The last three weeks of my life have been something of a whirlwind. The only thing I've done, basically from sun up until I flopped into my bed at night, has been to work on getting our house in order and on the market. For the most part, that's meant doing every repair and renovation we've neglected over the entire life of the house.
The den ceiling came first. It was yikes, two years ago that we had damage from pouring rains leaking through the skylights there; it ran in little sluices down the skylight well and down the sloped ceiling toward the wall, leaving behind a large, torn pucker between the drywall and the tape between its joints. That I had to slice, remove, sand, mud, sand, mud again, prime, and paint.
The front garden, which I've always thought too large and unwieldy for a reluctant gardener—which is the best way I can describe myself—needed to be weeded for curb appeal. I mean, really weeded, not given the half-assed let's grab the knee-high ones and no one will notice the rest treatment. Then I had to do the same with the back garden, and the side gardens. I have a lot of gardens, apparently. One those were done, I had to tackle cleaning up the curious lot on the side of the garage. The previous owners used the area to store their trailers, to give an idea of its size. The current owners—that is, the Mont and I—have tended to use it as a place to store the sort of yard refuse that requires care and planning to dispose. Large branches, for example, or crumpled-up metal garbage cans. The branches had to be broken down and tied into bundles that the city would accept, and then I had to whack the weeds and miniature trees that had sprung up since the last time I'd ventured back there a couple of years ago.
The front lawn needed to be re-sodded, since it could have been used to stage a fake lunar landing. Then it needed to be watered. And watered. And watered some more, every day, and every evening.
The upstairs bathroom. Oh my god, the upstairs bathroom. Where do I even begin? When we moved into the house, on the first first day we took possession I walked upstairs into the bathroom and took in all the details I'd apparently missed during the couple of times I'd visited while house-hunting. I looked at the metallic silver wallpaper printed with fluffy clouds in an entirely different shade of metallic silver. I observed the Pepto-Bismol-pink countertop. And then I promptly broke down and wept. For a couple of years, the Mont and I laughingly called it 'The Disco Bathroom' and threatened to install a mirrorball, but in the end the only thing we could think of to do with it was to strip the wallpaper, paint everything a shade of blue that we hoped would pass as 'tropical,' and endure the astonished comments of visitors to the house who left the bathroom complaining about bleeding eyes from the countertop.
Plainly, none of this would do for selling the house.
I'd intended to re-laminate the counter myself. It didn't seem that difficult. The laminate was relatively cheap—cheaper than a completely new top, anyway—and it seemed like the kind of thing I could do without too much cursing. Attacking the counter meant removing the bathroom sink, however, and that proved impossible to do, as I found out after an hour spent with my head in a cupboard with a wrench in my hands and a flashlight between my teeth, swearing at the top of my lungs before finally I had myself a good cry. I came upon Plan C when we were visiting Home Depot for some paint for the walls. Apparently they make such a thing as laminate paint these days. I bought a little jar of it, had it tinted, and took it home. A few days and a lot of sweat later, I emerged from a bathroom that was not only a lovely shade of cream, but had a delft blue countertop that looked as if it had been extruded in that very color. I also installed a new medicine cabinet (we'd never had one, and were storing our boxes of pills in the hot water pipe access cupboard), and mirrors. The Mont caulked the bathtub, and I installed crown molding around the top of the room.
It's not fully updated, but I don't think anyone would cry at it.
The spare bedroom had a patch of plaster on the walls that had been ruined eight or nine years ago before we'd had a new roof installed. I replastered and sanded the area, then painted that entire wall with a new accent color the shade of a Kraft caramel. The office ceiling had stains from the same event, so I primed those a hundred times and painted them.
I mopped the basement floor, and walls. I removed the alarm system electronic pad, since it no longer works, and sealed up the circuit box for the system. I sanded and painted the railing on the front porch, and pulled little grasses and weeds from the cracks in the driveway and the patio. I sprayed down the siding on the house and the garage to make it look clean, and washed all the windows.
And then I packed. Oh, how I packed. Our realtor had made the gentle suggestion that many people in the market for a house didn't care to enter a home in which every square space of wall was covered with bookcases and tall, hulking piles of books that looked as if they'd come straight out of the dustier stacks of the Hogwarts library. I took the hint, and spent day after day buying boxes from Home Depot (sixty-seven cents apiece for the small ones, in case anyone's looking for a bargain), filling them with my books, and then leaving them in the living room. Then the next day I'd go buy another twenty-five boxes and do it all over again. Then, once I was done with the books, I did the same thing with all our DVDs and CDs.
Finally the living room became unnavigable; we had to borrow a dolly from church in order to move everything into the garage, where it could be out of sight during the house showings. No lie—this was the single most painful part of the entire month, especially as we did it on one of the hottest days on record this summer.
The last part of the process was simply cleaning everything and staging the house to make it look half-civilized, before we could let anyone inside. In a hundred-year-old house, it's not easy to make everything look new. But at the very least, it can feign cleanliness.
Not until this last Sunday, when I bravely cut and fitted a new window to replace the one on the garage that's been broken for a decade, did I realize I'd come almost to the very end of the long list of tasks I'd begun assembling on the day I learned we were moving to Connecticut. The only thing remaining—painting the upstairs hall ceiling—was not something I intended to do on the eve of a whirlwind tour to my future home. It'll wait until I get home.
It's a shame that my list is done. All the work, the day-to-day tasks and the grim realities of trying to whip things into shape, kept me from worrying too much about other things. The little short-term goals gave me a roadmap to follow. It's easier to think about how to sand something smooth, or what color to paint a wall, than it is to wonder the whys and whens of selling the house, or packing, or the unknowns of the impending move. I was happier pretending to know what I needed to do next, rather than fretting about the formless shape of days to come.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Thursday, July 15, 2010
New Book Cover Day
I think it's my favorite of the trilogy. True, Petro looks a little like a lost Jonas brother, but check out the detailing on Emilia's uniform. And gosh, doesn't it look exciting?
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Hacked!
My World of Warcraft account was hacked a few weeks ago. It’s not an experience I recommend.
I’ve always been pretty scrupulous about my account in the past. Although it’s true I hadn’t bought one of the authenticators—a little keychain device that supplies a unique code to accompany your login password that’s supposed to guarantee that the person who owns the account is the actual person signing in—nor downloaded the software authenticator for my phone. I wrongly assumed that because I never played the game on strangers’ computers, or took my laptop outside my home to play, that I’d be immune to people snitching my password.
I’d actually taken a break from the game for about a week, right before my account was hijacked. I hadn’t logged on for a solid eight days. Then I used Blizzard’s mobile armory application on my phone to sign out of a weekly raid—and that’s where I ran into trouble. I either used the application somewhere on the road using the cellular network, or else in a coffee shop where I’d been working. Bad move, either way. That night, at one in the morning, my email account received a notification that I’d requested a password change. At four in the morning, I got a notification that my account had been suspended for suspicious activity.
All it took was three hours for them to wreak total havoc with my accounts. My World of Warcraft characters are basically spread over two different servers, but all the wealth and time were concentrated on Perenolde. There the hacker managed to liquidate everything not only in eight different characters’ banks and inventories, but cleaned out the bank of my guild as well—or at least the tabs available to me. Most of my toons carried between four to seven thousand gold apiece; one of them had an artifact that regularly sells on the auction house for more than ten thousand gold.
When I finally was able to log in, every single one of my characters was naked. My action bars were screwed up—every single one of my toons had spells removed so that the hackers could substitute macros to make their liquidation go more quickly. My hunter’s pets had been released into the wild, never to be retrieved again. Every emblem and badge I’d earned through daily dungeons was gone. Some of my characters had been removed from my guild; three of them had been transferred onto other servers, and one to another account entirely.
All in the space of three hours. It was depressing.
I got it all back, of course. Blizzard after two weeks sent me via in-game mail all the items that had been taken from me, down to the last copper and badge (though my hunter never got his pets back). Moving those items back into my inventory took an hour or even more per character, though, and while I waited I found the Blizzard support crew incredibly unhelpful and in one case even rude. I’m still not completely cleaned up.
The only up side to the whole debacle is that in the end, I made in-game money off of it. The account got shut down while one of my characters, apparently chosen to be the liquidator, was posting all kinds of stuff in the auction house. His bags were stuffed with epic jewels, enchanting materials, cooking spices, and other salable stuff. After the ordeal I’d been through, I had no compunction whatsoever in auctioning it off and pocketing the three thousand gold I made. Additionally, a few of my characters cashed in some honor tokens to add some new accessories to their outfits, and my main druid cashed in the rest of the honor points to buy four mounts.
Small consolation, really, but I take what I can.
I have an authenticator now, by the way. I highly advocate it.
I’ve always been pretty scrupulous about my account in the past. Although it’s true I hadn’t bought one of the authenticators—a little keychain device that supplies a unique code to accompany your login password that’s supposed to guarantee that the person who owns the account is the actual person signing in—nor downloaded the software authenticator for my phone. I wrongly assumed that because I never played the game on strangers’ computers, or took my laptop outside my home to play, that I’d be immune to people snitching my password.
I’d actually taken a break from the game for about a week, right before my account was hijacked. I hadn’t logged on for a solid eight days. Then I used Blizzard’s mobile armory application on my phone to sign out of a weekly raid—and that’s where I ran into trouble. I either used the application somewhere on the road using the cellular network, or else in a coffee shop where I’d been working. Bad move, either way. That night, at one in the morning, my email account received a notification that I’d requested a password change. At four in the morning, I got a notification that my account had been suspended for suspicious activity.
All it took was three hours for them to wreak total havoc with my accounts. My World of Warcraft characters are basically spread over two different servers, but all the wealth and time were concentrated on Perenolde. There the hacker managed to liquidate everything not only in eight different characters’ banks and inventories, but cleaned out the bank of my guild as well—or at least the tabs available to me. Most of my toons carried between four to seven thousand gold apiece; one of them had an artifact that regularly sells on the auction house for more than ten thousand gold.
When I finally was able to log in, every single one of my characters was naked. My action bars were screwed up—every single one of my toons had spells removed so that the hackers could substitute macros to make their liquidation go more quickly. My hunter’s pets had been released into the wild, never to be retrieved again. Every emblem and badge I’d earned through daily dungeons was gone. Some of my characters had been removed from my guild; three of them had been transferred onto other servers, and one to another account entirely.
All in the space of three hours. It was depressing.
I got it all back, of course. Blizzard after two weeks sent me via in-game mail all the items that had been taken from me, down to the last copper and badge (though my hunter never got his pets back). Moving those items back into my inventory took an hour or even more per character, though, and while I waited I found the Blizzard support crew incredibly unhelpful and in one case even rude. I’m still not completely cleaned up.
The only up side to the whole debacle is that in the end, I made in-game money off of it. The account got shut down while one of my characters, apparently chosen to be the liquidator, was posting all kinds of stuff in the auction house. His bags were stuffed with epic jewels, enchanting materials, cooking spices, and other salable stuff. After the ordeal I’d been through, I had no compunction whatsoever in auctioning it off and pocketing the three thousand gold I made. Additionally, a few of my characters cashed in some honor tokens to add some new accessories to their outfits, and my main druid cashed in the rest of the honor points to buy four mounts.
Small consolation, really, but I take what I can.
I have an authenticator now, by the way. I highly advocate it.
Monday, July 12, 2010
The murse
When I traveled to Toronto last week, I wanted to keep my travel footprint light. Instead of lugging around my laptop and its heavy cords and chargers, I thought I’d simply take my iPad. It has a tendency to rattle around my briefcase like a dried pea in a coconut shell, however, so I purchased a new carrier for it. A messenger bag.
Now, buying the thing, I was painfully aware that I was venturing into dangerous territory. Treacherous territory, in fact. Because while a briefcase is a manly enough accessory, a messenger bag—depending upon the make and the material—comes awfully close to being, well. A lady’s purse. A masculine lady’s purse, to be sure. A man-bag. A murse.
But my messenger bag, though a hairy-chested shade of khaki green and trimmed with leather in a bronco-buckin’ shade of brown, seemed closer to a grizzled old mail pouch carried by some smelly ‘baccy-chawin’ extra in a John Wayne western than something coveted by the Sex and the City cast, so I thought that perhaps I could get away with it. I do have a beard, after all.
My masculinity managed to deflect most of the man-purse comments from my traveling companions on the trip up. Then, when we got to the city, I thought to myself that handy as the bag had been for transporting my electronics and passports on the train, it would be a heck of a lot handier to put everything I’d need for the day in its pockets during the vacation itself. So I loaded it up with my baseball cap, sunglasses and case, camera, and phone. Then, for good measure, I threw in my sunscreen, a tin of mints, a little cloth for cleaning my phone and camera, and some headphones. And some Canadian change. And my subway pass.
It was when I was out on the street with my messenger bag hanging down my back, companionably flapping against me in a manly, manly way when I walked, that I realized I’d succumbed. I was carrying a purse. And what’s more, I didn’t care.
Toronto has an ordinance in which merchants now charge for carrying bags. So instead of paying, I would suggest that my travel companions put their purchases in my bag. “Stick it in my purse,” I said at one point, opening the mouth wide in a kitchen store. “Yes,” I said to several astonished, wide-mouthed friends. “I said purse. It’s a purse. I don’t give a darn. I love my purse. I love carrying a purse. So put your things in my purse and shut up about it.”
It’s telling that toward the end of our trip, when my little group walked into a department store with a display of luggage and bags, the others instantly started flocking over to the messenger bags and running their hands over them with little coos of pleasure.
So yes. I’m at peace with my purse. Shades of testosterone green and armpit-hair brown it may be, and a man-bag or a murse you may call it, but it’s a purse. I will carry it without shame.
Now, buying the thing, I was painfully aware that I was venturing into dangerous territory. Treacherous territory, in fact. Because while a briefcase is a manly enough accessory, a messenger bag—depending upon the make and the material—comes awfully close to being, well. A lady’s purse. A masculine lady’s purse, to be sure. A man-bag. A murse.
But my messenger bag, though a hairy-chested shade of khaki green and trimmed with leather in a bronco-buckin’ shade of brown, seemed closer to a grizzled old mail pouch carried by some smelly ‘baccy-chawin’ extra in a John Wayne western than something coveted by the Sex and the City cast, so I thought that perhaps I could get away with it. I do have a beard, after all.
My masculinity managed to deflect most of the man-purse comments from my traveling companions on the trip up. Then, when we got to the city, I thought to myself that handy as the bag had been for transporting my electronics and passports on the train, it would be a heck of a lot handier to put everything I’d need for the day in its pockets during the vacation itself. So I loaded it up with my baseball cap, sunglasses and case, camera, and phone. Then, for good measure, I threw in my sunscreen, a tin of mints, a little cloth for cleaning my phone and camera, and some headphones. And some Canadian change. And my subway pass.
It was when I was out on the street with my messenger bag hanging down my back, companionably flapping against me in a manly, manly way when I walked, that I realized I’d succumbed. I was carrying a purse. And what’s more, I didn’t care.
Toronto has an ordinance in which merchants now charge for carrying bags. So instead of paying, I would suggest that my travel companions put their purchases in my bag. “Stick it in my purse,” I said at one point, opening the mouth wide in a kitchen store. “Yes,” I said to several astonished, wide-mouthed friends. “I said purse. It’s a purse. I don’t give a darn. I love my purse. I love carrying a purse. So put your things in my purse and shut up about it.”
It’s telling that toward the end of our trip, when my little group walked into a department store with a display of luggage and bags, the others instantly started flocking over to the messenger bags and running their hands over them with little coos of pleasure.
So yes. I’m at peace with my purse. Shades of testosterone green and armpit-hair brown it may be, and a man-bag or a murse you may call it, but it’s a purse. I will carry it without shame.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Confessions of an iPad User
Dear people of the internet, particularly those who feel to hijack the comments sections of every tech web page with your anti-iPad screeds,
I own an iPad. I admit that I didn’t intend to buy one originally. I wasn’t a scoffer—I’d simply hoped to wait for the second generation. But then I played with them in the stores, and more particularly, got to sit down with one that a friend had bought, and I was hooked. I could easily see how I could fit one into my everyday life and work style.
So yes, I made a reservation and picked up an iPad a week and a half later. And here’s the thing: I really like my iPad. One of the first things I did was to put two-hundred and thirty-six of my favorite books on it, so that I could use it as a reading device. (And I haven’t even begun to score my classic favorites from Project Gutenberg, yet.) Yes, I could read books on my computer. I don’t like doing it though, any more than I enjoy watching movies or television programs on my computer when I could do it on my, you know. Television. Why do I like reading on my iPad so much? Because I can take it to bed. I can turn it sideways and read lying down. It weighs practically nothing. The screen is big. I can adjust the brightness and the typeface and the type size to suit my whims. I can hold it with one hand while I do my business on the john.
I use the iPad as my portable music library. The ForScore app allows me to organize PDF files of piano sheet music and have them all in one lightweight and easily transportable device. One that’s backlit, thank you very much. When I tap the glass, the page flips, and stays flipped. I can annotate and highlight sections. The app came with 1300 pages of sample piano music already installed. My repertoire consists of classical pieces in the public domain, so I’ve easily doubled that just by looking on public score repositories for stuff I already knew.
I’ve got access to all the internet services on my iPad that I really need. And I like the device because it’s slim and portable. I can stick it into its carrying case and take it out on the town without feeling compelled to drag along accessories and power cords and all the little things that my everyday computer would require. The battery lasts me a good dozen hours. I can use it at a table, or sitting in a comfy chair, or while I’m flat on my back. It carries a decent chunk of my music library. I have a word processor on it, so I can carry around copies of my latest manuscripts and work on new ones. It’s easy to type on. Easier still if I flip on my tiny bluetooth keyboard. It’s silent, cool, and suits me perfectly. And I suspect the thing hasn’t even come into its real heyday yet.
So this is what I don’t get, trolls of the internet. If I like a device, and if I find a lot of utility for it, why do you care if I bought it or not? I didn’t, as far as I’m aware, use your money for the purchase. That came out of my own bank account.
You can lecture me all you want about the alternatives. I can’t see myself propping a netbook up on a piano rack to play, much less annotating my score and flipping pages easily. I’m not going to take one into bed to read, either. I’m happy with what I have. Why do you care so much?
It seems to me that though they purport to be higher-minded and smarter than Apple fanboys, the Apple haters are an even more obnoxious breed. They hijack any internet forum they can to disparage Apple products, malign Apple users, and say anything they can to make themselves feel better about their own purchasing choices. Yet their pretense of despising anything ‘trendy’ is trendiness itself; jumping on a brand and its users on the internet isn’t a way of expressing your superior individuality. It’s just anonymous dog-piling, and takes no more thought than farting.
Dudes. Buy what you want. If it’s a Droid or a Windows product, it makes no never-mind to me. I don’t think any the less of you. Say what you want about me, but I honestly don’t believe that one’s computing purchases define me as an individual, any more than I believe wearing a shirt with an Abercrombie and Fitch logo will turn me into a sun-tanned catalog model, or slapping on American Apparel will turn me into an urban hipster. Bashing people for sport doesn’t make you a superior person. I buy what I like, if I like, and I let other people do the same.
Why don’t you?
I own an iPad. I admit that I didn’t intend to buy one originally. I wasn’t a scoffer—I’d simply hoped to wait for the second generation. But then I played with them in the stores, and more particularly, got to sit down with one that a friend had bought, and I was hooked. I could easily see how I could fit one into my everyday life and work style.
So yes, I made a reservation and picked up an iPad a week and a half later. And here’s the thing: I really like my iPad. One of the first things I did was to put two-hundred and thirty-six of my favorite books on it, so that I could use it as a reading device. (And I haven’t even begun to score my classic favorites from Project Gutenberg, yet.) Yes, I could read books on my computer. I don’t like doing it though, any more than I enjoy watching movies or television programs on my computer when I could do it on my, you know. Television. Why do I like reading on my iPad so much? Because I can take it to bed. I can turn it sideways and read lying down. It weighs practically nothing. The screen is big. I can adjust the brightness and the typeface and the type size to suit my whims. I can hold it with one hand while I do my business on the john.
I use the iPad as my portable music library. The ForScore app allows me to organize PDF files of piano sheet music and have them all in one lightweight and easily transportable device. One that’s backlit, thank you very much. When I tap the glass, the page flips, and stays flipped. I can annotate and highlight sections. The app came with 1300 pages of sample piano music already installed. My repertoire consists of classical pieces in the public domain, so I’ve easily doubled that just by looking on public score repositories for stuff I already knew.
I’ve got access to all the internet services on my iPad that I really need. And I like the device because it’s slim and portable. I can stick it into its carrying case and take it out on the town without feeling compelled to drag along accessories and power cords and all the little things that my everyday computer would require. The battery lasts me a good dozen hours. I can use it at a table, or sitting in a comfy chair, or while I’m flat on my back. It carries a decent chunk of my music library. I have a word processor on it, so I can carry around copies of my latest manuscripts and work on new ones. It’s easy to type on. Easier still if I flip on my tiny bluetooth keyboard. It’s silent, cool, and suits me perfectly. And I suspect the thing hasn’t even come into its real heyday yet.
So this is what I don’t get, trolls of the internet. If I like a device, and if I find a lot of utility for it, why do you care if I bought it or not? I didn’t, as far as I’m aware, use your money for the purchase. That came out of my own bank account.
You can lecture me all you want about the alternatives. I can’t see myself propping a netbook up on a piano rack to play, much less annotating my score and flipping pages easily. I’m not going to take one into bed to read, either. I’m happy with what I have. Why do you care so much?
It seems to me that though they purport to be higher-minded and smarter than Apple fanboys, the Apple haters are an even more obnoxious breed. They hijack any internet forum they can to disparage Apple products, malign Apple users, and say anything they can to make themselves feel better about their own purchasing choices. Yet their pretense of despising anything ‘trendy’ is trendiness itself; jumping on a brand and its users on the internet isn’t a way of expressing your superior individuality. It’s just anonymous dog-piling, and takes no more thought than farting.
Dudes. Buy what you want. If it’s a Droid or a Windows product, it makes no never-mind to me. I don’t think any the less of you. Say what you want about me, but I honestly don’t believe that one’s computing purchases define me as an individual, any more than I believe wearing a shirt with an Abercrombie and Fitch logo will turn me into a sun-tanned catalog model, or slapping on American Apparel will turn me into an urban hipster. Bashing people for sport doesn’t make you a superior person. I buy what I like, if I like, and I let other people do the same.
Why don’t you?
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Just a Friendly Little Cat
Chloe the Ragdoll cat was supposed to be non-clumping. That's how the breeder sold her as, anyway.
Of course, the breeder also said that Ragdolls were friendly and sweet and cuddly lap cats who loved to be with their owners, and in the fourteen years we've had Chloe, she's been crabby and neurotic and would never deign to do anything so lowly as to sit in anyone's lap. She does love to be with her owners, but it's only so she can point out in a whiny voice exactly how they are neglecting and mistreating her.
Perhaps a kitty Freud could cope with the neurosis. The only thing I can tackle is the clumping fur, and that's by giving her a bath regularly.
Which she hates.
Fred watched the whole proceedings with horror, then cringed away, and said, "Dude, WTF?"
To which Chloe glared.
Fred: "Seriously, WTF?!"
Beauty has its costs, though. Chloe's been swanning around the house ever since she dried off, looking glamorous and knowing it.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
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.
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.
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