I watched this film last weekend with a few others. The cinema had limited seating due to the covid 19 outbreak. This was before CDC recommended even greater limitations on gatherings.
1917 is a somber film that depicts a perilous time. Just a year later, in 1918, a pandemic would cause panic and confusion, much like is happening now in 2020.
What struck me at the end was the battalion's lack of gratitude. But then again, if you can't see the whole picture--the aerial maps--than its hard to be grateful.
What looks like an accidental drowning might actually be a suicide. Told in alternating voices, this suspense-saturated drama is Hawkins' second novel.
If you missed it the first time around, like I did, your library probably has plenty of copies.
Nel isn't very well liked in her small community. Even her sister bears a grudge against her. The community resents that she's writing a book about the witchcraft trials and other historical events that took place in Beckford.
Nel chooses to write not only about the historical deaths by drowning but also the more recent drownings. This infuriates Louise, the mother of a girl who recently committed suicide in the pool.
Soon afterward Katie's death, Nel also drowns in the drowning pool. Some family members think she has killed herself but others suspect something more sinister.
Among the suspects, there is a jealous sister, a handsome male teacher, a dangerous ex-boyfriend, an outraged mother, and a cantankerous cop.
Nel's teenaged daughter is also in danger, leaving readers to wonder if she will suffer the same fate as her mother and all the other "troublesome" women.
Though some have said they enjoyed this book less, its actually more enjoyable than The Girl on the Train. Into the Water is multi-faceted and surprising, thought-provoking and riveting.
In this novel, a pair of twins unhappily work in a doll shop and a collector of rare specimens, Silas, takes interest in one of them. Iris also fall under the gaze of a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of painters hoping to take Victorian London by storm.
The drudgery of Iris' work is palpable. What she wants more than anything is to become an artist. Louis, a member of the Brotherhood, offers her a chance of a lifetime. He tells Iris,
"I can teach you how to use oils, and perhaps next year you can enter a canvas into the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition."
The offer, however, is contingent upon her becoming a model for him. He promises to also teach her to paint--something that Iris has longed for all her life.
Her family disowns her after she becomes Louis' model. They feel its unbecoming of a woman to live alone and work as an artists model. This leaves her more vulnerable to the local psychopath, Silas.
MacNeal skillfully creates this character by first hiding his flaws. Silas originally appears as just another impassioned artist, except in his case he is interested in curiosities. He preserves dead animals and skeletons, butterflies, and other odd assortments.
Oddly enough, several women associated with Silas go missing--Flick, Bluebell, and now Iris.
The novel skillfully draws readers into the Victorian world. Readers care about the plight of the protagonists--Louis who has gotten himself in a quandary--and Iris who desperately wants to be free to paint. Like the queen in Louis' painting, Iris finds herself figuratively and literally imprisoned.
In writing that rivals the best suspense novel, MacNeal takes readers into the mind of a serial killer and contrasts it with a desperate woman's fight for freedom.
A really good essay on "writing" by Bonnie Hearn Hill, "What I Wish I'd Known."
She addressed the loneliness, the doubts, but also the triumph.
She says (of writers):
"We do it because we can’t not do it, riding that bicycle up the mountain, calves screaming in pain, the road nipping at our heels, whispering, “I’ll get you this time.” But we know better because we’ve done it before, because one way or another, we will get to the top, and that’s the reason we do it, one of the reasons, anyway. We do it for that blast of oxygen in our lungs, the certainty of the finish line. We do it for the ride down the hill, that sweet sense of soaring."
Bonnie's essay was the 2019 winner of the contest. For anyone interested, there's a new contest with a March 3rd deadline:
https://writermag.submittable.com/submit/156927/2020-essay-contest
Blood brothers and members of the Comitatus, Finn and Keiro both have a privileged standing in Incarceron. They are nontheless as the maestra reminds them prisoners. No one can ever leave the living prison that is Incarceron. The prison has many eyes that watch them and a voice that taunt them.
With the aid of a crystal key, Finn, Keiro, Gildas, and Attia hope to escape to the Outside as they Sappique did. After a dangerous escape from the Comitatus, they embark on a quest that tests and transforms them.
Nearly killed by a beast in a cave, the four of them are rescued by a strange Sapienti called Blaze. Blaze takes them to a high tower where he tries to convince them that there is no Outside. But Blaze and nearly everyone else is not who they say they are.
On the outside, Claudia's father plans for her to marry an odious boy, Caspar. John Arlex, her father, is Warden of Incarceron but he refuses to tell her anything about its secrets. He only wants to use her as a pawn to achieve power.
At court there are many factions but Claudia does what she can to protect her tutor, Jared, and Finn, whom she believes is the rightful heir of the kingdom.
Faced-paced and exciting, this novel is a great fantasy for those who love suspense and plot twists.
Catherine Fisher's official webpage,
https://www.catherine-fisher.com/
What is a lyric essay?
A lyric essay is a cross between an essay and a lyric poem. In "Knit One," Suzanne Cody writes in Eastern Iowa Review about a woman's sorrow and dejection by using the metaphor of knitting:
"Sorrow ravels the sweater from the bottom--a slow, slow process. He appears to think the young woman doesn't notice. But she does. He may well know this, but likes to pretend."
Their relationship is becoming unraveled just like the sweater:
"If you don't make time for this, eventually the pulling will go faster than the stitching and there will be nothing left between you and me but a pile of tangled wool"
The term lyric essay was invented by the late Deborah Tall, a professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Tall wrote A Family in Strangers in which she employed the lyric essay, a form she has been obsessed with for thirty years.
Resources:
http://outofboundsradioshow.com/exc_audio_post/deborah-tall-poet-writer-and-professor-of-english-at-hobart-william-smith-colleges-geneva-ny/
I watched this film last weekend with a few others. The cinema had limited seating due to the covid 19 outbreak. This was before CDC recommended even greater limitations on gatherings.
