A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

This just might be the scariest book I’ve ever read. Reading it in January, along with Wylding Hall, makes for a great year of reading horror even if I don’t read anything else in that league for the rest of the year.

The Red Tree is one of my favorite horror genres, the “found manuscript.” This one is especially satisfying in that manner because it involves found manuscripts within found manuscripts within found manuscripts.

It begins with an introduction by the editor of deceased writer Sarah Crowe, explaining that the journal she kept in the last months before her suicide was mysteriously mailed to her. The editor then details her trip to the house in rural Rhode Island that Sarah had been renting when she died; she visits the tree that she says is often mentioned in the journal, but doesn’t dare go into the basement...

Is your skin creeping already? Mine was. But it gets exponentially scarier as it goes along. Similarly to Wylding Hall, this is the restrained, things-glimpsed-from-the-corner-of-your-eye, minimal gore type of horror. Which, to me, is nearly always the scariest kind.

Sarah rented the house on the pretense of finishing an overdue book which she’s completely blocked on, and also to escape from reminders of her ex-girlfriend Amanda’s suicide. She discovers after she’s already moved in that the house was previously occupied by Charles Harvey, a professor who also killed himself; in the extremely creepy basement, she discovers his unfinished work of nonfiction documenting the horror surrounding the red oak growing near the property, and also the typewriter and ream of onionskin paper he wrote it on. Using the same typewriter and same paper, Sarah begins a journal.

Then she learns that her landlord rented the attic of the house to Constance, an artist from Los Angeles. And that’s when things start to get really weird...

The Red Tree is incredibly atmospheric, beautifully written, and with an unusual, vivid main character in Sarah, who is hard to get along with and easy to love. It has the unusual quality of being both an easy read in terms of prose and extremely dense in terms of narrative complexity.

This is an extremely ambiguous book, which deploys multiple possible explanations, along with a total lack of explanation, to paradoxically satisfying effect.

Sarah is, at the very least, depressed. She has seizures, which can cause blackouts, and drinks despite medical advice not to. In her journal, she confesses to a number of lies in the past, in addition to sometimes outright claiming to have made up or fictionalized aspects of things she just wrote about. And, of course, she’s a fiction writer. In other words, she’s an extremely unreliable narrator.

But maybe she’s not that unreliable. There is a ton of local lore about that tree. Maybe it’s all true. But how reliable is the manuscript she finds? Sarah says she can’t find sources for much of what’s in it.

And then there’s Constance. She’s present for a number of the creepy supernatural moments. But there’s reasons to question her reliability, too.

This rundown makes the book sound like a “magic or madness?” type of story, but that’s much too simplistic. The Red Tree resists simple explanation, instead opening up layers and layers of horror, grief, obsession, history, myth, identity confusion, dreams, and art. It rewards close attention, and I’m sure it will reward re-reading, but not to find straightforward answers. There are none.

Huge spoilers below. I’d love to discuss this book and hear others’ thoughts on it!

( Read more... )

This was the first thing I'd read by Kiernan, and now I want to read everything.

The Red Tree



This should win some kind of prize for most inappropriate cover. It looks like a standard urban fantasy, and it is not even remotely that. It needs a cover indicating literary horror. This sort of thing:

A sweet and extremely relatable F/F second-chance romance by the author of Briarley.

Olivia is on a one-week trip to Florence with her college class when she spots someone she hasn’t seen in seven years – Ashlin, who was her best friend when they were both thirteen, before that relationship came to a disastrous end. She can’t resist approaching her, though she’s nervous about whether Ashlin will still be mad at her.

From then on, the story alternates chapters from when Ashlin and Olivia were both thirteen, and in the present day when they’re both 21. At first it feels very cozy and idyllic, but it soon becomes clear that that’s a reflection of how Olivia idolized Ashlin. The depiction of what it feels like to be 13 and have a friend who’s your entire world and who understands you like no one ever has before, and how you create a two-person reality together, is incredibly vivid. And so is the depiction of the downside of that, and the intensity of being 13 in general.

There’s nothing melodramatically tragic going on – just ordinary pain and ordinary joy –
but it’s intense in a way that captures the intensity of those particular experiences. If you’ve ever experienced social anxiety or had a bad experience trying to introduce a new friend to old friends… let me put it this way, I am still gunshy about that.

It’s a romance, and a very believable, sensual one at that, but a bit of an unconventional one in that its main concerns are slightly to the side of the usual concerns of romance. (Perception, memory, a specific set of real-life experiences – there’s a moment involving crushed magnolias that is just brilliant.) The ending is more romance-conventional than the rest of the book, and I could have used it being either more open-ended or for it to be longer.

A lovely story and one that I think a lot of you could really relate to.

Only $2.99 on Kindle: Ashlin & Olivia

Letty Campbell inherited a chicken farm in Yorkshire from her aunt. Two years later, she’s got her hands full with an obstreperous rooster, an ex-girlfriend with a too-good-to-be-true financial offer, a librarian who’s coming out late and needs Letty to show her the lesbian social scene, and the librarian’s straight niece who loves cars.

The chicken farm is a great setting though occasionally under-researched, the 90s lesbian scene in England is also a great setting that clearly didn’t need to be researched at all as it has the distinct ring of lived experience, and Letty is a hilarious narrator.

What could possibly go wrong with this book? Well, after 168 pages of hijinks in a book that’s 177 pages total, we suddenly get this (not offensive, just bizarre): ( Read more... )

96% delightful romantic comedy with a fun setting and charming cast, 4% OMGWTFBBQ mystery/action plot that comes 100% out of nowhere. I can’t help suspecting that the latter was inserted to make the book more commercial, but it is incredibly obviously not where Fritchley’s heart is – so much so that in the wrap-up, Letty mentions that if we want an explanation for the action plot, we can read the newspaper. No we can’t, this is FICTION!

I enjoyed this a lot overall and there are definitely worse flaws a book could have than a sudden swerve into “Oops, I guess this needs a mystery plot, who cares if it makes any sense?” However, I have been tipped off that my favorite supporting characters are only in the first book, so I’ll probably leave it at that.

Chicken Run (Letty Campbell Mysteries)

(Well, I read it on Friday.)

A gorgeous, unusual, post-apocalyptic F/F science fantasy riff on “Beauty and the Beast.”

Yen is a young scholar living with her mother, the town healer, in a world that was ruined and then abandoned by the mysterious Vanishers. When her mother makes a desperate attempt to save a dying patient, the dragon Vu Con, answers her call… and takes Yen back with to her beautiful and deadly home, full of magic and science and alien geometries.

This short novel is amazingly inventive at every turn, with magic made of visible words, alien viruses, and medicine understood in both ancient and futuristic terms. The central romantic relationship is F/F, but romance is only one aspect of the web of relationships: familial, friendship, surrogate family, teacher-student, wary co-existence. The base culture is Vietnamese, with both Eastern and Western folklore and fairytale elements. It’s set in a very dark world, but is ultimately about people (and spirits) grappling with the damage of the past and trying to change things for the better in the future. I liked it a lot.

In the Vanishers’ Palace

A lovely play about loneliness, missed and found connections, fame, love, fidelity and infidelity, and of course trust. Six characters are connected by a web of complex relationships, some romantic, some not, some unrequited, some committed, some casual, some hard to define, all changing.

Cody is a singer who just became famous; Becca is his fiancee; Leah is a singer who’s been well-known for a long time but is no longer a rising star; Gretchen is a dressmaker who’s making Becca’s wedding dress; Holly is a young groupie; Roy is a lonely DJ. The heart of the story is an unexpected slow-build romance between two of the women, which was not where I expected the story to go when I first read it and was a very pleasant surprise.

I’ve never seen it performed but it reads well, though Roy, who steals compulsively when he gets nervous, probably comes across better in performance. In reading, he’s the one character who felt more like a concept than a real person. Otherwise, though highly structured in that everyone is connected to each other in no more than one degree of separation, it has a very realistic feeling. It makes me think of looking out a window and seeing people passing by on the street, and wondering what relationship you might have with each one if you actually got to meet.

This is my favorite play by Dietz. He’s best-known for Lonely Planet, which I also like a lot, a two-person play about two gay men. Jody owns a map shop, and his friend Carl keeps coming in with a chair, which he leaves behind when he goes until the shop and stage are filled with them. Each chair belonged to someone who died of AIDS, and the cluttered stage becomes both a visualization of the space that mourning and fear takes up in our minds, and an AIDS quilt-like memorial for those who have died.

Singing Again at Seven Bells. Being the journal of Captain Annabel Blackwater, terror of the deep. A short and disproportionately delightful story of a mermaid and a female pirate captain, drenched in briny atmosphere. The style is great and idiosyncratic, without a word wasted, and the central relationship is creepy and beautiful and compelling. (This isn't the harmless kind of mermaid, but more of a siren.)

She planned to eat me, after all, when she first sang me out.

She told me so herself, tho - I confess - I knew it from the start.

We all have our indelicate desires.

The story is from Original Works Exchange. I haven't had a chance to read much, but there's a lot that looks good. Here's all the F/F

One Curse Tablet, Slightly Used. Historical RPF (real person fiction, i.e., historical fiction) - Sappho. I loved everything about this story, from the title to the premise to the intensity to the command of diction, which slides easily from high to low, from prose to poetry to invocation.

I present Sappho of the honey mouth to you, Persephone, goddess of dead things.
May she feel no love in her heart or pleasure in her bed unless she return to me.
May you bind her head to my head, her thighs to my thighs, her lips to my lips.
And may this curse tablet fucking work already, goddess.
May she come back.

Right Answers. Heathers (movie and musical). Sharp, bittersweet.

Chandler knows these questions all have right answers. There are right and wrong answers about everything in high school, in society. A right answer to the public is to wear plaid coats with shoulder pads, party late every time you get a chance, and hook up with guys. A wrong answer is to have yourself a girlfriend with a biting sense of humor and a morbid mind.

Chandler has been getting more and more questions wrong these days.

望女成龙 (from daughters, to dragons.) Original Fiction. Dragon shifter/human. Sensual, evocative, with a very dragon-y dragon.

wang nu cheng long --

(lit.) hoping one’s daughter becomes a dragon, a subversion of the Chinese idiom that wishes for this fate for a son— or

(fig.) to hope that one’s child succeeds in life, that they’ll chase down their dreams and grasp them, eyes wide and arms outstretched, hopeful and playful and so, so shining.

this is the story of a beast who shed her human skin.

faites-lui mes aveux. Original Works. Soprano/Mezzo in Pants. Absorbing backstage romance with tons of fun opera details and a great ensemble cast. It parallels the onstage and backstage stories, which I always enjoy in this genre.

Leah Beecham is cast as Marguerite, and that's only the first surprise that the university Operatic Society production of Faust brings with it. And Ellie Everett should probably have kept out of OpSoc altogether if she wanted to avoid Music Department drama, but it's a bit late now, because she's got the part of Siebel...

I am still reading Poisons (it's 21K words) but I am so far very much enjoying this well-written murder mystery set in an intricate fantasy world.

This blisteringly intense novel is one of the best books I’ve read all year. It’s a character portrait in gorgeous prose, has elements of magical realism and suspense thriller, and was impossible for me to put down once I’d started. (It’s short enough to read in one sitting.) So I’ll put off the plot description for a moment.

A lot of people have said recently that they only want fluffy escapism right now. I completely understand that, and if so, definitely avoid this as it's the opposite of that. For me there’s always a fine line between stories so closely aligned with the most upsetting aspects of the world or my life that I can’t tolerate them, and stories that deal with them in a way that’s cathartic, makes me feel less alone and more hopeful, and is exactly what I want and need at that moment. For me, So Lucky was the latter.

Mara Tagarelli works for an HIV/AIDS nonprofit, is a serious martial artist, and is in a 14-year relationship with a woman named Rose. Then, one day, Rose leaves her, and she trips over nothing and falls. Shortly afterward, she’s diagnosed with MS, and in very short order loses her job, her ability to do karate, most of her social life, and all of her life as she knew it.

Because many individuals, the medical establishment, and society in general are absolutely terrible to people with chronic illnesses and disabilities, she starts a new nonprofit for people with MS. But she’s stalked by something that may be a hallucination (she’s taking medication that could cause that, and also has lesions on her brain) or her illness given physical form and malevolence or the criminals who have been robbing and murdering people with MS.

Whether or not they’re after her, those criminals are undoubtedly real… and when Mara investigates their crimes, she comes up with a disturbing theory that might be key to catching them. But who listens to an angry sick woman?

This novel captures justified female rage like little I’ve read before. I’ve been that angry sick woman who everyone ignores and disbelieves. Maybe you can’t live on anger alone, but women are told so automatically that they’re not allowed to be angry at all that it was very satisfying to read about Mara’s fury, along with her fear and helplessness and determination and refusal to be the meek docile patient that everyone wants her to be.

She hates being sick, she hates being in a body that feels terrible all the time, she hates losing the ability to do things she loved, she hates the way people act like utter assholes if you’re sick or disabled, and she refuses to be ashamed about any of that. And if she’s really on to something about those murders, she’s not going to let herself be brushed off until she gets to the bottom of it.

The book isn’t all anger – she also gets an adorable kitten and some new human connections – but it tosses the usual disability/illness narratives out the window, starting with the ones about how you’re supposed to be grateful for all it has to teach you and for giving you a new appreciation for the things that really matter (nature of those things unclear, given that your illness/other people's reactions to your illness/your reactions to your illness have destroyed not only everything you love in life but also the relationships that are supposed to be your support in this difficult time), how you're supposed to love your new body (that used to supply you with good feelings but now supplies you only with pain, nausea, and weakness), with a detour to the obligatory support group that are supposed to be helpful and supportive but are instead incredibly depressing.

Mara is extremely self-sufficient, and creates some of her own problems by trying to stay that way as it gets increasingly impossible. But when you've already lost everything, is it worthwhile to make your life easier by giving up the last thing you have left, which is the core component of your very self?

I found the book hugely cathartic. Sometimes when things suck, what you really want is for other people to just admit that they suck. Attitudes to illness remind me sometimes of the story of the Fisher King, who had a wound that could not be healed until someone asked him what was wrong.

We're so stuck in illness narratives, each neatly and arbitrarily tailored to a particular disease, that leave no room for individual people's feelings or identities or even the individual process of their illness.

Breast cancer? PINK! Yay female power! Buy pink stuff! Stop crying about it, it's just a breast. Be strong!

All cancer: Fight fight fight! If you're afraid you might die, you're giving in, and then if you do die it's your fault. Fight fight fight!

AIDS: We have drugs now! Just take care of yourself like if you had diabetes, no one dies of that any more.

MS/CFE: Shut up, crazy woman, you're not really sick. See a psychiatrist.

Anything hard to diagnose with 100% compliance to the strict diagnostic criteria in the manual: Shut up, crazy woman, you're not really sick. See a psychiatrist.

I could go on, but So Lucky isn't really about that, though it does touch on the differences between illness communities. It's mostly about looking into the abyss and giving it the finger.

If that's the mood you're in right now, So Lucky is for you. It’s beautifully written, suspenseful, uncompromising, unpredictable, and has a very satisfying ending. It also has a great cover and is a very nice physical object (the image doesn’t do it justice), so if that’s a consideration I would get the hard copy rather than the ebook.

So Lucky

“Passing Strange” is a standalone historical fantasy novella, mostly set in San Francisco in 1940. In the present day, an elderly woman sells the original chalk painting of a pulp horror magazine cover, an action which is clearly part of an elaborate, years-spanning plan. Then the story goes back in time to when the painting was created, and focuses on the queer women who have created a vibrant community despite having to live partly (but not entirely) in hiding.

I absolutely loved this story, but it’s hard to review because a lot of it is unpredictable and more fun to discover unspoiled. For instance, while the rough outline of what happens at the end is somewhat predictable, other fairly basic plot elements, such as who the love story is about, take a while to become clear.

It’s full of Dick Francis-worthy fascinating details about all sorts of things – how to use fish to make fixative for a chalk painting and why you need to, laws against women wearing fewer than three items of feminine clothing, what people called avocados and pizzas in 1940 (alligator pears and tomato pies) and where you’d go to get them in San Francisco, how to magically rearrange space with origami – and it’s all both fun to read about and necessary to the plot. The characters and place and milieu feel incredibly real and vivid, and the language is lovely.

Contains period-typical homophobia, sexism, racism, violence, and past child abuse. But it’s not about how people are ground down and destroyed by oppression and trauma, it’s about how people survive and thrive and find happiness and build community within a system that doesn’t even acknowledge their humanity, and so is a story that was particularly good to read right now.

“Hey Presto” and “Caligo Lane” are short stories about supporting characters from “Passing Strange,” and are both in Klages’ collection Wicked Wonders.

“Hey Presto” is about Polly, a teenage girl who wants to be a scientist and whose father is a stage magician, and is about how they begin to repair their previously distant relationship when she has to sub in for his assistant. It’s sweet and has nice stage magic details. (Note: I’m reviewing it as part of FF Friday only because of its connection with “Passing Strange;” to my recollection, Polly’s sexual orientation never comes up one way or another in either story.)

“Caligo Lane” is a lovely, heartbreaking short story about Frannie and her magical shortcut-creating origami. Either it’s set several years after “Passing Strange” or isn't quite consistent with it, as her abilities seem significantly stronger here. It has a long, beautiful description of her doing a work of topographical magic that’s clear and detailed enough to read as an instruction manual, and hypnotic enough to be a spell itself.

Wicked Wonders

Passing Strange

A novellette set after Second Nature, focused on a different set of characters but involving some of the repercussions of the events of that novel. Humans who find out about the existence of the shapeshifting Wrasa are no longer automatically assassinated, but it’s a fragile peace and they still might be assassinated. Therefore, interspecies dating is still forbidden. Which makes it difficult when ER psychiatrist and coyote shifter Shelby falls for her human co-worker, ER nurse Nyla.

Shelby’s a flawed Wrasa, with the metabolism and enhanced senses but unable to shift at will, but still bound by the rules of the community. Still, given her lowly status, maybe no one will notice if she just goes on out on one date... (One incredibly awkward date, as Wrasa normally bring gifts of meat rather than flowers, Nyla’s chihuahua senses Shelby’s Wrasa nature and doesn’t like it one bit, Wrasa can’t see projected movies very well owing to their non-human vision, and they run into a pair of very suspicious fox shifters at the theatre.)

If Shelby tells Nyla her secret, she’ll be putting Nyla at risk and making herself look like a lunatic, as she can’t shift to prove it. But if she doesn’t, how can they ever have a real relationship?

Another nicely detailed and solidly enjoyable lesbian shifter story from Jae. Shelby’s enhanced senses and the Wrasa culture details make for a very fun story, and the central dilemma is convincing and not easily dealt with. I’m guessing Shelby and Nyla will turn up again or at least be heard from in the next book in the series, True Nature, as while this novelette resolved their romance, the larger obstacles are still at play by the end.

Manhattan Moon