLD THE HANKIES...neither of these people is likeable...too many sharp edges...Joan's tendency to ramble is annoying....but this trait works to the Author's purpose....which is to make a strange and compelling novel...one of the more Unusual i have read in the past year..and i am a Fool for the Unusual

4 Stars (and i look forward to the author's next effort..whenever)


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WELCOME TO HELL

THE GLISTER
John Burnside
Doubleday/Nan A Talese
2008


This is not horror of the Stephen King variety (though i have nothing against SK)....rather it is cerebral....almost to a fault..meaning one can get lost in the atmosphere, both of the writing itself, and the setting of the story....to the point that one forgets that not much is actually happening,,,,that being said.

An abandonded chemical plant still awash in toxins...becomes the refuge of disaffected youth in the town that once depended on it..the town itself dying from civic apathy, cultural decline..the vestiges of corporate greed...severe ennui...and various odd cancers

Every year or so a boy from the local school has gone missing in the local Poisoned Woods. The local policeman, aware of the fact that these have actually been deaths..ritual killings......is also aware of the means by which they have been covered up...and suffers the usual pangs of guilt.A group of local youth decides to take matters into their own hands...or at least bring someone to Justice....with disastrous results..after a particularly violent bit of Avenging, one of the boys, Leonard, teams up with a fellow denizen of The Bad Place...and all hell proceeds to break loose in ways brutal, pathetic, and Biblical..ritual killing and an Infernal Machine.complete the steps to Oblivion

Imagine being a witness to your own death? Imagine that you are but one in a chain? Imagine being aware of these facts at the one moment when it is too late for that awareness to matter?

this was one of the best books i have read in a long while
5 Stars


*this is a review of an ARC*

AW SHUCKS!

Just want to thank everyone who has stopped by and posted comments lately. I am amazed that anyone, besides myself, is interested in these reviews....no, seriously. So again, a big thank you to my "visitors"..I have one review...in the works...and a couple more "books on tap" to be read..and far more coming into the house than are "necessary".....shelf space is becoming a serious problem...ahem.

Oh, well...enough of this. I must go to read...

And You Think Your Job Is Difficult...

MISTRESS OF THE ART OF DEATH
Ariana Franklin
G P Putnam’s Sons
2007
280 pages




“Name of the Rose” crossed with “Silence of the Lambs”???? Whichever, the premise is as old as Time. Someone is savagely murdering children, and Someone Else has to discover who and, more importantly, why.

In this case, the year is 1157 AD, the city is Cambridge, England during the reign of Henry II,who is held,to this day, responsible for the death and subsequent canonization of Thomas a Becket..Someone is murdering English children and the Jews are being blames..the same Jews who fill the coffers of the realm..the eternally scapegoated Jews....enter Simon of Naples, himself a Jew and well-known “fixer”; his erstwhile sidekick, Adelia Vesuvia Aguilar, a “mistress of the art of death”, and a Physician to boot..which fact, if widely known, could condemn her as a Witch in the society of Cambridge...throw in a Saracen bodyguard and watch them enter the story among a troupe of pilgrims returning from Canterbury with relics, sickness, and a murderer in tow...so the story begins.

and what a story! i was impressed with Ms Franklin’s scholarship regarding the historical aspects of this tale...its Politics and mores. her portrayal of everyday life and death was a joy to read. her characters were actually Characters and not dialogue-spouting cutouts. my only qualm was the intrusion of a Romantic Aspect..which sells books, i know. But Adelia was subject to self-doubt on her best days...once she encountered the Studly Rowly she went all soft and girly and nearly lost her head.....but that’s a minor quibble, given the strength of the rest of the book. i had no problem with the rather savage end of the SICKLY NUN...and the MURDERER got his just desserts as well

I’m not sure i want to read the sequel(s) in the series but i strongly recommend this first foray....4 stars at least