I read and consumed American Gods (you can read that review here) and have watched and been consumed by the brilliant take on the book through the Starz drama starring the immensely talented Ricky Whittle. The Ocean at the End of the Lane has been on my t0-read list for quite some time and I was pleased to see it show up as available on my library queue.
For such a short story, TOEL packs a lot of narrative and drama into its pages. A man returning to his hometown for a funeral decides to pay a visit to his childhood home and is drawn to the farmhouse down the lane from where he grew up. A girl he once knew, Lettie Hempstock lived there and he feels compelled to revisit her home. Upon arriving, his childhood begins to come back to him, in particular a rather harrowing few days following his seventh birthday party.
A lonely and friendless child, the boy happens upon Lettie Hempstock while his father is being questioned by police after a dead body is found in the family car parked on the Hempstock property line. Lettie decides to take the boy with her on an errand. Things around Lettie aren't quite what they seem and while on their errand in Lettie's fields, the boy is bitten on the foot by something. Later that evening, the boy finds a worm in a hole in his foot and attempts to pull it out. The following day, a woman bearing a strange resemblance to the worm arrives at the home to occupy a spare room in the house and serve as the boy and his sister's nanny while their mother returns to work. The nanny, Ursula Monkton brings with her a variety of strange happenings.
There are many things that are really impossible to briefly explain over the rest of the book, but the boy fights against Ursula Monkton for his freedom and the freedom of his family.
The book is so wonderfully strange, but very rich in detail and imagination. In finishing it last night, I was thinking about my own childhood, and what kind of truths I may have learned that are now forgotten. What kinds of things do children understand that adults will never know? What fullness and richness of experience do children live in when everything is new and instructive. I like asking myself these questions and I live even better the books which cause me to ask them.
5/5 Stars.
I
know I haven't been doing as many reviews lately. My time with the audiobooks has been seriously curtailed this last month. Back in August a friend of mine told me she was coming to Nashville to watch some live tapings of her favorite podcasts and asked if I'd be interested in attending. I agreed and set off to download a couple episodes so I could become familiar enough not to embarrass myself at the tapings.
Well, turns out one podcast, The Adventure Zone, was a 69 episode narrative odyssey so my audiobooks took a backseat for all of September and most of October as I attempted to absorb 80 hours of audio in preparation for the show. Then, coming off the finale episode, I had one of those weeks where nothing else seemed appealing. Have you ever finished a book series like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings that left you so absorbed for so long that everything else seemed dull and pale in comparison? That is what The Adventure Zone did to me. That a graphic novel is coming out in July is delightful, but I'm really feeling sad that the journey is over. If you are into fantasy fiction at all, you should check it out. The podcast got better and better as it went along (check out this write-up in the Austin Chronicle).
But, alas, I now have a longer commute, and aside from re-listening to some of my favorite episodes (which I have done), there seemed nothing for it but to get back on the audio horse and start listening again. So I turned back to the Berlin Noir series and Bernie Gunther.
The Pale Criminal kicks off in 1938, a year or so after the last installment in the series. Bernie now has a partner, a character whose name I won't even try to spell, and at the beginning of the story, a new client. The client is a rich woman with a troubled son. The mother is being blackmailed for the return of lewd letters the son wrote to his therapist. Exposure of such a homosexual nature could result in a death sentence in Nazi Germany. Bernie agrees to find out who is doing the blackmailing and recover the rest of the letters.
In the meantime, it looks like the head of the criminal police force also needs Bernie's help in uncovering a serial murderer who is kidnapping, raping, and killing young German girls in Berlin. The investigation of which unravels quite a few insidious plots along the way.
I really appreciated the skill with which the two mysteries were wrapped together. There was so much richness added regarding the background of the times and the environment in which Bernie is trying to solve these crimes. Real characters like Karl Maria Wiligut, Otto Rahn, Himmler and Heydrich play large roles in the story. And because of the murky details surrounding Rahn's death, and Wiligut's "retirement" from the SS, Kerr has a lot of room to work in the details of those circumstances to his own fictional devices.
This continues to be an excellent series.
4/5 Stars.
Being an Air Force veteran, it's virtually impossible to be unfamiliar with Charles Lindbergh and his non-stop flight from New York to Paris in 1927. I was also aware that his child was kidnapped at some point thereafter. But the details of these things had become fuzzy if they had ever been present at all.
The Aviator's Wife tells the story of Anne Lindbergh, Charles wife and eventual widow. I was really impressed with Melanie Benjamin's detail and handling of Anne's life story. The novel did a good job of expressing Anne's desire for Charles and their complicated relationship. It also felt very honest about her grief at losing her oldest child to kidnap and murder, a horror I can't even imagine going through as a mother.
While at times I became exasperated at the repetitive nature of some of Anne's statements, it provides a a baseline for where Anne was at during her marriage to Charles. Equally satisfying was the fact that Charles motivations were murky and never really cleared up even to the end of the novel. I'm interested in reading more about this fascinating family. I wonder what Charles and Anne's children think of this book being out there in the world.
3.5/5 Stars
