Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel (continued)

This dark novel alternates between "then" and "now." The chapters called "then" deal with Laney's sixteenth summer. A New Yorker who recently lost her Mom, Laney instantly feels at home among the Roanokes. She thinks they are the family she always wanted.

The chapters that take place in the present hint at something dark and unnatural that occurs in the house. Cooper, Laney's on-again, off-again boyfriend often wonders what goes on in the Roanoke house.

Yates, the head of the Roanoke family, is possibly the most nefarious literary character ever invented. He preys upon the Roanoke girls' vulnerability. His charm and genuine love for them only make his actions worst.

Gran, though, is a close second. Her actions are almost incomprehensible.

Despite the fact that it is a thriller, the pace can be frustrating. Readers know pretty early on what is happening to Allegra, yet no one confronts Yates until near the end.

The clues are nicely placed. Allegra carves words into surfaces, a kind of diary for others to read.

In the end this is a gripping read but also extremely unsettling.

I requested a pre-publication copy of The Roanoke Girls from Netgalley and Crown Publishing. The novel's expected release date is March 7, 2017.

Continued from earlier post

The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel

"Roanoke girls never last long around here." She skipped along the hall, her voice growing fainter as she moved, like we were standing at opposite ends of a tunnel. "In the end, we either run or we die."

Allegra, The Roanoke Girls.

Disturbing and intriguing in equal measure, this novel has the power to haunt readers. Responding to a family crisis, Lane finds herself revisiting a dark corner of her adolescence, the summer she spent at her grandparents farm in Kansas.

continued

Astray by Emma Donoghue

The impressive short stories in Astray are based on actual historical events. Donoghue, who wrote The Room, is able to get into the minds of countless people from a wide variety of historical periods.

"Man and Boy," which portrays the loving relationship between an elephant and his keeper is based on Wild Animals in Captivity. The story closely follows the actual removal of Jumbo's London Zoo to a circus and the uproar it caused.

"The Widow's Cruse" is loosely based on a journal entry from the Weekly Journal dated May 26, 1735. A widow hoodwinks a man who means to take her fortune.

Some of Donoghue's stories are inspired by her trip to the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, Arizona e.g. "Last Supper at Brown's" and the "The Long Way Home."

The narrator's dramatic dialogues gives readers a keyhole glimpse to history. Its just a keyhole glimpse; We don't see, for instance, the whole of the 
Revolutionary War, just the experience of one fifteen-year-old Hessian in "The Hunt" who decides to act villainously.

We don't see the whole slave experience in Texas; we're given instead the story of one man who kills his master and runs away with his mistress ("Last Supper at Brown's"). We're told the lamentable story of a bored daughter whose games and lies lead to the selling of a honest slave-girl, Milly ("Vanitas")

Astray is a powerhouse of a short story collection that is divided into three parts: Departures, In-Transit, Arrivals and Aftermaths.

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.

Stranger Things (TV Series)

Set in the eighties, this nostalgic TV series is a horror drama starring Winona Ryder, Matthew Modine and Milly Bobby Brown.

When a local boy, Will, goes missing, his middle school friends poignantly launch their own investigation. Coincidently, A girl with no memories wanders down the same road, Mirkwood, where the local boy disappeared.

She is strong and vulnerable, an interesting contradiction. Mike, one of the kids looking for Will, shelters her in his basement.

Local police believe that Will has fallen into the quarry and accidently drowned. Joyce, the boy's mother, believes she can speak to him through a string of Christmas lights. Naturally, everyone surmises she's gone nuts with grief

For a plot like this, it would be easy for the series to fall into commonplace horror. The monster that chases them in the upside down is fairly classic horror--cobwebs, stickiness, facelessness.

Stranger Things doesn't descend, however, into comic book characterizations. Not all of the bad characters are entirely bad e.g. Steve, nor all of the heroes entirely good e.g. Hopper.

As in every work of horror, there is something terrible in the ordinary. Take nothing for granted, the genre seems to say.

Even the most polished, the most exemplary may be hiding a dark secret. Conversely, even the weakest or the most vulnerable may be strongest.

Creative work

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” Mary Oliver

Some Kind of Happiness by Claire LeGrande

In Some Kind of Happiness a young girl, Finley Hart, who is suffering from crippling anxiety, invents her own world, Everwood. She is surprised to find that Everwood is a real place, the woods behind her Grandparents’ house. While this could have been a simple story about magic, LeGrande’s story alternates between fantasy and Finley’s real-life traumas.

Finley has been sent to her grandparents’ house for the summer because her parents are having marital problems. Though Finley has never met her Dad’s family, she agrees to spend a summer with them.

Finley finds her Grandparents, Aunts and cousins, collectively known as The Harts, fascinating and intimidating at the same time. She longs  to be accepted by them because they seem to be the perfect family who are charitable, fun, and outgoing. They don’t have the anxiety problems that haunt her.

In her Everwood journal, Finley images herself to be an orphan girl who must keep the dark away from her precious woods. She wants to protect the Harts from the darkness but does not realize they are hiding their own dark secrets.

Brilliantly realized, this is a great story for young adults or middle schoolers.

Some Kind of Happiness by Claire LeGrande

In Some Kind of Happiness a young girl, Finley Hart, who is suffering from crippling anxiety, invents her own world, Everwood. She is surprised to find that Everwood is a real place, the woods behind her Grandparents’ house. While this could have been a simple story about magic, LeGrande’s story alternates between fantasy and Finley’s real-life traumas.

Finley has been sent to her grandparents’ house for the summer because her parents are having marital problems. Though Finley has never met her Dad’s family, she agrees to spend a summer with them.

Finley finds her Grandparents, Aunts and cousins, collectively known as The Harts, fascinating and intimidating at the same time. She longs  to be accepted by them because they seem to be the perfect family who are charitable, fun, and outgoing. They don’t have the anxiety problems that haunt her.

In her Everwood journal, Finley images herself to be an orphan girl who must keep the dark away from her precious woods. She wants to protect the Harts from the darkness but does not realize they are hiding their own dark secrets.

Brilliantly realized, this is a great story for young adults or middle schoolers.

The Taxidermist's Daughter by Kate Mosse

The Taxidermist's Daughter is a novel about storytelling. Connie Gifford finds herself among storytellers.

Connie knows that taxidermy is a form of storytelling. She says of her father, "Although I called him a taxidermist, he himself would use the old terminology. A stuffer of birds is how he would introduce himself. He thought 'taxidermist' was too fancy...it took away from what he was doing...[t]elling stories."

Harry Woolston, her suitor, identifies with this, since he, too, is an artist and storyteller.

Harry tells Connie, "When I'm working on a portrait, I'm always thinking about everything that made my sitter the person they are, not just what's visible on the canvas."

"That's it," Connie replied. "It's the sense that if the bird--jackdaw, magpie, rook...could talk, it would tell you its life story."

Unfortunately, Connie doesn't know her own story. She doesn't remember the older woman who cared for her or the person who taught her poetry as a child. She remembers hitting her head, an "accident" that no one talks about.

A secret group, the Corvid Club, has committed a heinous crime.
Many lives have been ruined by the actions of the Corvid Club.
That's why Connie Gifford desperately needs to illuminate the darkness. She needs know her own story, one that is riddled with "vanished days."

The Taxidermist's Daughter by Kate Mosse

The Taxidermist's Daughter is a novel about storytelling. Connie Gifford finds herself among storytellers. Her suitor, Mr. Woolston, asks her questions about her father and a mysterious figure, Cassie, in a critical scene. 

Connie says of her father, "Although I called him a taxidermist, he himself would use the old terminology. A stuffer of birds is how he would introduce himself. He thought 'taxidermist' was too fancy...it took away from what he was doing...[t]elling stories."

Mr. Woolston identifies with this, since he, too, is an artist and storyteller.

Harry tells Connie, "When I'm working on a portrait, I'm always thinking about everything that made my sitter the person they are, not just what's visible on the canvas."

"That's it," Connie replied. "It's the sense that if the bird--jackdaw, magpie, rook...could talk, it would tell you its life story."

Unfortunately, Connie doesn't know her own story. She doesn't remember the older woman who cared for her or the person who taught her poetry as a child. She remembers hitting her head, an "accident" that no one talks about.

A secret group, the Corvid Club, has committed a heinous crime.
Many lives have been ruined by the actions of the Corvid Club.
That's why Connie Gifford desperately needs to illuminate the darkness. She needs know her own story, one that is riddled with "vanished days."

Writing advice from Brian Doyle

"We are all storytellers and story-attentive beings. Otherwise we would never be loved or have a country or a religion. You do not need a sabbatical or a grant to write a book. Write a little bit every day."

Brian Doyle in 
TheAmericanscholar.org






I like the phrase he uses here "story-attentive."

Brian Doyle's most recent work,

Ex Machina

Ava looks at parts of other AI machines.

I hestitated to watch a film that used what seemed to be a cliched, tired theme. A mad scientist creates a machine that turns nightmarish.

As it turns out, this movie was one of the better artificial intelligent films. Ava, the machine, is in the maze but so too is the viewer, as they are never sure what will happen.

After Caleb wins a prize, he's invited to visit a research facility in an isolated region. He is taken there by helicopter. 

He meets a stranger who says he has the opportunity to take part in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, the chance to take part in a Turing test and test an AI machine.

Caleb gives up free will and privacy, as his new employer spies on him constantly. His key card gives him limited access so certain areas are off limits to him. Caleb can, however, spy on the AI, Ava, by turning on the TV in his room.

The moment he meets the machine, Ava, is magical. Ava has that deer-in-the-headlights look as if she is perpetually scared, but her voice is flat and even confident. 

Will Ava, a machine, fall in love with him? She wasn't programmed to do that. Will he fall in love with her? Will they run off together, as the replicant and Rick Deckard do in Blade Runner?

Alex Garland, writer and director, has created a startling film that received, unfortunately, not enough attention. 

Ex Machina

Ava looks at parts of other AI machines.

I hestitated to watch a film that used what seemed to be a cliched, tired theme. A mad scientist creates a machine that turns nightmarish.

As it turns out, this movie was one of the better artificial intelligent films. Ava, the machine, is in the maze but so too is the viewer, as they are never sure what will happen.

After Caleb wins a prize, he's invited to visit a research facility in an isolated region. He is taken there by helicopter. 

He meets a stranger who says he has the opportunity to take part in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, the chance to take part in a Turing test and test an AI machine.

Caleb gives up free will and privacy, as his new employer spies on him constantly. His key card gives him limited access so certain areas are off limits to him. Caleb can, however, spy on the AI, Ava, by turning on the TV in his room.

The moment he meets the machine, Ava, is magical. Ava has that deer-in-the-headlights look as if she is perpetually scared, but her voice is flat and even confident. 

Will Ava, a machine, fall in love with him? She wasn't programmed to do that. Will he fall in love with her? Will they run off together, as the replicant and Rick Deckard do in Blade Runner?

Alex Garland, writer and director, has created a startling film that received, unfortunately, not enough attention. 

National Women's Business Week

National Business Women's Week is the 3rd week in October.

A great book to read for National Business Women's Week is In The Company of Women by Grace Bonney.