In preparation for the Peril on the Screen challenge, we’ve piled up a half-dozen or so Vincent Price movies. I first thought to watch them all back-to-back today; averaging under 90 minutes apiece, it would long, but do-able. However, having just watched the first, I’m going to opt for Plan B: one classic Vincent Price horror flick a week for the duration of the RIP V Challenge. The same things that make me nostalgic for Price movies (the camp, the cheese, the scenery-chewing), make them best enjoyed in small doses.

Today’s selection was The House on Haunted Hill (1959), and oh my, was it a cheese-fest! Before we started it, we had some discussion about the difference between “camp” and “cheese”, as they relate to B-grade horror movies, and this movie drew the line for us perfectly. The credits were all camp: knowingly over the top with their melodramatic pronouncements of doom. The film itself was pure cheese, as the whole cast played their ridiculous roles with perfect sincerity. Even Vincent intoned his speeches, dripping though they were with delicious melted cheddar, in a deadly serious manner. It was a delight.

There were a couple of gotcha! moments that made me jump, but the movie never worked up a real sense of dread, and the ‘ghastly’ props inspired more giggles than shrieks. The movie makes the mistake of trying to explain a few of its manifestations, poorly. For instance: okay, so the ghoulish woman who pops up behind the ingénue in the cellar a few times is actually the caretaker’s blind wife–that explains how and why she was bumping around in the dark, but not why the hero didn’t see her when he must have walked right past her–nor why she was moving as though strapped to a Roomba, her hands held up before her in grasping claws. Nor, for that matter, why she had no reaction to the heroine’s brain-clawing shrieks every time she appeared.

In an effort to keep the audience guessing, the plot all but ties itself in knots; the lapses in logic grow larger with every new revelation. But no matter: we don’t watch these things for the lucidity of their plots. We watch them for the gasp and the giggle, and most of all for Vincent Price’s inimitable screen presence. This movie is packed with all of them, so by all means, give it a spin.

Delightful premise, no? What an adventure, to be young, beautiful, and independently wealthy in London. How exciting, to inherit a spacious flat full of interesting objects, overlooking a scenic and historic graveyard. How thrilling, to discover your mysterious auntie’s ghost is companionably hanging about the place, giving you a chance to get to know her and maybe unravel some ancient family mysteries. This book held so much promise, only to waste it—much like the young women at the center of the story.

Beware: I’m going to spoil the heck out of this thing; if you’re planning to read it, stop here. I wouldn’t want to ruin any of the ‘surprises’ for you—although, I warn you: they’re not “Happy Birthday, we got you a cake!” surprises so much as “Uh-oh, we amputated the wrong leg!” surprises.

Valentina and Julia aren’t characters, they’re fetish dolls. They’re vanishingly pale and tiny; at 21 years old, they’re still wearing identical cutesy outfits and doing absolutely everything together, including sleeping in the same bed. Everyone who sees them remarks on their immaturity; several characters mistake them for 12- or 16-year-old girls, they’re compared to kittens, and two different characters address them as “Child”, without either of them taking umbrage. Note that this physical and emotional immaturity doesn’t prevent Elspeth’s bereaved boyfriend, Robert, from taking up with Valentina, once he gets up the nerve to meet the twins. (He lives in the flat directly below them, and spends the first couple of months creepily stalking them all over London instead of simply introducing himself.) Why, Valentina’s a younger, fresher, virginal copy of his lost Elspeth! It’s almost better than the real thing!

This is what I most objected to in the book: this depiction of twins, and women in general, as interchangeable. You see, the big secret that has kept Elspeth and Edie apart for over 20 years is (surprise!): they switched identities! Ghostly “Elspeth” is really Edie, and suburban “Edie” is really Elspeth!! See if you can follow this: the original Elspeth wanted to test her boyfriend Jack’s fidelity, so she pretended to be her twin and came on to him. He could tell the difference, but played along because he was mad at her. This ridiculous game went on for some time, until Jack upped the ante by breaking up with Elspeth and proposing to Elspeth-pretending-to-be-Edie—the same woman, mind you, just using her sister’s name. Now, the complication: at some point before the wedding, the real Edie gets drunk and sleeps with Jack; naturally, she gets pregnant from this encounter. So Elspeth-pretending-to-be-Edie marries Jack, then puts real-Edie-pregnant-with-Jack’s-babies on the plane to Chicago with him. A few months after the twins are born, real-Edie goes to London to visit Elspeth and hand over the babies. Elspeth returns with the children to America, to live with her actual husband, raise her nieces as her daughters, and pretend to be Edie for the next two decades. The reason the elder twins never see each other again is because they’re afraid Jack will be able to tell them apart if he sees them side by side.

Ah, but there’s another twisteroonie, because Jack could ALWAYS tell them apart! He knows it’s real-Edie moving to Chicago with him, and he doesn’t ask why. He never asks either of them what they hell they think they’re up to. Worse, he doesn’t remember the drunken tumble with real-Edie, so for 20+ years, he thinks he’s raising the cuckoo’s-egg children of the sister-in-law he hates. He knows that his real wife came back from London with the twins—apparently, childbirth changes the body in ways even profoundly stupid men can perceive—and that seems to be enough for him. He never confronts his wife about any of this.

I have to tell you, I hate books where the plot requires the characters to be situationally stupid. To make this plot work, Niffenegger had two options with Jack: make him too stupid to tell the difference between his wife and her twin, or make him too stupid to call either of them out on their life-altering shenanigans. Either way, the plot turns on the convenient stupidity of a character not otherwise shown to be in need of Miracle-Gro and frequent waterings. Then there’s Elspeth’s narcissistic idiocy in originally trying to fool him, and Edie’s foolishness in playing along. All of these people would have been better off if at any point any one of them had had the self-respect to call anyone else on their unbelievable bullshit. Instead, it just carries through to the next generation.

So, back to the plot (that’s just the backstory, friends—it gets worse from here!) One of the tragic consequences of Edie and Elspeth’s deception is that Jack only finds out after Valentina is dead that she was really his child all along. Oh, sorry, SPOILER: Valentina dies. You see, I was wrong to say the Dollies have no aspirations; Valentina wants desperately to go to college and become a fashion designer. Julia forbids it, out of disinterest. She doesn’t want to go to college, and there’s certainly no way her twin could go without her, therefore, they won’t go. So they stay cooped up in a big, creepy house at the edge of a big, creepy graveyard for months on end and get paler and thinner and creepier, being spied upon by their creepy dead aunt/mother and her creepy living boyfriend. (At this point, I realize that someone should have explained to Niffenegger that masturbating pseudo-necrophiliac para-pedophiles, while certainly very creepy, aren’t the kind of creepy people are generally looking for from ghost stories.)

Eventually, Elspeth gets strong enough to affect things in the physical world. First, she uses the ability to communicate her presence; once lines of communication are established, she pursues her fixation with Valentina, now intensified and complicated by the fact Val is sleeping with Robert. She discovers that she is able to pull a soul out of a living body and replace it when she accidentally kills, and then resurrects, the house kitten. (A tiny, pure-white kitten trapped in the flat against her will, I bother to note. Whatever could the author be driving at?) This gives Valentina a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea: Elspeth can ‘kill’ her, leaving her body for Julia to find, and then after the funeral, she can put Val’s spirit right back, and Val and Robert can run away and be free of Julia. Yes, stop a moment here: this bright spark chooses to fake her death (risking real death in the event human spirits are more complicated than those of kittens), devastate her entire family, and disappear, rather than tell her bossy sister where to get off. Is this the character the author wants us to sympathize with? Because…no. At this point, I was sure Elspeth was going to murder her own daughter and take over her body, and I was just about rooting for her to do it.

An incredible (by which I mean, literally not-credible) range of people are drawn into help with the plot; it all goes off without a hitch, and Valentina and Robert live happily ever after. Oh, no, wait! That would be silly. No, it turns out that Valentina’s ghost isn’t strong enough to inhabit her week-old corpse, so Elspeth runs off with it to reunite with Robert—who, to his vanishingly small credit, CAN tell the difference between Elspeth and Valentina, even when they’re in the same body. Things go badly between them, but not until after Valentina’s un-dead body manages to conceive a child, who I’m sure won’t be at all traumatized by being abandoned before birth by his father and raised by his insane re-animated (grand)mother. (Do I smell a sequel?)

Valentina’s ghost eventually finds a non-homicidal way to leave the flat and Julia discovers that hey, what do you know? She CAN live without her twin at her constant beck and call, after all—probably should have let the silly cow go to college in the first place. We don’t know what becomes of Jack and Edie—except that he suddenly starts calling her by her real name, so they’re probably going to be okay–and Martin overcomes his OCD to reunite with Marijke in Amsterdam. Wait! Who with the what now? Well, I wasn’t going to mention Martin and Marijke, because they’re decent people who deserve to exist in a different book. But I want to point out that Marijke, alone in the entire book, has sufficient sense of self to extricate herself from a loved one’s bullshit. Tired of putting up with the effects of Martin’s OCD, she walks out on him at the beginning of the book, daring him to get well enough to come find her. In doing so, she becomes the only character to avoid entanglement in the ridiculous mess the Noblin women create for themselves and everyone around them; if only I’d had the presence of mind to follow her out the door!

This review was part of the Readers Imbibing Peril V Challenge.

I will be participating in Peril the First: to read (at least) four books in any of the seasonally-appropriate categories (Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Dark Fantasy, Gothic, Horror, and Supernatural–basically, anything that sets spines a-tingling). In the pool for this year’s Challenge:
Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger
The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
Dracula, Bram Stoker
The Book of Were-Wolves, Sabine Baring-Gould
Fox Evil, Minette Walters

The library delivered Her Fearful Symmetry to me surprisingly quickly, so I’ve already finished it and am writing it up. I have wanted to re-read The Historian since I first read it in 2007, and darn it, this year I’m doing it! In fact, I started reading it today, and already feel myself under its spell. (It’s truly an excellent novel; I hope on second read to be more able to parse out its magic, rather than surrendering to it, but no promises!) I’m not sure I’ve ever actually read Dracula all the way through, and I suspect that the fact that I don’t know is proof that I haven’t. The Baring-Gould is a bit of an unusual inclusion–a folkloric study of werewolves, and a classic in its field. I’ve been wanting to ‘meet’ the real Sabine Baring-Gould since I read Laurie R. King’s The Moor, in which he was a cantankerous pivotal character. And of course, I’m absolutely ready for another turn with Minette Walters, given how thoroughly I enjoyed The Ice House.

I will probably do a bit of the Short Story Peril, although I won’t be focused on it. I have collections by Elizabeth Gaskell, Edgar Allen Poe, and H.P. Lovecraft decked up for when the mood catches me. Yes, still with the Lovecraft. He’s hard to shake, once you start. Not so much in the “I feel a creeping horror tearing at the edges of my sanity” way that I think he hoped for, as an “Oh dear, I wonder how sad, crazy Howard is doing up there in the attic. Best check in on him, see what he’s written lately. Oh, more creeping horror tearing at the edges of your sanity? That’s nice, dear. Do have some tea.” I just worry about the poor mad thing, up there all alone. I fear he’ll do himself an injury.

Most delightfully, there’s a new category this year: Peril on the Screen. There’s nothing I like better, this time of year, than to settle in on a dreary Saturday afternoon and scare myself silly with the thrillers and chillers of the silver screen. I’m thinking of the following:
Shadow of the Vampire
Le Pacte Des Loups
The Haunting (1963 version, of course!)
Let the Right One In
Something Gothic starring Vincent Price

I failed to make it all the way through The Haunting the last time I tried to watch it; that movie is a classic of the “suggest, don’t show” school of horror films, and without splashing so much as a drop of blood on the screen, it got to me. I’ll try to do better this time. And I know I read Let the Right One In for last year’s RIP Challenge, but I haven’t seen the movie in, hmm, almost two years? It’s due for another watching. Les Pacte Des Loups has been on my to-watch list for ages, and I have no good excuse for not doing so earlier. I saw Shadow of the Vampire some years ago and really enjoyed it; it’s also due for a re-watch. And then there’s Vincent, of course; no Halloween season is complete without an appearance by the master. I don’t have anything particular in mind; I’m hoping for one of the early films, something with a decrepit old house and an imperiled ingénue in a filmy peignoir. Surely AMC or TCM will toss up an afternoon of Gothics sometime in the next few months. I’ll just put out a Search & Record on Vincent’s name and see what the DVR drags in.

“I just want to run in here and see if they have any Minette Walters,” I said. Ken, well-accustomed to this form of self-deception, merely waved me in the door. The shop was bigger than I expected from the street, and specialized in mystery novels. There were cute sub-genre signs all around, “Wild Women”, “Nancy Drew for All Ages”, “The Great Detective”–signs that hint what you might find, and invite you to explore further.

I found a whole run of Walters’ books up right up front and excitedly started pulling out titles. The woman at the counter, who I took to be the owner, commented on how much she enjoys Walters and gave recommendations. Then Ken reminded me he’d just heard a story about a Swedish married couple who wrote a classic detective series in the 1960s-70s. What were their names, again? “Maj…something. And her husband was Per…somebody,” I was dredging through my memory banks. “Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo? Right over here!” Barbara exclaimed, leading the way past a Steig Larsson display. (Looking up pictures of the store, I found Barbara’s name and confirmation she is the owner.) Sure enough, they were stocking the entire run starring Martin Beck. I asked for the first in the series and said if I liked it, I’d be back for more. All told, we left the store with a short stack of 4 novels, leaving $27 in the hands of an independent book dealer. And we will be back to explore those intriguing genres, to expand collections, to locate rare items, and most importantly, to talk books with a knowledgeable and enthusiastic bookseller (remember those?)

All of which leads me to my prediction. As you know, I’ve been doing a lot of my reading in eBook format since I got the iPad, and I really do love the convenience of it. However, printed books aren’t going to go away–not for me, and not for the world at large. The technology of the printed book is too good, too useful, too lasting to ever be abandoned. You can’t set a cart full of eBooks on a sidewalk to lure people into your shop, and the thing is: people WANT to be lured. People want a compact handful of story they can toss in a bag or take into the bath. People love to walk away from a shop or a library or a garage sale with a sack full of cheap paperbacks to indulge in. Don’t fear the eReader: it’s here to supplement and enhance the book experience, not replace it.

And if I’m wrong, booklovers, there’s a silver lining to the twilight of the tomes: just imagine the fantastic sales everywhere as libraries and bookstores clear out their stock. You’ll be able to buy a lifetime’s supply of books at a penny a pound. But you’ll have to get in line behind me.

The adults around Sacks challenged his intellect; each of these paths to knowledge were paved with classic books in the field–no Chemistry for Dummies or Physics Made Easy for Oliver! If he wanted to learn, he could read Lavoisier, Davy, and Mendeleev in their own words. A challenge, yes, and also a compliment to a burgeoning young mind, telling him ‘we think you’re up to it, Oliver. You don’t need an elementary-level introduction to scientific topics; you’re a Sacks, you can jump right in at the adult level.’ His elders judged his enthusiasm well, and nurtured it wisely. They also gave him the freedom to experiment, to make errors and discoveries on his own. When an early chemistry experiment filled the house with noxious smoke, Oliver’s parents gave him a shed in the yard for a workspace. Oliver describes taking a bus across London to spend his carefully-hoarded pocket money at a chemical supply house: “The shopkeepers…would warn me now and then, ‘Go easy with that one!’ [but] they always let me have what I wished.” Acids, poisons, volatile and potentially explosive substances, all cheerfully wrapped up and sent along with the obsessive little 10-year-old boy. Shocking, yet appealing, the freedom young Oliver was given.

The book isn’t all carefree boyhood days of distilling poisons and shed-exploding idylls; Sacks delves into some traumas and tragedies as well–the terror and loneliness of being evacuated from London during the Blitz; the abuse he endured at boarding school; the gruesome, bloody death of his Aunt Birdie, at home, as his surgeon mother worked desperately to save her; the psychotic break and descent into madness suffered by his own brother, Michael. Sacks seems to be studying himself as he would one of his patients, exploring the events that shaped the man he became. I have always found Oliver Sacks an interesting and appealing character, and never more so than when at the center of his own story.

As long as I’m coming clean here, I might as well tell you I’m off the Challenge wagon entirely. I’ve been reading freely and at will for over a month now, not accomplishing anything more than my own entertainment and edification. I got an iPad in early May, and I had promised myself that the first book I read on it would be The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; it seemed appropriate, now that Apple has so nearly approximated that famous device. (I also named my iPad Adams, in honor of Hitchhiker’s dearly missed author.) And, as you’ll see on my 2010 Reading Page, one Adams novel quickly turned into four (and several more on the iPad to go!)

I resisted the ebook revolution for a surprisingly long time, given how much I love to read and love techie toys. You’d think I would have been in on them immediately (and in fact, I’ve been asked for recommendations on readers many times by people who assumed I would have been.) I had played around with a Kindle, but was underwhelmed by it. As much as I liked the idea of keeping a whole library at hand, I didn’t want yet another digital device to round up every morning and schlep with me. The iPad, however, hit a sweet spot of functionality and portability that won me over, and now that I have it, I find that I love reading ebooks. I’ve been tearing through them a remarkable pace. The instant-purchase wireless downloads are a bit of a danger, but one I’ve managed pretty well so far.

It’ll be a while before I get back into Challenge mode, unless I can quickly find one dedicated to genteel protagonists solving increasingly unlikely murders. We’re moving in to summer now, and I’m already feeling the urge stack up the mystery novels and devour them like popcorn. Ramona got me started on Laura Childs’ tea shop mysteries, which will be just about perfect when it’s too hot to read anything but short, fluffy fiction. I’ve also heard good things about Steig Larsson’s mysteries, and plan to give them a go. Once we tip over into Fall (and yes, I’m looking forward to that already!), I’ve got my choices lined up for this year’s RIP Challenge. So the year may end on a positive note, challenge-wise. For what it’s worth, I promise you I’ll do a better job reporting on the books I’m reading, electronic or otherwise.

Whoever’s idea it was, it was a good one. Happy 10th Anniversary, Darling!

The lilac bush we planted three years ago finally bloomed, to great rejoicing. The picture above is from last weekend; we cut the bloom stems today, to encourage further growth, and put them in a vase on the table–you can smell them all through the house! Ken and I both love lilacs and irises, and now we have both growing in our yard. The free irises we picked up in the neighborhood last fall are growing vigorously and have finally produced a hint as to their color: one purple bud, still tightly furled.

My Great-grandma Ridnour had a big patch of irises; to tiny me, walking up the path with irises towering over my head on both sides, it seemed the entire back yard was irises. I confess I’ve considered doing the same in our front yard: just giving it over to the flowers and letting them run riot.

I would like to get some lilies of the valley growing somewhere in the yard. These are my true birthday flowers, i.e., the flowers ‘assigned’ to May birthdays, and I love their fragrant daintiness. A few years ago, Ramona sent me some that had originally grown in Great-grandma Lynam’s yard, but they failed to take root. Still, try, try again. They’re supposed to be quite hardy, once established. Perhaps they’d do well in the same corner that the Arum italicum is flourishing in?

I also want to find a spot and get some huechera, or coral bells, going. I love the autumnal colors of the ‘Caramel’ and ‘Marmalade’ varieties; it would be nice to have a little autumn in the garden all year round. Perhaps I’ll do something like this container garden I saw on the Craftzine Blog. Pretty, isn’t it?

Persephone’s mission statement:

Persephone prints mainly neglected fiction and non-fiction by women, for women and about women. The titles are chosen to appeal to busy women who rarely have time to spend in ever-larger bookshops and who would like to have access to a list of books designed to be neither too literary nor too commercial. The books are guaranteed to be readable, thought-provoking and impossible to forget.

On the “Why Persephone” page of their website, they say they chose the name Persephone because “it has a timeless quality; sounds beautiful; is very obviously feminine; and symbolises new beginnings (and fertility) as well as female creativity.” I think they’re overlooking another potent bit of symbolism: each of the books they publish, like Persephone herself, has been raised up from oblivion and returned to the light of public awareness and appreciation.

I must say, there are few things that delight me more than a parcel of books from London (shades of 84 Charing Cross Road!) I first dove into Vere Hodgson’s marvelous (and massive) Few Eggs and No Oranges, a compilation of her wartime journals. These were not private diaries, but dispatches she circulated among her far-flung family during the war years. I have a deep fascination with WWII-era Britain, particularly with London during the Blitz, and this book satisfied it in a way no work of reminiscence or fiction could. The entries have an incomparable immediacy, as Vere sat down at the end of her work day before heading home (assuming an air raid wasn’t in progress, making travel impossible; she spent many a night on the couch at her office) and tapped out a few paragraphs to her family. The pages passed through six or seven hands before arriving at their final destination, a cousin in Rhodesia. As the title indicates, the concerns of daily life play a much larger role in the story than would be the case in a memoir written decades after the event. This is history written as it occurred, reflecting not the actions of the few and the great, but the concerns of everyday citizens caught up in world events. It’s a priceless piece of reporting, and the jewel of my Anglophilia collection; I’m endlessly grateful for the chain of events that brought it to my attention.

I have recently finished another Persephone title, one that illuminates another life that could have so easily been lost in the mists of time, if not for the power of the written word. (And here is Penelope Lively again, to remind us of the immortality-conferring powers of language!) I put Oriel Malet’s biography of Marjory Fleming on my Persephone Books request list for an obvious reason: I’m always looking for material to add to the Biographical Dictionary of Prominent Flemings that I keep in my head. There are just so many distinguished members of the extended Fleming clan: writers, artists, actors, athletes, scientists, even a Time Lord; perhaps I shall have to actually write the thing some day? (Note: I am unaware of any actual connection between my family and any of these illustrious folk. But that’s hardly a reason not to claim them!)

I had never heard of little Marjory, though, until I perused the Persephone Catalog—one more reason to be grateful for their dedication to overlooked classics! She was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, in 1803, and would die there, of meningitis, less than nine years later; in between those events, she would manage leave her mark on Scottish literature.

From Marjory’s journals and letters between various family members, Oriel Malet constructed a fanciful and evocative portrait of a brilliant mind trapped in the body of a small child. Marjory’s intellectual maturity far outstripped her physical and emotional development, and this caused her quite a bit of difficulty when she was very small (the book opens with an imagined scene of Marjory at three years old, already running a bit wild and feeling intensely her place in the world.) When Marjory was five, the family hosted her cousin Isabel Keith for a lengthy stay; Isa, just seventeen herself, was enchanted with her bright little cousin and begged her aunt and uncle to let her take Marjory back to Edinburgh with her when she went home. She argued that Edinburgh had much more to offer a talented child than did rural Kirkcaldy: greater cultural and social opportunities, and Isa herself as a dedicated tutor to her small cousin. The Flemings agreed, and Marjory embarked on the adventure of her life (sadly, literally: the Edinburgh trip that should have been merely the first in a long life of adventures would be Marjory’s one great excursion into the wider world.)

Marjory lived with the Keiths, a wealthy and well-connected branch of the family, for 18 months, and she blossomed under her cousin’s tutelage. Morning lessons were leavened with afternoon visits to parks, museums, and shops; Isa’s circle of friends adopted Marjory as something of a pet, addressing her as an adult and including her on their social rounds. Marjory loved history and poetry, hated math, and above all, despised copy-book exercises. Isa, in a stroke of brilliance, offered Marjory a plain notebook and said she could write whatever was in her head to practice penmanship, rather than copy out the dull writing exercises, and thus was an author born. Marjory’s exercise notebooks quickly became her journal, and her legacy.

Malet’s book contains several excerpts of Marjory’s writing, including the entirety of her 205-line biographical poem on Mary, Queen of Scots.

She flew to England for protection
For Elisbeth was her connection
Elisbeth was quite cross & sour
She wished poor Mary in her power
Elisbeth said she would her keep
And in her kingdon she might sleep
But to a prison she was sent
Elisbeths hart did not relent

And this at six or seven years old! We are left to imagine the poems and novels we were denied by Marjory’s untimely, and all too common, death. It makes me wonder how much else we have lost, as bright minds flared into being and out again, without the chance to create the piece of art, literature, or history hidden within them. And it makes me all the gladder for the work Persephone Books is doing, reclaiming the works we do have from oblivion.