So, after having spent the past weekend and the better part of last night and today tying up half a dozen half-finished bingo reads that, naturally, hadn't shown any progress whatsoever while I was exiled on planet work overload, for the time being I'm back on track. And thus I am happy to finally be able to declare my next bingos after all and present:
The Books:
Bingo No. 6:
Read by Candlelight or Flashlight – E.T.A. Hoffmann: Das Fräulein von Scuderi (Mademoiselle de Scuderi) (read by flashlight, in bed)
A spooky mystery set in the 1680s, in the Paris of Louis XIV. Mlle. de Scuderi – an elderly gentlewoman who is in the confidence of the king and his maitresse, Madame de Maintenon – gets involved, very much against her own will, in the efforts to clear up a string of brutal robbery-murders, as well as the death of Paris's most famous jeweller. She isn't actually the person to solve the crimes, but acts as a powerful intermediary on behalf of the person wrongfully accused, and her advocacy on his behalf eventually leads to the solution.
Those familiar with the real-life Edinburgh tale of Deacon Brodie may find some elements of this story familiar.
(spoiler show)
I read this in German; Hoffmann's language is rather florid (and might well be too florid for me under different circumstances), but somehow it fits the setting and mood of this story very well.
Magical Realism – Isabel Allende: La casa de los espíritus (The House of the Spirits)
Isabel Allende's breakout success and still one of my favorite novels by her (surpassed only by Of Love and Shadows): A multigenerational allegory on the story of her native Chile – seen through the eyes of the novel's female protagonists, the women of the Trueba clan; particularly the paranormally gifted Clara, as well as the Patrón, Don Esteban Trueba (Clara's husband and the father and grandfather of their daughter Blanca and granddaughter Alba) – and at the same time, Allende's attempt to come to terms with her own family's involvement in Chile's history. A gorgeously lyrical narrative, as expansive as the plains surrounding the Trueba estate of Tres Marías; at times harsh, at other times, delicate, and a paen to the will to survive and to live exhibited by the Trueba women in the face of all adversity. Of all books labeled as exponents of magical realism, to me this one, alongside Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, is the quintessential magical realist novel.
Witches – Terry Pratchett / Neil Gaiman: Good Omens
Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's hilarious end-of-the-world spoof: Armageddon as foretold in the nice and accurate predictions of one Agnes Nutter, witch. (Time of Armageddon: Next Saturday. Place: Tadfield, Oxfordshire.) Starring one demon named CrawlyCrowley (who's got just about enough of a spark of goodness inside him to be congenial company to one particular angel), one angel named Aziraphale (who deep down inside is just about enough of a bastard to get along like a house on fire with one particular demon), the Son of Satan (one Adam Young, 11 years old, resident of Tadfield) and his friends (think the Three Investigators and the Famous Five rolled into one; hellhound named Dog included), the Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse (and the Hell's Angels got nothing on 'em), a Witchfinder Sergeant and his Private (father and son Pulsifer ... that's -ssssifer with a sharp "ess"), and of course the aforementioned Agnes Nutter (the last witch burned in England, by the great-great-great-great-grandfather of the aforementioned Witchfinder Sergeant Pulsifer) and her great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter Anathema (also a resident of Tadfield), who will run into the aforementioned Witchfinder Private Pulsifer (Newt to those who aren't into witchfinding) just in time before Armageddon rolls around; and last but not least a self-proclaimed medium named Madame Tracy.
Tremendous fun, and I'm glad I simultaneously treated myself to the book and its BBC full cast adaptation, which was broadcast as BBC 4's 2014 Christmas Special!
Genre: Horror – Change of plan: Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Originally my entry for this square was supposed to be an assortment of stories by Edgar Allan Poe (all of which I actually did (re)read as well, together with The Fall of the House of Usher (see below)), but browsing on Amazon I was reminded of the audio version of Frankenstein read by Kenneth Branagh, which had long been on my TBR, and I took a snap decision to use that as my Genre: Horror entry instead. And boy, am I glad that I did. Branagh's voice is almost too silkily gorgeous for so harrowing a tale, but if ever there was a spellbinding narrator it's him (I found that the CD is best listened to with your eyes closed); and he does perfectly bring home the pain and despair of all involved – the creature's, as well as that of his creator Victor Frankenstein – and the horror of the framework story's epistolary narrator, Captain Walton, like few others could have done. Mary Shelley's tale is a marvel in and of itself (and let's not even get into the fact that she was barely more than a teenager when it was published), but it is really lifted to yet another level by Branagh's narration.
Black Cat – Frances & Richard Lockridge: The Norths Meet Murder
A murder investigation occurring in New York City's martini- and cocktail-guzzling Greenwich Village "beautiful people" set, wherein a black cat named Pete (the titular Mr. and Mrs. North's pet, who seems to be modelled on the authors' own cat) is a witness to the murder and is ultimately also (unwittingly) instrumental in bringing the murderer to book.
I could never really get into this book; while it did have its amusing moments, by and large it read like the work of a cookie cutter, rather pedestrian mind trying to copycat Dashiell Hammett's Nick and Nora Charles of Thin Man fame. The writing dragged interminably in parts – e.g., I seriously did not need to know what the chief investigator, who isn't either of the Norths but a police lieutenant called Weigand, had for every single one of his meals during the investigation. (Obviously, it also didn't help that I have actually just read the real thing, an honest-to-God Dashiell Hammett novel, for the Halloween Bingo, so Hammett's own style and craftsmanship is still fresh in my mind at this point.) This is the first book of a series that seems to have had quite a successful and long run, so I may eventually end up taking another look at the Lockridges' writing at some later point, but it probably won't be any time soon.
Now, if Asta were a cat and not a dog ...
Bingo No. 7:
"Fall" into a Good Book – Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher
I've never been much taken with the wan, ghost-like appearance of the near-death Madeline Usher – and though I suspect Poe was at least partly writing from experience in describing Roderick Usher's symptoms of suffering, that doesn't necessarily induce me to feel particularly sympathetic to him – but let's face it: this thing is a masterpiece of gothic atmosphere and practically epitomizes, all by itself, the "haunted castle" variant of 19th century gothic writing. So, full marks for style, even if I can only take it every so often and won't necessarily be revisiting it very soon, either. (On this particular occasion, I counterbalanced it by some of the other stories I'd been contemplating for the Halloween Bingo; including and in particular the ruthlessly poignant The Masque of the Red Death and The Pit and the Pendulum, which are among my all-time favorite short stories by Poe.)
Locked Room Mystery – Gaston Leroux: Le mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room)
This book is billed as the first-ever locked room mystery, which isn't entirely correct, as by the time it was published (1907), there already were several very well-known mysteries relying on the same feature (Edgar Allan Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue, as well as Arthur Conan Doyle's Sign of Four and The Speckled Band (see below)), even though their solutions are different than this book's. The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Speckled Band are, interestingly, expressly referenced here, and it is quite obvious that Leroux was a huge admirer of Sherlock Holmes and his creator, to the point that I couldn't make up my mind to the very end to what extent he was copycatting and to what extent he was paying hommage. By and large it's an enjoyable read, though, and I can well believe that the book's contemporaneous readership considered it a novelty and was seriously wowed by its solution. (Side note: Grammar nuts reading this in French will have the rare joy of finding the chief narrative tense to be the first person plural passé simple, which greatly added to my personal reading pleasure.)
It Was a Dark and Stormy Night – Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None
Ten people are invited to an island off the Devon coast by a Mr. and Mrs. U.N. Owen, who however never make an appearance themselves. One by one, the invitees meet their death; not before, however, it is revealed that they themselves all have someone else's death on their hands in turn and have gotten away with it. – One of Agatha Christie's most famous mysteries: certainly her most-read nonseries book, and a hot contender with the likes of Murder on the Orient Express for the place of the one book that solidified her reputation as the Queen of Crime more than any others. This one's really got it all: a locked room puzzle (or several, actually), a sinister, secluded island location, Christie's trademark use of nursery rhymes (this wasn't the first such occurrence in her writing, but it's unquestionably the most notable one), a cast that – in the absence of any recognizable "detective" character – seems to consist of ambiguous, unreliable characters only, and a turntable conclusion of the sort that only Christie could have come up with.
Set in New England – Shirley Jackson: The Lottery
One of Jackson's greatest masterpieces, the terrifying story of an annual lottery (by Jackson's own account, set in her Vermont hometown, though the location is not actually named), which seems to begin as just another small town event, but is slowly and inexorably revealed to be a drawing for the victim of a ritualistic stoning. No reason for the ritual is given and the story stops short of describing the stoning itself in great detail, but it doesn't actually have to – you're chilled to the bone by the end of the story regardless; which is precisely what Jackson was aiming for, of course: she wanted people to think about the casual violence we inflict on each other each day every day without even thinking twice. (And indeed, many of Jackson's original readers, who found the story on the pages of the New Yorker in 1948, took it for fact and asked, shocked and appalled, in what part of America rituals such as these were actually permitted to take place in the middle of the 20th century.)
Full Moon – James D. Doss: White Shell Woman
Oh dear God – why, oh why did I have Mr. Doss's novels sitting on my shelves for ages without ever actually cracking a single spine while he was still alive and cranking out further installments to his series? Man, am I glad to finally have remedied that omission, even if only after his death. And to think that I actually first bought these books with the notion that they would probably appeal to me ...
I originally selected White Shell Woman for the Full Moon bingo square because the hardcover edition I own has a full moon on the cover and the series's protagonist is a Southern Ute (ex-)cop / tribal investigator named Charlie Moon. Turns out, the novel's title makes this one a match for that particular square as well, as "White Shell Woman" is actually the Ute name for the moon.
Some of the pro reviewer praise for this series runs along the lines of "what Tony Hillerman did for the Navajo, James D. Doss has done for the Ute," but this actually short-changes Mr. Doss's books in several significant ways: for one thing, judging by his author portraits, Kentucky-born Doss – unlike Hillerman – wasn't Caucasian / white himself, but even more importantly, he didn't merely copycat Hillerman; his no-nonsense, dry humor and spare but intensely atmospheric prose makes for a style all of his own, and his books' protagonists (Charlie Moon, his best friend, [white] local police chief Scot Parris, and Charlie's cranky old aunt, Ute shaman Daisy Perika) can easily stand up to Hillerman's Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee any time.
As a Halloween bingo book, White Shell Woman turned out an excellent choice, not merely on the strength of the writing and because it's a perfect match for the Full Moon square on several levels: this is also, at least in parts, a fairly spooky read, which would equally well fit the "Dark and Stormy Night," "Supernatural," "Witches" (well, Anasazi shamans / wizards), "Vampires vs. Werewolves," "Grave or Graveyard" and (if I'm right about Mr. Doss's ethnicity) "Diverse Authors" squares, as the story concerns a series of murders and suspicious deaths occurring at night (at least one of them, during a violent thunderstorm) at a Southern Colorado Anasazi dig, with one of the victims being found semi-entombed in a pit house ruin, while a hound-like creature believed to be the shape-shifting ghost of an Anasazi priest-turned-werewolf is seen by several witnesses (or is he?) – and all of this, set against the background of an old legend concerning blood rituals and human sacrifices performed by Anasazi priests in order to placate the moon goddess (White Shell Woman) and overcome a prolonged and lethal draught.
Highly recommended – even if you're not reading this for the bingo, if you're at all interested in the American Southwest and its history, culture and archeology, do yourself a favor and take a look at this novel (and Mr. Doss's "Charlie Moon" series in general). It certainly won't be the last book by Doss I've read – in fact, I'm glad I already own some of them! :)
Bingo No. 8:
Genre: Horror – Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
(See above.)
Scary Women (Authors) – Daphne Du Maurier: Jamaica Inn
17 year old Mary has made a deathbed-side promise to her mother to go and live with her aunt and uncle Patience and Joss after her mother has died. So she exchanges the friendly South Cornwall farming town where she has grown up for Uncle Joss's Jamaica Inn on the Bodmin Moor, which couldn't possibly be any more different from her childhood home.
From page 1, Du Maurier wields her expert hand at creating a darkly foreboding, sinister atmosphere, which permeates the entire story. This being Cornwall, there is smuggling aplenty, and though there are a few elements and characters I could have done without,
(most noticeably, Mary's infatuation / love affair with a "charming rogue" who is about as clichéd as they come, as is her final decision, which impossibly even manages to combine both of the associated trope endings – (1) "I'm the only woman who can match him in wildness and who can stand up to him, therefore I am the one woman who is made for him," and (2) "I am the woman who will tame him and make him respectable, therefore I am the one woman who is made for him" – which in and of itself bumped the book down a star in my rating)
(spoiler show)
the story's antagonist (Uncle Joss) in particular is more multi-layered and interesting than you'd expect, I (mostly) liked Mary, and anyway, Du Maurier's books are all about atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere, and as an entry for the "Scary Women Authors" bingo square this one fit my purposes quite admirably.
Gothic – Horrace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto
The grandfather of all gothic literature, madly dashed out in the space of a mere eight days. Intended as a (semi-)satirical response to the "Frenchification" of the 18th century English stage, where – under the influence of Voltaire's criticism of Shakespeare – scenes considered unduly "rough" and "uncultured" (like the gravediggers scene in Hamlet) were often cut entirely, while at the same time actors highly emphasized emotions considered "natural," Walpole's Castle of Otranto simultaneously created the gothic genre and acted as its very first spoof. This one has got all the ingredients that would come to characterize gothic writing from the novels of Ann Radcliffe, C.R. Maturin, Sheridan Le Fanu, and E.T.A. Hoffmann, to the late 19th century and 20th century "penny dreadfuls" and A-, B- and C-horror movies of classic Hollywood: An Italian setting, a haunted castle imprisoning rather than protecting its inhabitants, a walking / shape-shifting painting, ghosts and other preternatural phenomena galore, virtuous virgins (and wives) ruthlessly persecuted by a furious fiend, secret underground passages, abandoned orphans, lost princes, a clergyman with a colorful and sad personal history, dueling noblemen, and a young hero appearing in innocuous disguise but ultimately revealed as a white knight in shining armor. To top it off, Walpole, in the book's first preface also presented the tale as the alleged 16th century (geddit? Shakespearean-age!) translation of a medieval southern Italian legend (a sleight of hand technique that, inter alia, Umberto Eco also uses in The Name of the Rose, which bears many other, though not all elements of a gothic novel as well) ... engendering a veritable shit storm – not least on the part of critical revewers – when he revealed his bluff and stated his true purpose in the preface to the second edition.
18th century star actor David Garrick as Hamlet, depicted in the (in)famous pose upon seeing his father's ghost (left: etching from Dramatic Characters, or Different Portraits of the English Stage, 1773; right, mezzotint after a painting by Benjamin Wilson, 1756): probably the single most prominent example of what was considered "natural" acting on the 18th century stage. The "hair raising" effect was produced by a hydraulic wig.
Set in New England – Shirley Jackson: The Lottery
(See above.)
Pumpkin – Washington Irving: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
The classic Halloween (and pumpkin) story ... need I say anything about it at all?! This was a reread (albeit a bit unseasonable, in what was officially declared the warmest September of record hereabouts), and just as enjoyable as ever! Poor Ichabold Crane ...
Bingo No. 9:
Black Cat – Frances & Richard Lockridge: The Norths Meet Murder
(See above.)
Reads with BookLikes Friends – Arthur Conan Doyle: The Hound of the Baskervilles
One of my favorite tales by Arthur Conan Doyle – man, I'd so been looking forward to the buddy read experience of this book. Well, I did duly revisit it, and I'll be making a belated mad-dash attempt to join the conversation, though I expect most of the others to be done with it at this point ... it's not that long a novel, after all! :(
Buddy read "replacement post" (of sorts) with images taken in situ here. (Sigh.)
Creepy Crawlies – Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventure of the Speckled Band
A.C.D. part 2, and another all-time favorite of mine. One of the first-ever locked-room mysteries; if David Pirie (screenwriter of Dr. Bell and Mr. Doyle and the Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes TV series and author of the novels based on that series) is to be believed, based on the solution to the mysterious death of an Edinburgh woman whose husband hadn't introduced a snake but, rather, a poisonous gas into her bedchamber from a neighboring room, using the flue connecting both rooms' fireplaces to the house's ventilation system. You'll be looking for a swamp adder in your zoological dictionary in vain, incidentally – there is no such snake in India or anywhere else outside Arthur Conan Doyle's fancy. The most likely candidate he seems to have been thinking of is the Indian cobra, which famously has a "spectacled" pattern and whose venoms are extremely fast-acting neurotoxins and cardiotoxins, producing effects like those described in A.C.D.'s story.
Indian cobra (naja naja)
Full Moon – James D. Doss: White Shell Woman
(See above.)
Set on Halloween – Agatha Christie: Hallowe'en Party
One of Christie's final Poirot novels, and one of the few books that stand out favorably among her final books overall. There is the odd passage here and there where Christie reveals that she really was not – nor did she seem to want to be – in touch with the England of the 1960s, but the mystery itself is finely-crafted and holds up well; even if Christie in part revisits familiar ground (but then, she frequently did that).
Poirot is summonned to a village some 40 miles from London (in Miss Marple territory, it would seem in fact) by his friend, crime novelist (and Agatha Christie stand-in) Ariadne Oliver, after a young girl has been found murdered at a Halloween party that Miss Oliver happens to have attended. The dead girl, during the preparations for the party, had proclaimed that she had once witnessed a murder – and though everybody is quick to declare her to have been a braggart and a liar who was probably just trying to impress the celebrity novelist in attendance, Poirot is reluctant to agree with that judgment, arguing that someone obviously took her words at face value and chose to kill her rather than running the risk of discovery.
Currently Reading:
Diverse Authors Can Be Spooky Fun – Sherman Alexie: Reservation Blues
Finished – Update 1:
Creepy Crawlies – Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventure of the Speckled Band
Supernatural – Arthur Conan Doyle: The Sussex Vampire
Set in New England – Shirley Jackson: The Lottery
Finished – Update 2:
Ghost Stories and Haunted Houses – Henry James: The Turn of the Screw
Read by Candlelight or Flashlight – E.T.A. Hoffmann: Das Fräulein von Scuderi (Mademoiselle de Scuderi) (read by flashlight, in bed)
Finished – Update 3:
Young Adult Horror – Oscar Wilde: The Canterville Ghost
Pumpkin – Washington Irving: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Finished – Update 4:
Free Space – Dashiell Hammett: The Dain Curse
Set on Halloween – Agatha Christie: Hallowe'en Party (novel)
Finished – Update 5:
Scary Women (Authors) – Daphne Du Maurier: Jamaica Inn
Classic Horror – E.T.A. Hoffmann: Der Sandmann (The Sandman)
Finished – Update 6:
Locked Room Mystery – Gaston Leroux: Le mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room)
Finished Update 7:
Vampires vs. Werewolves – Terry Pratchett: Feet of Clay (Night Watch novel)
Finished – Update 8:
Witches – Terry Pratchett / Neil Gaiman: Good Omens
Black Cat – Frances & Richard Lockridge: The Norths Meet Murder
It Was a Dark and Stormy Night – Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None
Finished – Update 9:
Magical Realism – Isabel Allende: La casa de los espíritus (The House of the Spirits)
Genre: Horror – Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Reads with BookLikes Friends – Arthur Conan Doyle: The Hound of the Baskervilles
Gothic – Horrace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto
"Fall" into a Good Book – Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher
Full Moon – James D. Doss: White Shell Woman
TA's Reading List:
Read by Candlelight or Flashlight – E.T.A. Hoffmann: Das Fräulein von Scuderi (Mademoiselle de Scuderi) (novella)
Magical Realism – Isabel Allende: La casa de los espíritus (The House of the Spirits) (novel)
Witches – Terry Pratchett: Wyrd Sisters (or possibly Terry Pratchett / Neil Gaiman: Good Omens (novel)
Genre: Horror – Edgar Allan Poe: The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether (short story); alternately E.A. Poe: The Tell-Tale Heart or The Masque of the Red Death (also short stories). Change of plan: Mary Shelley: Frankenstein.
Black Cat – Ngaio Marsh: Black as He's Painted (novel) (black cat central to the story and therefore also black cat on the cover of the stand-alone paperback edition) change of plan: Frances & Richard Lockridge: The Norths Meet Murder (novel)
Diverse Authors Can Be Spooky Fun – Possibly Edwidge Danticat (ed.): Haiti Noir (short story anthology); otherwise TBD Settled on: Sherman Alexie: Reservation Blues.
Ghost Stories and Haunted Houses – Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (novella)
Young adult horror – Oscar Wilde: The Canterville Ghost (novella)
Scary Women (Authors) – Daphne Du Maurier: Jamaica Inn (novel)
Reads with BookLikes Friends – Arthur Conan Doyle: The Hound of the Baskervilles (novel)
Grave or Graveyard – Edgar Allan Poe: The Cask of Amontillado (short story); alternately Ngaio Marsh: Grave Mistake (novel) or Umberto Eco: The Prague Cemetery
Genre: Mystery – Peter May: The Blackhouse (novel)
Free Space – Dashiell Hammett: The Dain Curse
Gothic – Horrace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (novel)
Creepy Crawlies – Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventure of the Speckled Band (short story)
"Fall" into a Good Book – Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher (short story)
Locked Room Mystery – Gaston Leroux: Le mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room) (novel)
It Was a Dark and Stormy Night – Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None (novel)
Set in New England – Shirley Jackson: The Lottery (short story)
Full Moon – James D. Doss: White Shell Woman (novel) (full moon on the cover, and the protagonist / investigator is called Charlie Moon); alternately Dennis Lehane: Moonlight Mile
Vampires vs. Werewolves – Terry Pratchett: Feet of Clay (Night Watch novel)
Supernatural – Arthur Conan Doyle: The Sussex Vampire (short story)
Classic Horror – E.T.A. Hoffmann: Der Sandmann (The Sandman) (short story)
Pumpkin – Washington Irving: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (short story)
Set on Halloween – Agatha Christie: Hallowe'en Party (novel)
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