I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN (AUGUST 2024 EDITION)

Momentum – I has it! More or less. Anyway, books, yo.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I’ve seen this book in the classics section for decades, and probably would have tried it sooner if I’d realised it was a ghost story. Okay, I didn’t look that closely, and you should never judge a book by its cover etc and so on, but honestly to me it looked like your average late-19th century novel, more Bronte sisters than Edgar Allan Poe. It was only maybe six years ago that I found out it was a ghost story, and it was only after watching The Haunting of Bly Manor on Netflix (and finding out afterwards it was based on this book) that I finally decided to give it a go.

As you may know, the narrative is framed as a manuscript written by a woman who served as a governess at Bly Manor for two young children, Miles and Flora. It’s all idyllic and wonderful until she starts seeing strange people wandering about, who resemble two former employees at Bly who the housekeeper, Mrs Grose, knows to be dead. The governess’ terror grows as she senses a connection between the ghosts and the children. But are the ghosts real? Or just in her head?

I must confess that this didn’t really work for me at all, for while the basic story is okay, it’s also liberally festooned, to the point of being encumbered, I dare say, with the sort of overblown emotional melodrama that is somewhat typical of Victorian-era fiction, which I’ve always found too cheesy to take seriously, the disagreeable effect of which is arguably exacerbated by James’ demonstrable penchant for writing really long and complex sentences, with lots and lots of commas, as if to jam as much information, both relevant and tangential, as possible into one complete, and grammatically correct, sentence, not unlike the one I’m writing now. Which is okay if you’re into that kind of thing. I am not.


Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I tried Octavia Butler once a long time ago with Mind of My Mind, and for whatever reason, it really didn’t click with me. But it wouldn’t be the first time I wasn’t ready for a particular book or author when I first tried them, and in recent years this book and its sequel Parable of the Talents have been getting namedropped as an increasingly relevant and prescient vision of dystopian America (i.e. the book – published in 1993 – is set in 2024 in an America that is splintering apart under the effects of climate change and an authoritarian Christian nationalist Presidency, where the police and fire depts are corrupt, and slavery has returned in the form of indentured servitude to corporations that are privatising cities). So when I came across this copy during my last trip stateside, I decided that was enough of a hook for me to try Butler again.

The story is the diary of Lauren Olamina, a teenage girl suffering from hyperempathy (the ability to literally experience the pain and suffering of others) who lives in a gated community near Los Angeles that is by no means wealthy, but has enough resources to be a target for the gangs, pyromaniac drug addicts and desperate homeless people outside. Disillusioned by the Biblical teachings of her Baptist pastor father, Lauren develops her own theological concept of God that she calls “Earthseed”, which she believes is humanity’s only hope for survival. Lauren also educates herself on how to survive in the wild, as she also believes her community will inevitably be overrun. Which it is, after which she heads north with a handful of survivors in hope of finding refuge and work.

To get the obvious out of the way, while I think the comparisons of Butler’s dystopian 2024 to real-life 2024 are somewhat overblown, her vision certainly seems a lot more plausible now than it probably did in 1993 – we may not be there yet, but we do seem to be headed in that direction. Which is why, as dystopian novels go, it’s one of the bleakest I’ve ever read, and yet one of the most powerful. As with most SF, it’s not really about prediction – it’s about how humans respond to the breakdown of society, the moral/ethical choices we’re forced to make to survive, and how much of our humanity we can retain in the process. In this regard, Parable of the Sower is brutally honest and mostly realistic. Anyway, I’m sold on the sequel and will be hunting down a copy of that.

(PS: I’m not big on trigger warnings, but if you like dogs, this may be an especially tough read for you.)



Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I haven’t seen the TV series, but I have read Matt Ruff before (Bad Monkeys) and found him entertaining enough, and I have read some HP Lovecraft as well, so I figured this was worth a try. I also like the basic conceit here, which is to essentially write an episodic homage to Lovecraftian horror that also acknowledges Lovecraft’s notorious racism by setting the story in Jim Crow-era America and asking the question: which is scarier – tentacled horrors or being stopped by racist cops? Ask a white person and a black person in America, and you may well get two different answers.

The story focuses on the family of Atticus Turner, who returns to Chicago from the Korean War to find that his father Montrose has gone missing in Ardham, MA while investigating a family secret. Atticus goes to find him with sister Letitia and uncle George (publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide, a fictional version of the Green Book), which leads to an encounter with Caleb Braithwaite, an ambitious member of a secret sorcerer society called The Order of the Ancient Dawn, who manipulates the Turners throughout the book. Along the way the various members of the Turner family encounter a haunted house, a gateway to parallel universes, cursed books and devil dolls. And of course, plenty of racists.

Ruff’s writing is accessible and reasonably well paced, and makes the most of his universe by using an episodic structure to support a broader story arc (indeed, he originally conceived Lovecraft Country as a TV series). And while the horror stuff is good, it’s the parallels with racism that make it more interesting, as well as the fact that Atticus and George are science-fiction fans who have also read Lovecraft, which gives them something of an edge in navigating the supernatural landscape. And while the climax seemed a bit far-fetched, it does deliver a satisfying ending. There’s a sequel, and it’s in the to-read pile, so there you go.

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