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Showing posts with label Seattle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seattle. Show all posts

Saturday, November 26, 2016

Summerlong


In Summerlong, a girl called Lionness has uncanny abilities. She smells like meadows, enchants children and calms Orcas. She owns nothing of value and yet she lives rent-free in an older couple's garage. 

Abe thinks she looks like Botticelli's Primavera; Joanna, his live-in wife, agrees to let the girl stay in their garage. She worries, though, that her daughter, Lily, will fall in love with Lionnness.

Though they love each other, the couple's relationship is seriously strained when Lionness' husband comes looking for her at the restaurant where she works.

At this point, the novel makes a U-turn. Abe makes love to Lionness, though its never really clear why. He's in his sixties and she is presumably in her twenties but actually something non-human, Queen of the Underworld.

If Abe is unfaithful, Joanna, often called Delvechio, wants to do the same with Mr. Mardikian, who is really the God of the Underworld. First, though, she wants to shoot hoops.

Beagle combines the fantastic with the prosaic in such a superb way that none of it seems outlandish.

Peter Beagle wrote his best known work, The Last Unicorn, while in his twenties.

Monday, August 15, 2016

He's Gone by Deb Caletti

Dani's second husband has gone missing. The two of them share an ostensibly fairy tale life. After he rescues her from an abusive husband, they move to a houseboat, far from the gossip of the suburbs. 

All, however, is not as it seems. Dani comes to realize how little she knows about Ian.

Unfortunately, Dani took two Vicodins the night her husband disappeared, leaving her with memory gaps. She remembers arguing with him at the party but very little else. 

Ian appears to have taken none of his clothes or other personal effects. His car was left in its usual parking spot.

Some additional details come to light. Nathan, a partner in the company, offered to buy Ian's share of the high tech start-up. This betrayal, Dani realizes, may have pushed him over the edge.

The missing person case gives Dani some clarity. She realizes her missing husband has been overly critical of her. After years of abuse from Mark, Dani has fallen from someone who wanted to rescue her. Only his rescue feels more like a trap. 

Ian often demanded she do exactly as he wanted. His hobby is collecting insects and what he says about a curious trait of butterflies is particularly disturbing.


Readers wonder if Ian's family will ever find him but another thread in the narrative concerns Dani. Will she ever find the self-confidence she needs?

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