Three short story reviews for RIP - and a link to Niagara Falls and holidays

Before I get started on my short story reviews, I wanted to tell you about an awesome giveaway I just saw over on Court's blog Once Upon a Bookshelf.  She is giving away a new Fringe book!  Yes, a new book about one of my all-time favourite shows has just been published, and she won a copy in a bag of goodies she won at last weekend's FanExpo Canada 2012.  Lucky, lucky her, and us, because she's never seen an episode of Fringe....so if you are like me and love this show, this sounds like an interesting book just published about the themes and elements and plot.  Happy sigh.  I've already entered.....Into the Looking Glass, Exploring the Worlds of Fringe, by Sarah Clarke Stuart.  Hmm, if I don't win, I'll add it to my Christmas wish list.....

Ok, on to three really good, no, awesome horror short stories that I've read over the past week.  Two are  from The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2010 , edited by Paula Guran. 

Monsters - Stewart O'Nan.  This is the story about a young boy, Mark who is playing with a pellet gun that belongs to his friend Derek. They are shooting bottles, and then the game expands in the way that it does when the pellets are harmless, and the bottles don't break.  Something does happen, and this is the story about how everything changes in an instant.  It's heartbreaking, and moving, and it hurts.  That sense of guilt that Mark feels eats away at him, even though no one blames him, and he is not able to forgive himself. That's where monsters come from,inside us.  An amazing story that feels so true, powerful and unsettling - I certainly have felt that guilt, and forgiveness is much harder to do than it sounds, especially towards one's self.  Oh, and no one dies, so don't avoid the story out of fear that it's like that.  It's much more subtle.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown - Holly Black. A vampire story, but not like any you've ever read before.  Vampires are caused by a virus that mutates, an infection that sets in when you are bitten.  If you get a taste of human blood after being bitten, you become a vampire.  If you don't?  Well, read what happens to Matilda, who has been bitten, and is trying to not become a vampire.  Then her friend Dante finds her, and tells her the boy she loves has crossed over into Coldtown - so named, because every city and town has a Cold area barricaded, where all the vampires live - along with Dante's sister.  They are both still human and alive. There is only one reason to go to Coldtown, however.  What Matilda does will chill your heart and make you cry at the same time.  An amazing story, one of the best short stories I've read about vampires.  As Guran says in her end note, you will want to know more about Matilda, and Cold Town, after.   I certainly do.  Fascinating.

The third short story I read is from The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, edited by Michael Cox and R.A. Gilbert:

The Upper Berth - F. Marion Crawford.  A haunted berth on a passenger ship, and a narrator who is a no-nonsense kind of man, until he meets the - thing that haunts the berth.  It is a ghost/dead thing that will make your hair stand on end. awful in its wrongness.  It is written in 1886, so Victorian in tone and attitude, for those who like the early ghost stories.  I liked this one, it reminded me that ghosts are all about the unknown, and the uncanny, and that to be touched or in the presence of one, reminds us in our core that it's not the natural way of things.  The Upper Berth is available here, online.

All these stories rate 5/5.  Have you read any of them?  How is your short story reading for RIP?  I'm so excited that I wrote reviews for short stories  for RIP!  They are all so very good, you have to check them out if you can. Go on, I dare you. 

And now for something completely (but not so unrelated) different:
Niagara Falls
Sidenote:  I was just exploring online to see if I could find Monsters online as well for you to read.  Well, I found this instead, a review of Stewart O'Nan's new book, The Odds.  It's set in Niagara Falls.  Now before you wonder what I'm on about, I just went on my summer holidays to Niagara Falls, last month.  I hadn't been there since a child, and I wanted to show my soon-to-be ex husband and children the Falls.  We had a fantastic holiday, one of the best ever.  So to find out that O'Nan's book is set there - and the main couple go there to see if their thirty-year marriage can be rekindled or if it's  over, because the Falls are one of the Honeymoon capitals in North America.  (We didn't go for that reason, and all my romantic prone friends are dismayed that the Falls didn't work magic on us anyway). Well, you know me, my friends, I had time to look for a bookstore, and eventually found the only one in the central area, a second-hand bookstore called One Page, not so far from our hotel. I even got in while it was open, and bought some books.  Well it turns out that Stewart O'Nan likes this store too - see the bottom of the article I've linked you too.  Small world......and now I definitely have to read his novel, with Niagara Falls fresh in my mind.

By the way, I LOVE Niagara Falls.  Not the Clifton Hill attractions, which are like Blackpool in England only smaller (so my ex says), but the Falls themselves are extraordinary and beautiful. As a child I saw them many times, as most of my family is from the nearby London area. It was fun to go back as an adult and realize they are just as awesome and beautiful as ever.  Below are four pictures from our trip. How is this related to the above?

So about the horror RIP link:
Well, my youngest son was determined to see some ghostly or ghastly wax museum.  When I went a as child to Niagara Falls, I clearly remember going through the Chamber of Horrors, which was set in the bottom of Louis Tussaud's Wax museum.  I would start off slowly, and then when the exhibits got too much for me, I would start running until I was dashing through the exhibit.  That was when I was 10. Flash forward to now, 39 years later.  We eventually found two wax museums which each had a tiny horror section.  My reaction to both was the same:  I started off okay, and if it was too dark and the exhibits moved or were too close to us, I began to move faster and faster until I was almost running.  My youngest son is most disappointed in me.  I failed the 'cool mom can go through a horror museum' test. I think I got clammy hands at one point,and we had to take the short cut through one part.  My son kept saying, " They're only statues, mom!  they can't move! They're not real!"  I kept thinking that something was behind me when I wasn't looking......so that's my real live RIP moment, brought to you courtesy of Niagara Falls.  That Freddy Kreuger statue was very life-like and much too close in the passageway.....

Moby Dick read!

       I just found this, and thought I would share it, as it is fantastic:  Moby Dick is being read, chapter by chapter, one chapter a day, for free online.  Read by such luminaries as Simon Callow, Tilda Swinton, the British Prime Minister David Cameron, Will Self, China Mieville, Benedict Cumberbatch........the list goes on.  It is very exciting, organized by author Philip Hoare, who wrote the book about The whale and Moby Dick, called appropriately The Whale:

                                          

 I own this book, and I own Moby Dick, which you will recall I set out earlier this year to read. I haven't got past the first page (mostly because I got distracted by other books) and now I find this a lovely reason to get to it!  I can hardly believe it, all these great actors and writers and also ordinary citizens of Britain - so many people volunteered that they had more readers than chapters.  Isn't that wonderful? Here is the link to the site where one chapter will be read each day - appropriately named mobydickbigread.com .  135 chapters, 135 days.  Here is the link to the fabulous Guardian article that discusses it.
                          


I am most definitely tempted to join in.  I can read a chapter a day.  How about you?  At the very least, to listen to it being read by some wonderful people.  It's very exciting! 

Beyond Black - Hilary Mantel - RIP

          Do you like psychics?  Have you ever been to a psychic fair? or had your palm read, or tarot cards done, or wondered if you have a spirit guide? If you believe the line of most new age spiritual books, everything is happy and light, and all we have to do is believe in love and happiness and it will be that way.  I myself have (and continue to do them every day) read tarot cards, and own some crystals, I've been to psychic fairs, had my palm read, and most importantly, I believe that life is a mix of good and bad things, and what I can control is my reaction to them. I've met some good psychics, and had the wonderful fortune to have as my spiritual teacher someone who could hear spirits on the other side. He never foretold the future, he was much more interested in getting people to heal and be responsible for themselves, which I thoroughly agree with. Still, I love the idea of getting a glimpse of the future, though any time the phone rings or the doorbell and I know who it is, or I have a dream that comes true, I do get  a shiver.  The uncanny is just that, and always will be, for me.

             
     The heroine of Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel is a psychic - or as she and the other psychics in the book call themselves, 'sensitives'. Alison Hart is the real thing.  The reason why I asked above if you have ever been to a psychic fair or know anything about psychic ability, is because there is alot of hocum and charlatans out there, some of which is discussed in a very amusing way in Beyond Black.  Most of all though, this is a book about Alison, and a journey into what it is really like to be psychic, and how this does not let you lead anything other than a typical life - except that you know things about others, that they don't know or understand.  And the ability to see the future, but because it comes in pieces, even to someone who is as gifted as Alison, there is never knowing all the pieces of the future.  Where would the fun be in that?  Even when we go to see a psychic, we don't really want to know everything that will happen to us. Alison never sees it all, she only gets bits and pieces, so she can't say it all much of the time, though occasionally she can see things through and through, and that is fascinating when that happens. 

Beyond Black is much more than just that.  Alison had a very unusual childhood, none of which gave her her gifts, but which she has had to overcome and escape .  She has had to create herself and her life as soon as she is old enough. Her mother is a piece of work.  There is no other word for Emmeline.  Probably one of the world's worst literary mothers. She horrified me.  All her neglect of Alison has left Alison exposed to the seedy underbelly of life. The worst part of it is, Alison's guide comes from this part of her life.  Because her guide attached to her early in her life, well before Alison had any idea she was sensitive, she had no choice.  Part of Beyond Black, is Alison exploring what she believes, and how her actions - for good or bad - have consequences.  Partly because of her awful early life, she tries to be good, in the hopes she can escape her hideous guide, Morris. And he is possibly the warning that people should be aware of when they dabble with opening themselves up to spirit and asking for guides to come - a very real danger that the guide you get, is not someone who walks a path of light. Who isn't easy to be around, dead or alive.  Isn't that scary?

Alison knows a group of sensitives that she does psychic fairs with, and it's fun to see them relate to one another, and talk behind one another's backs, just like any other group of people who have similar interests.  I know I've made this sound a heavy book when it isn't; there are moments that are really funny, and when her group of sensitives get together for their many shows together, it's hilarious how they backstab each other, and talk about one another. I also enjoyed how often many of them change what they do  in their quest to make money from New Age teachings. Alison is the most gifted of them, and they know it, even if they don't admit it. 

Part of the novel is about her relationship with Colette, who she meets during a psychic fair, and offer her a job to be her manager.  They live together for 10 years (as friends, and they have a funny moment as they sort this out too), at first idyllic, and then it begins to crumble.  The astonishing thing is the problem is Colette.  She is not a nice person, not kind, and it's only by the end of the book that I realized that Alison is trying to do good, to balance all the bad in her childhood - to balance the dark with light.  She is the unlikeliest of heroines, fat, soft-hearted, spoils herself, but as the layers of her life are revealed, it becomes the least of the things she can do for herself.  She is kind to everyone around her, and this becomes the light in the book.

 Colette is a possible sensitive, but she is unable/unwilling to open herself to it.  She is the polar opposite to Alison. Alison is willing to learn about herself, and see how her past has impacted on her, and take steps to fix it. Colette can't see the truth about anything, although she is a very good manager and organizer, what surprised me was how mean she was. She never learns, and it becomes amusing to see how she doesn't see things about herself .  The scenes between Colette and Alison, their relationship and how they talk to one another, are really well-done.  It's at the heart of the book, this relationship, and it's only at the end that I saw how Colette fit the picture of what Alison is trying to free herself from.  I really liked the ending to this book, what happened to them each, and how true it was. 

It is one of the truest accounts of being a psychic I have come across, a very good novel complete with spirits, ghosts, hauntings, spirit guides, and a look at what it means to be be a psychic, how vulnerable you really are.  Everyone wants to know, but who gives a thought to what it's like to always be open to spirits?  To feel them around you, always pressing to talk, no matter where you go?

I really enjoyed how the tarot cards are used and described, too, how Alison cares for them.  There is an amusing scene with Colette trying to read them, and how she can't.

I love how Alison frees herself, finally.  There is real evil here, real darkness, and she finds her way past it.  It's how she does it that gives this book it's heart and soul.  It's quite a journey, and quite a book.  Highly recommended, especially for anyone interested in psychic life, or is experienced in it, and for anyone who wants a good satisfying novel for RIP.  It is sufficiently creepy enough that you will never look at mediums and their guides in the same way again. 

***Edited to add: This was my third book read for RIP VII.  I'm having fun with this challenge this year.

RIP VII - the scary fun begins!!

   Oh, it's my favourite time of the year!  Autumn, glorious leaves and colours, the tinge of sadness and decay in the air as the growing year ends, the smell of wood fires, the last of the fall flowers......Thanksgiving Turkey and pumpkin pie.....and the best of all, Hallowe'en. I can't think of a better way to slip into autumn and the ending of the year than by participating in Carl's RIP 7 challenge.  Readers Imbibing Peril. As Carl explains it on his site (go here to sign up):

The purpose of R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril VII is to enjoy books and movies/television that could be classified (by you) as:

Mystery.
Suspense.
Thriller.
Dark Fantasy.
Gothic.
Horror.
Supernatural.
Or anything sufficiently moody that shares a kinship with the above.

There are two simple goals for R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril VII

1. Have fun reading.
2. Share that fun with others.

  R.I.P. VII officially runs from September 1st through October 31st. But lets go ahead and break the rules. Lets start today!!!

I'm glad he wrote the above, because I did!  I have already read two short stories and two books for this challenge!

Before anyone says how, I confess I am still on my holidays  - which end today, with Labour Day Monday.  Tomorrow I am back at work.  Summer is over, and although the calendar year says there are still two weeks left before the equinox and the seasonal change, I know in my heart that autumn is here.  So I celebrated by reading as soon as Carl put his post up, Wildwood Road by Christopher Golden, Find Me by Carol O'Connell, and two short stories from The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories.            
                                          
I am doing Peril the First, which is reading 4 books in any of the categories above.  I will also be participating in Peril the Short Story, and Peril the Screen. 

So, for the first time ever, I'm starting with two book reviews: 
                                               
 Wildwood Road - Christopher Golden
   - a ghost story.  It has some very creepy moments, some chills, and is very sad, too.  Here is the Amazon book description:
 Michael and Jillian Dansky seemed to have it all–a happy marriage, two successful careers, a bright future. But late one October evening, all that changed. Driving home from a Halloween masquerade, Michael momentarily nods off behind the wheel–and wakes to find nothing is the same.

Standing by his car is the little girl he came within a breath of running down. She leads Michael to her “home,” an empty house haunted by whispers, and sends him away with a haunting whisper of her own: “come find me.” But in the weeks to follow, it’s clear that someone–or some thing–doesn’t want Michael to find her: ominous figures in grey coats with misshapen faces are following him everywhere. And then Jillian wakes one morning replaced by a cold, cruel, vindictive woman Michael hardly recognizes as his wife. Michael must now search not only for the lost girl, but for a way to find the Jillian he's always loved, and to do so he must return to where the nightmare began. Down an isolated lane where he’ll find them, or die trying.

It was very well written, and contains an idea about ghosts and essences that I found intriguing.  A very good ghost story. 4/5

Find Me - Carol O'Connell.  A Kathy Mallory mystery, and one of the best.  At it's heart, a serial killer has been working old Route 66, killing children and burying their bodies over a large span of time, along the roadside.  Due to the nature of city and state police forces, no one is alerted for many years that these cases are related.  Not until Mallory starts to ride down the old route 66 because she has discovered that her father drove this very route when he was young.  He was before now almost a mystery to her, and when she obtains a series of letters that he wrote, she decides to follow his route to try to learn more about him.  As she starts out, a grisly discovery is made: a body of a man is discovered at the start of route 66 in Chicago, only he has one hand chopped off, and the bones of a small child's hand point up the road, the same route Mallory is taking.  The killer wants his victims found, so that he will be known for how many he killed.  Along the way, there is a caravan of parents who are being guided by a online psychiatrist, all of whom are parents of missing or dead children.  And the killer starts to pick off parents, one by one.....
                                                
This was a fabulous, gritty mystery, filled with police force/state/FBI politics, Kathy discovering more about her father, and Riker and Charles Butler, her partner and her friend respectively, chasing her as they think she is falling apart.  How the New York police intervene and figure what is going on is nothing short of brilliant.  How Kathy discovers that all is not lost for her, is a grand moment in this series, for up until now, she has been alone except for her foster parents, who gave her a home, loyalty and love when she needed it most as a child.  This is one of my favourite mystery series, not the least of which no one is perfect - all the characters are slowly being changed by their proximity to Mallory, who is brilliant if amoral as a detective.  The hardest part is the number of children who have been killed, and how the killer finds them, and the way the FBI have treated the parents in this novel - or rather, one officer in particular.   A gripping mystery, one of the best. 5/5

I will review the short stories another time, this post is long already!

 Now to the best part:
my pool of books (and this is by no means final, if I find something  catching my eye):

Beyond Black - Hilary Mantel (currently reading)
Underground - Kat Richardson (book 3 in the series)
Deadline - Mira Grant  (book 2 in the trilogy)
The Silent Land - Graham Joyce
Raising Stony Mayhall - Daryl Gregory
I Am Legend - Richard Matheson
Hell Train - Christopher Fowler
Wolf - Gillian Cross
Graveminder - Melissa Marr
The Vampire Tapestry - Suzy Mckee Charnas
Alice Hearts Welsh Zombies - Victoria Dunn (local Ottawa author)
The Hypnotist - Lars Kepler
Let the Right One In - John Ajvide Lindqvist
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen - Alan Garner *thanks to Geranium Cat over at Geranium Cat's Musings for putting this on her list!
The Moon of Gomrath - Alan Garner **and the final sequel Boneland if it comes out here
Stephen King: either The Shining, or 11//22/63
The Hallowe'en Tree - Ray Bradbury

and assorted short stories in various collections:
Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories  - ed Michael Cox and R.A Gilbert
Hallowe'en  - ed Paula Guran
The Best Horror of the Year, Vol 1 - ed Ellen Datlow
The Dark - ed Ellen Datlow
The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2010 - ed Paula Guran
Haunts: Reliquaries of the Dead - ed Stephen Jones
Ghosts by Gaslight - ed Jack Dann and Nick Gevers

 Yaaaay!  I love this challenge reading experience.  I wonder if I can fit some poetry in there too?

Now to come see your lists and see what you are reading, my dear blogging friends.

Dark Matter: A Ghost Story - a review, a little late

      I read Dark Matter by Michelle Paver way back last January.  I sadly did not review it then, and please believe me, it's not because it wasn't a good book!  On the contrary, it is a very good ghost story.  Now it's time for Carl's RIP ghost story reading challenge,  RIP 7, and so I thought I would review Dark Matter now, because really, this is a an excellent chilling ghost story, and in case anyone is looking for something really good to read for the challenge.

                                     

Dark Matter: A Ghost Story is set in the far Arctic north of Norway, in 1937.  It's written in journal form, a highly respectable way to write a ghost story.  Why is that some of the best are written in journal form, or in first person?  I think it has to do with the first-person narrative and how it always leaves an impression that it's only one view, and so it could be unreliable. There is certainly the sense in Dark Matter that the narrator, Jack Miller, is sensitive - the sight of a suicide being fished out of the Thames is what convinces him that he has to go on the expedition, even though he is the poorest, the grammar school boy to the 4 others university-educated men putting the expedition together.  He is hired as the wireless man, who will relay the three meteorological readings a day to the government, as well as maintain radio contact for the group - the communications man.  The site they have chosen, Gruhuken, is two days away from the nearest settlement, Longyearbyen.  And of course, shortly after they arrive and get settled, the camp leader Gus falls ill with appendicitis and has to be rushed to Longyearben, leaving Jack behind to monitor the weather so the survey expedition isn't a failure.  To quote so many horror movies, 'all alone, in  the dark."   The expedition is from July through the winter, only Jack only makes it as far as November.

Read what happens to him.  There is a terrible history at Gruhuken camp, a dark presence, a nameless dread that creeps into the camp after they get settled.  Watching Jack fall apart as the light leaves the sky and darkness settles in, and the increasing storms that cut him off from the world, is like watching a mind break apart - what would happen to most of us if we were thrust into this story.  It's chilling and makes for a story that simply can't be put down.

What haunts Gruhuken?  What makes everyone there feel ill at ease? No matter the light, the science, the routines, how can you cope with a creeping sense of dread?

It's similar to The Terror by Dan Simmons in that it is set in the north. I read The Terror several years ago in 2008, and it was on my list for favourite books of the year that year.  Here is my post for The Terror. It was so good that I didn't think anything could be as good set in the arctic, and then I discover this book, and yes indeed, Dark Matter is just as good as The Terror. It's shorter, and the effect of the terror is the same.  Awesome in both books.  I think that there is something about being in the far north, where the light disappears for months at a time, that makes it a perfect setting for ghost stories. Humans need the light to banish the dark.  Because in the dark, we never know for sure if it is real, or our minds playing tricks on us, which Jack struggles with and tries to reason with.   Read Dark Matter, and see what you think:  did Jack Miller break down, or was there something in the camp with him?  I think there was something with him.  I think once the light goes away, our natural tendency to believe in the unseen comes forth, and that's why we still need ghost stories, and enjoy them so much: because in our secret space within us, we know that the dark is still out there, and it is filled with what we won't let exist in the daylight.  I did enjoy the contrast of the science nature of the group, and how each tried to cope with that unscientific, unmeasurable feeling of dread.

Dark Matter is a wonderful scary ghost story, that gets at our deepest fears - fear of the dark, and what might be out there.  It is one of the best ghost stories I have read. 5/5

So if you are looking for something for Carl's challenge.........

I will be doing my post tomorrow - I'm busy putting my list together of books I have piled up over the year to read, and I am a little stunned to realize I have 18 novels so far!  and a ton of ghost/horror short story collections!

****Added a short time later:
Other reviews: 
 Bride of the Book God
I first read a review of this over at Bride of the Book God, and I've finally found her review to link to, here.  It was Bride's review, along with reviews in Entertainment Weekly, that brought this book to my attention.  Bride's review is excellent, too!

If you've read this, let me know, and I'll link to your review also.  The more the merrier!
added Sept 3/12***Geranium Cat left a comment that she read this for RIP V, so I went looking, and sure enough, she left a lovely review, here.  
Somehow I missed it then, for which I feel very sorry, as Geranium Cat and I have very similar taste in books. 

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

                                              

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell is a classic English novel about class, love, and work.  It was written in 1855, with an eye to the change in life up north with the industrial revolution - specifically, the cotton mills in Milton, in the north.  I have seen the BBC production and love it - Richard Armitage as John Thornton, mill owner, and Daniela Denby-Ashe as Margaret Hale, southern daughter of a minister who leaves the church after a collapse of faith.  They move up north where he takes up a post teaching the classics as a private tutor, going to Milton because Mr Hale has a friend from his Oxford education days who owns property up there, and offers to help get him settled. Mr Thornton owns his mill, but leases the property from Mr Bell, Mr Hale's friend. 

What's fun is that Margaret and John dislike each other on meeting.  She thinks he is a boor, and rough, and a tradesman, and he thinks she is proud, and haughty, and knows nothing.  If you think Pride and Prejudice, you are right, as Gaskell wrote this with that novel in mind.  She has changed the setting, and added a great deal about English mill-towns and working-class life that make this novel so interesting to read now, but the real story is always Margaret and John, and how they learn to really see one another beyond their initial prejudices and beliefs.

I could hardly put this book down, which enormously thrilled me.  I was hoping for a deeper understanding of John and Margaret, as the tv show shows their change of feelings, but not enough to satisfy me as to their thoughts.  North and South thrilled me with showing me the workings of John's mind. He is a great character, stern, intelligent, and self-made - the modern English man, shaped by the freeing of the Industrial Revolution, wanting their freedom from the political decisions from London.  Fiercely independent as well, he also has a conscience, and as he discovers, an ability to love deeply, hopelessly, kind of like Anne Eliot in Persuasion.  Even though the novel is mostly from Margaret's perspective, John is a stand-out figure, marching across the page, intensely alive and stealing every scene, just as he does in the tv show. 

I have spent the day pondering why I like his character so much, and why I have difficulty warming up to Margaret. At first I thought it was how she was portrayed in the series, but as I read the novel, I realized that the character of Margaret is difficult to write.  She is one of those good heroines who take in the suffering of others and often exist in relation to others.  The most interesting part of her, the revelation that she loves John, is withheld from us, in the novel - we have to read between the lines, and I dislike this.  If we get to feel her shame at the lie she tells to protect her brother, and the despair that John knows about the lie, which leads her to realize she can only care so much about his good opinion because she cares about him, it would have been good to have that clear statement of her feelings for him in the novel.  We certainly get John's!  There is no doubt that she does love him, it's just that the final chapter has a rushed feeling, when so long of the novel is the set-up and building to her realizing that she has changed - she comes to love Milton, and the man who lives there.

That aside, and that's just me, I wanted to share in Margaret's understanding of her own heart, and the joy that she loves, as well as the sorrow because she thinks he no longer does - to have that emotional depth shown from her too, clearly.  This is a small quibble though, because this is a wonderful lively novel about life in mid-century England.  I was fascinated to read about the poverty, the change of circumstance the Hales find themselves in when they leave their comfortable Rectory for the cold life of the north.  The characters are all exquisitely drawn, the Hales, the Thorntons, and the Higgins, the three families that chiefly star in the different levels of society in mid-century Victorian England.  In the midst of this, we see the dark skies above the mill towns, the heavy dark fog, the bad air caused by the machines, and the difficulties faced between those men who have achieved ownership of their mills, and those who work underneath them.  Gaskell was well aware of the working-class in England as her husband's work as a minister took him among the lower classes of Manchester, one of the great manufacturing towns of England. She could see the changes for the women who could work, the struggles of families to earn enough to live on, and the working class fear that the rich were getting rich and not paying the workers their fair share.  So in North and South, there is a strike by the workers, that draw Margaret and Mr Hale to learn about the working class needs, versus the views spoused by John Thornton.  It's interesting to read now, especially as strikes still happen, with much the same causes and beliefs as back then. Not much has changed.

One of the things that is interesting about Margaret is that she does not really have any wants or desires of her own.  She doesn't have any intellectual leanings, doesn't study on her own, doesn't want  to be a teacher or do anything.  She doesn't even want to get married, particularly, and ignores most men .  There is no primping, no fashion talk except through her cousin Edith, who is rich, bubbly, empty-headed, and beautiful, everything Margaret is not. There is no jealousy, no wanting, nothing.  They love each other and are close, but Margaret doesn't want anything for herself.  She believes in fairness, and justice, but doesn't know what they mean until she goes to Milton and finds out that she has courage and cowardice in equal measure.  So despite her not wanting to do anything but be a support to her parents, she is an interesting character as she discovers who she is as a person.  This has to be one of the first novels that didn't have a female character constantly wondering if she would marry, worried about her prospects - which I think might have made a powerful novel if Gaskell had made her penniless and family-less when her parents die, instead of having her rich aunt whisk her away to London again, and then conveniently she is left money to become an heiress.  I think if Margaret had been forced to make her way in the world, that would have been an illuminating novel, but Gaskell had already gone there with Mary Barton, so she backed down a little with this novel. Margaret Hale is a good woman, a good character, virtuous and kind and intelligent, strong and considerate. 

I am so happy I finally read this novel.  As always,  the book is better than the tv series, at least for me.   We get to see the inner thoughts of the characters, their motivations, and know everything in greater detail.  The tv series is true to the book, and the characters, and the differences are minor tweaks, except the ending, which is better in the book, I think. She would never kiss him in public as they do in the tv series at the ending!  Even though it is very romantic and I love it, on tv, I prefer  how they come together in the book - very similar, but privately.  Much more in tune with their characters.  All in all, an excellent novel.

Olympics, new Rebus, and In the Garden with Jane Austen - book review

The Olympics are taking up much of my attention this past week.  I'm getting a little reading done, though only because we had a long weekend so I was able to read in the evening the past few days and finish a book. Darkfire by CJ Sansom, to be reviewed shortly..  I love the Olympics, I enjoy how the athletes try their best.  It's exciting and thrilling and sometimes heartbreaking to watch. 

At the same time, I had to share with you my excitement when I found on Amazon today that a NEW REBUS mystery is coming out!    
 

Yes indeed, John Rebus is back!  He is teaming up with Malcolm Fox, or rather, he and Malcolm cross paths.....all the old favourites are there, Siobhan Clarke, Big Ger Rafferty, and most of all, Rebus.  Still retired, and still pushing buttons and going where no one else wants to go.  Standing In Another Man's Grave isn't released here yet, there is no date out, and I'm still ecstatic.  NEW REBUS MYSTERY!!!! 

I thought for a change of pace that I would actually review a book today.   Some of the high heat and humidity  we have been suffering under have died away today, so that I feel energized and can think straight.  I'm posting while I can.....

In the Garden With Jane Austen by Kim Wilson

This was such a beautiful book.  Gardening and Jane Austen, what could be better? Well, this book takes bits and pieces of letters Jane, her mother, and her sister Casexened to the gardens in her various homes after her death.  It even shows some of the stunning gardens and settings she would have seen in her travels around south England, and wrote about, either to her family, or used as a basis in her books.        
                                           
I learned two big things reading this book:
1) Jane loved to garden and discussed flowers, fruits and vegetables and took an interest in raising the animals that were being raised for food by her family  She learned to raise animals and grow vegetables and fruit while growing up at the parsonage in Steventon, where her father was the rector. She and Cassandra looked after the animals, the chickens and the bees, and they often had what the house gardens and land offered as their main source of food.

2) that walking paths, garden paths, were used extensively in 18th century England.  Ladies didn't run, they didn't work out!  So to keep healthy, walking paths were built into gardens - thus, the ladies could go for several miles of walking if they walked around the gardens several times, depending on where they were living and the kinds of gardens around.  It makes me feel much better about my walking and less guilty that I hate working out (so I don't). Walking is good exercise,! 

I did not know that her brother Francis was wealthy enough to manage a country estate, which they did at Goodnestone Park.  This was the same brother who she visited for a short time in London, and who supported her and her mother after their father died. Goodnestone Park has several gardens,  and Jane visited her brother and sister-in-law frequently there.

There is alist at the back of the book, of the flowers grown in Jane's time. Unfortunately the original gardens at many of the places she lived are long gone now, however the head gardener at Chawton Cottage now (which is a trust historical estate) provided a list of the flowers grown now at the Cottage, with almost all the varieties used being available during the years Jane was alive.
-Hollyhock
-lady's mantle
star of Persia (allium)
basket of gold/gold alyssum
masterwort
sweet William
 dianthus superbe
bleeding heart
geranium Buxton Blue
dogtooth daisy
Little Maid daylily
Madonna lily
winter honeysuckle, Hall's Honeysuckle
moonwort/money plant
maltese cross
yellow daylily
evening primrose
Jacob's ladder
garden phlox
Rosa Alba Belle Amour
Rosa centifolia Shailerss White Moss
black-eyed Susan
satin flower
columbine

I was delighted to see that I have some already in my garden, sweet william, daylilies, phlox, of course roses, money plant, maltese cross (though I can't grow these, they keep dying), Jacob's ladder, black-eyed Susan, alysum, and I dearly want to try growing some Hollyhock next year.

There are many pictures in this book, of the gardens and great houses that Jane would have visited, and pictures of the gardens at Chawton Cottage, old sketches if the gardens or houses don't exist any more, and delightful descriptions from Jane's letters, as well as excerpts from her novels. There are excerpts from gardeners of the time, thoughts on gardens, how to design them, what a successful 19th century garden should contain, the various uses of the garden. 

I found this book to be a delight for the soul.  It is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon, with a cup of tea,  reading about gardens and life in Jane Austen's time.  It gives a rare glimpse of how Jane used the landscape around her in her novels, and when I reread them, I know I will have a better understanding of how she used the garden settings in her books. I love that she loved her gardens and was happiest when she could have one to tend, a cottage with a garden.  She was a woman after my own heart, and since I already love her novels, this is such a deep pleasure to discover about her.