The Little Stranger

One of my all-time favorite books is Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith, a pair of twin tales about the intertwined lives of a Victorian guttersnipe and a privileged, sheltered young lady. I’d already loved Waters for Tipping the Velvet, a literary box of bon-bons with a bold lesbian narrator whose picaresque journey through Victorian London’s music halls, back alleys, bedrooms, lands her in the arms of the organized labor movement. I’d loved the creepy, seductive Affinity, with its world of mediums and apparitions.

But Fingersmith manage to push every pleasure button in my system. Not only was it a ripping good read, but its intricate narrative structure provided twists and turns and double-crosses that made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Charles Dickens would’ve been proud. Appalled, and proud.

When I recently finally got my hands on Waters’ latest novel, The Little Stranger, I was a little apprehensive, however. Waters’ post-Fingersmith effort, The Night Watch, was set during and after World War II London, and though it was beautifully-written, it wasn’t exactly exciting. When I saw that The Little Stranger was also set after the war, I was slightly apprehensive. I needn’t have been.

Like The Turn of the Screw, The Little Stranger is a ghost story. Narrated in memoir style, the book is the tale of a physician of limited stature and means who becomes increasingly involved in the madness of a once-proud family of a country squire. Both the family and their rambling estate —which is the kind of architecture to which Mrs. Danvers might have been found, skulking about and mumbling about her precious Rebecca—are falling apart at the seams as the ghost of a lost child toys with its occupants, one by one.

The chills of The Little Stranger are subtle. The ghost manifests itself through the slightest of sounds and shadows, with only the smallest of traces left behind. As the doctor narrator struggles with his own skepticism and the dogma of modern-day science, the ghost eats away at the house’s inhabitants from within, leaving them empty and hollow at the core before doing away with them entirely. It’s a tale of subtle chills and goosebumps, rather than morbid images and shrieks.

In fact, the novel is so subtle that it wasn’t until I was three-quarters of the way through that I wondered to myself where it was going. From a literary standpoint it’s a great homage to Du Maurier, Henry James, Le Fanu, and most especially the very early Agatha Christie, but in reading, it seems very little more than a well-told fireside ghost tale. It wasn’t until I recalled the twisty, devious Waters of Fingersmith and Affliction that I realized exactly what was happening but was left unsaid in her story, and I plowed through the book’s last quarter, eager to see it resolved.

And it wasn’t. The book came to a suitable conclusion, but it was so ambiguous that it left the impression of something being omitted. It was like watching The Sixth Sense without that grand reveal at the end that snaps everything into perspective. There’s no peek behind the magician’s cabinet, to see how it all was done.

Only, of course, the reveal is there all along, for those who are sharp-eyed enough to find it. It’s in the novel’s lush first pages; it’s laid at its barest in its very last sentence. Understanding what’s really afoot in the novel requires reading it fairly closely, though. Judging the reviews from ordinary readers that I browsed through on the Amazon web site, most of which had kind of a um, what was the big deal? kind reaction, that might be a lost art.

For anyone who enjoys the milieu or a well-told tale, however, The Little Stranger is full of shivery, dreadful pleasures.

Scaredy-Cat

Our youngest pet, Fred, is a most satisfactory cat. She’s got spunk. She has a wicked sense of humor—or at least she does things that make me laugh, like settling next to one of the other cats while they’re napping, waiting until they’ve been lulled into a false sense of security, and then hauling off and clocking them. She’s sweet and purry at night, and a lap cat during the winter. She’s a chatterbox who’ll carry on entire conversations at the drop of the hat. She’s photogenic. She is a top-notch squirrel monitor at the back windows. And best of all, she always seems grateful to be living here.

As I said, most satisfactory.

However, she’s the archetypal scaredy-cat. The slightest disturbance and she’s off like a shot to hide somewhere. If she can’t hide beneath the den sofa, she’ll cower beneath the bed upstairs, or huddle beneath the staircase in the basement, shivering, until I go down there to find her. I’ll point a flashlight in her direction and see two tiny, frightened headlights for eyes shining back at me.

Fred is frightened of the following:

- Thunderstorms. The slightest bass roll in the distance will have her scurrying for the safety of a dark enclosure, from which she won’t emerge until two or three hours after the storm has passed.

- Rain. Because it accompanies thunderstorms, I imagine.

- Trucks. Because they sound like thunder.

- Construction. When our neighbor had a new driveway poured, poor Fred spent the entire day in the basement.

- The vacuum.

- The sound of the door opening to the closet where we store the vacuum.

- The doorbell. I don’t really know what the doorbell has ever done to her, but apparently they have a dicey relationship.

- People who enter the house after they ring the doorbell. If we have a party, Fred will stay upstairs all evening with big, alarmed eyes. Then halfway through the party she’ll decide to venture down, see what’s happening, and will discover that everyone pays her so much attention that she sticks around and looks adorable so people will fawn over her. Then we have to repeat the entire process for the next party.

- Branches falling from the trees.

- Raccoons.

- The sound of the smoke detector going off.

- When I turn on the vent fan over the stove. Because usually it’s a hasty precursor to the smoke detector going off.

- The sound of people crunching through leaves on the deck.

In some ways, Fred’s little phobia make it easier to deal with her. She’s the only cat I will take outdoors, accompanied, because I know that if she gets out of hand, all I have to do is stomp on the deck a few times or brandish a broom and there she is, scurrying back to the back door and cowering to be let in. In others, it’s a little bothersome. Finding her after a scare can be a pain, since she has a tendency to find the most out-of-the-way places in the house. We’ve taken to trying to anticipate the frightening moments and to put her beneath the blankets on our bed, where she feels safe, stays warm, and where we can find her easily.

I keep hoping she’ll outgrow some of her fears. So far, though, we’ve just become accustomed to the sight of a brown and black fuzzy streak zooming by.

Conversations with My Father: Fancy Food Edition

THE SCENE: An uncrowded Denny’s on Broad Street.

ME: I haven’t been to a Denny’s in forever.
MY FATHER: This will be a treat for you, then!
ME: Mmm. Denny’s. That’s a real treat, all right.
MY FATHER: Now. Let me explain the menu to you. I like the Build Your Own Grand Slam breakfast. It’s only $4.99. You get to choose four out of the ten items. I choose eggs, pancakes, hash browns, and sausage. You could choose eggs, pancakes, biscuits, and bacon. Or you could choose pancakes, bacon, sausage, and grits. Or you could pick an English muffin, eggs, ham, and. . . .
ME (my voice raised): I get it! Thank you!
MY FATHER: Are you always this grumpy in the mornings?
ME: So basically, when I’m in town, my role is to escort you to crappy chain restaurants?
MY FATHER (offended): Denny’s is not a crappy chain restaurant!
ME: Let me rephrase. My role is to escort you to every restaurant in town that has photos in the menus? We’ve been to IHOP, and Outback Steakhouse, and Golden Corral, and you were threatening the Olive Garden again.
MY FATHER: Well, when the Barramundis and I go out to dinner, they refuse to go to chain restaurants. They think it’s ‘important’ to support ‘local’ restaurants.
ME: I can’t say I disagree with them.
MY FATHER: They make me go to fancy breakfast places where I will get two eggs and a slice of toast for eight dollars. Eight dollars. At Denny’s, you can get a Build Your Own Grand Slam for $4.99, and you can get eggs, pancakes, hash browns, and sausage. Or eggs, wheat pancakes, ham. . . .
ME: I think we've covered this territory, thanks.
MY FATHER: Even at a fancy place like Appleby’s, you can get a better value for your money.
ME: To you, there’s basically Denny’s and Golden Corral, and then everything else is just fancy, isn’t there?
MY FATHER: What do you mean?
ME: Fancy or unfancy: Appleby’s.
MY FATHER: Fancy.
ME: Fancy or unfancy: Chili’s.
MY FATHER: Fancy!
ME: Bennigan’s?
MY FATHER: Oh gawrsh, Fancy.
ME: Ruth Chris Steak House?
MY FATHER: So fancy.
ME: So to you, a Ruth Chris Steak House is on the same level of fanciness as an Appleby’s?
MY FATHER: Listen. Jon Stewart. You know Jon Stewart. You went to school with him.
ME: Yes, and he slept next to me in sweatpants for two semesters of abnormal psychology.
MY FATHER: Well Jon Stewart has a British sidekick and Jon Stewart was joking with him about how once his sidekick came to America and ate at Denny’s, the sidekick never wanted to go back.
ME: You don’t think Stewart was being ironic?
MY FATHER: No.
ME: Did I ever tell you about Cafe Muse back home? No? It’s one of those breakfast and lunch-only places. It was featured on Oprah because they have some kind of amazing grilled cheese sandwich and it gave Oprah’s girlfriend Gayle an orgasm.
MY FATHER: You’ve eaten there? Is it fancy?
ME: Oh, it’s very fancy. They have French toast there that’s slices of chocolate bred stuffed with vanilla-and-liqueur-laced cream cheese, then drizzled with chocolate sauce. I always get these amazing whole wheat pancakes with berries and homemade granola.
MY FATHER (with suspicion): How much?
ME: Twelve dollars.
MY FATHER: Oh gawrsh. Twelve dollars.
ME: And if you want bacon, it’s three dollars extra.
MY FATHER: Gawrsh. Gawrsh!
ME: It’s fancy and delicious.
MY FATHER: Well what’s good enough for Jon Stewart is good enough for me and that includes Denny’s.
ME: Next time you come visit we’ll go to Cafe Muse.
MY FATHER: Gawrsh. You are trying to kill me.

The Epigraphs of Cassaforte

During the editorial process of The Glass Maker’s Daughter, my original editor at Flux had a vision of prefixing the chapters with little quotations from fictional sources. The epigraphs could illuminate the chapter at hand, he said, or simply give color to the world I’d created.

Although for two or three minutes my reaction was grumpy (more work?! Dangit!), I threw myself into the project with enthusiasm. I’m the child of two historians. I know my source materials. So it was easy and fun for me to make up all manner of pretend source materials with a renaissance flavor—travelogues, letters, secret documents, journals, guide books. When I carried on the tradition with the two sequels, I wove in all manner of other types of imaginary source materials. Nursery rhymes. Broadsides. Popular sayings. With the chapter quotations in The Buccaneer’s Apprentice I was able to explain Cassaforte’s unique theatrical traditions without interrupting the flow of the narrative, for example.

Theatre is important in the novel, because it’s Nick’s experience with Armand Arturo’s Theatre of Marvels that gives him the acting chops necessary to masquerade as a dread privateer. Staged performances in Cassaforte are similar to commedia dell’arte, but who wants to interrupt the nonstop action gripping pirate tale to explain what commedia dell’arte might be? Not I. A few brushstrokes at the beginning of a chapter, however, from a fully-imaginary expert, and there it is.

What I don’t think most people realize when they read the chapter epigraphs is that they really tell a story unto themselves. I didn’t make up trivial facts, or irrelevant material. The epigraphs of The Glass Maker’s Daughter introduce characters and countries that appear in The Buccaneer’s Apprentice and set up an arc of action that carries on into The Nascenza Conspiracy. There are letters from a spy known as Gustophe Werner, for example, who doesn’t feature in the first book of the series, but is quite prominent by the third; it’s a long-range form of foreshadowing. I intended to clue in the reader that Cassaforte is not merely a country unto itself, but part of a vast world. And it’s a world that might not be completely enamored with the Cassaforteans and their magical blessings.

The epigraphs of The Buccaneer’s Apprentice are similarly forward-looking, but not quite as much so. They’re a little more self-contained, and if one reads between the sea shanties, the theatrical reviews, and the travelogues, they provide a lot of information that might otherwise go unnoticed. There are hints at relationships between the characters—where they’ve been and where they might be going in the future. Sometimes the epigraphs are wry commentary on the action that follows, or has immediately preceded.

Every quotation is there for a reason, though. They shouldn’t be overlooked.

In the department of cool things, I received a mockup for the cover of The Nascenza Conspiracy this week.



It’s a nifty concept, and I like the fact that it’ll have both protagonists, Petro Divetri and Emilia Fossi, on the cover. I did ask that in the final realization, which like the first two covers will be done by the totally awesome Blake Morrow, that Emilia be given an outfit that was a little more military-like, given that she’s supposed to be a palace guard in the book. “She’s looking a little bit like she’s on the way to a Young Republicans meeting,” I told my editor.

He wrote back, puzzled. “Does that mean she’s not a Young Republican?”

The Buccaneer's Apprentice

I'm happy to announce that The Buccaneer's Apprentice, the second novel of the Cassaforte Chronicles, is available for your reading pleasure.

It's a tale of nautical intrigue. It's a story about crooked card games. And it's a novel about an acting company so bad that it can only get engagements in foreign countries that haven't heard how terrible they are.

But mostly it's the story of a cursed seventeen-year-old who bluffs his way from lowly apprentice to the pirate master of the Azure Sea, in the days when an enemy armada is sailing for the shores of Cassaforte with deadly intent.

Here are a couple of places to purchase the book online:

The Buccaneer's Apprentice at Amazon

The Buccaneer's Apprentice at Barnes & Noble

As always, I appreciate it when those of you who've read and enjoyed my books review them on Amazon or other sites.

One special note: I know some of you like to run down to your local bookstore, look for my novels, and then inform me that the bookstore doesn't have any copies left on their shelves. I'd like to gently remind my readers that I don't have control over the distribution of my novels. If your favorite bookstore doesn't have it in stock, ask them to restock and to order a copy for you from their warehouse. They'll be happy to help you, I'll be happy you bought a copy, and it'll arrive in a mere couple of days. Also, if your budget is low, don't be shy about asking your local public library to get a copy!

In Hartford, Hereford, & Hampshire, Hurricanes Hardly Happen

The British Empire is not dead. It has merely conquered Hollywood, with a vengeance.

Last night the Mont and I went out to see How to Train Your Dragon, which was all very well for a movie like that. The dragons were awfully cute, anyway. But it wasn’t more than two or three minutes into the proceedings when I realized that, oh gawrsh, this was going to be one of those movies in which the kids spoke with streetwise American cadences and the adults were all going to be growling out disapproval in the lilting tones of the British isles. Scotland, specifically. Never mind that in my head, ancient Vikings sound more like . . . I don’t know. More Scandanavian. Like ABBA. Hell, like the Muppets’ Swedish Chef.

One thing I know for certain, though is that Vikings very likely did not at all sound like weak imitations of Mike “I Know Only One Accent Other Than Canadian And You’re Going To Hear Me Do It Dammit” Myers doing Shrek.

Now, it’s not that I’m anti-British accents in films. In films like the Lord of the Rings trilogy when all the hobbitses are running around with hairy bare feet and talking to elves in Cockney, I’m fine. The original author was English. Ditto with the Narnia films. Harry Potter? The wizardly intonations of this updating of Tom Brown’s Schooldays is fine with me. I may even have harbored a few secret fantasies of Emma Watson’s Hermione telling me in a soft whisper that I was a very naughty lad who richly deserved a thrashing. And trust me, it’s all about the accent, in that particular scenario.

But that is neither here nor there. Those characters are rooted in the traditions of the Great Britain. Dragon-training Vikings are not. Nor, I would like to point out, is the pantheon of Greek gods. From what I saw in the Clash of the Titans trailer, the august collection of deities hanging around Mount Olympus could have been cast from the leftovers of some Merchant/Ivory period piece. And the female lead in the upcoming Prince of Persia? Wench sounds like Julie Andrews in Camelot.

It seems as if the movie industry uses patrician upper-class English aristo-modulations as shorthand for gods, wizards, nobility in any European non-English-speaking country, and other all-powerful creatures. The comic relief and the ogres get plucked from Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and London’s East End. Ah well. I shouldn’t complain. At least the cliche keeps dozens of refugees from BBC Television employed, and lets a lot of people like Jake Gyllenhaal who shouldn’t be attempting accents, strut their stuff. But when the day comes that some barely-an-actor like Keanu Reeves is conscripted to adopt some plummy British accent so that audience are forced to sit through . . . oh. Sorry, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Dangerous Liaisons.

Forgot about you. Poor things.

Ninjas vs. Pirates!

In honor of the April release of my novel, The Buccaneer’s Apprentice, as well as Ed Briant’s Choppy Socky Blues, my publisher, Flux, is giving away copies of both books to one lucky entrant with social networking savvy.

All you have to do is visit their Facebook page answers the age-old question: when it comes to pirates vs. ninjas, who’ll be the winner? I’m partial to pirates, myself, but I have to admit. Ninjas are pretty awesome.

You can tweet a reply @fluxbooks on Twitter, too!