I have seen other reviewers mention this, and I can’t help but chime in: this cover art is very off-putting. I have no idea if that woman is in the thI have seen other reviewers mention this, and I can’t help but chime in: this cover art is very off-putting. I have no idea if that woman is in the throes of ecstasy, in shock, chocking or in pain (or all of the above!) but silly as that may sound, it was almost enough to make me not read the book. Yes, yes: I know what they say about books and their covers. I also know that we nevertheless CONSTANTLY judge books by their covers, and this one is weird. But I had gotten morbidly curious about “Big Swiss�, and that was the edition they had at Lift Bridge Book Store, so, yeah� here we are.
Following in the footsteps of the divisive Ottessa Moshfegh, this is a book about a woman losing her mind in a very bizarre way. Greta is a recently separated middle-aged woman who lives in her friend’s ramshackle and bee-infested farmhouse in the Hudson River valley and supports herself by transcribing an eccentric sex therapist’s sessions. She develops a crush on one of the patients� whose sessions she had been listening to, a younger married woman she nicknames Big Swiss (her real name is Flavia) � and eventually meets her in real life, something that seems inevitable in such a small town. Greta recognizes her voice immediately and uses the info she has gathered listening to Big Swiss� sessions to get closer and eventually start an affair with her. Big Swiss is, of course, unaware that Greta knows all these intimate details about her life and her past. Will she find out? Will Greta’s insanity ruin the relationship first?
So is this a book where the cover is its own warning? Is the content as off-putting as that cover portrait of female experiencing� something (I ended up looking it up, and the cover is from a painting called “Falling Woman� by Canadian artist Anna Weyant)? I think that my experience of reading this book was not all that different from how I felt reading “My Year of Rest and Relaxation�: I stayed out of curiosity but my enjoyment of the story and characters oscillated back and forth between laughing out loud and rolling my eyes enough to give myself a migraine. Om is not that far from Dr. Tuttle in the sense he is an absolute quack, and his session transcript are equal parts hilarious and horrific. Greta does not have Moshfegh’s nameless protagonist’s excuse of youth to explain her curious lack of introspection, but she is equally damaged and oblivious. Again, not unlike my experience with Moshfegh, I found myself wondering if that was a point to the cringe or if the cringe IS the point? Listen, I know that many of us do not have our shit together nearly as much as we would like, and that truth often has a way of being stranger than fiction � and sometimes, it’s refreshing to see that on the page, the weirdness and confusion we really have to deal with on a daily basis. But if there was a greater idea here, I'm afraid I missed it.
I noticed that the reviews for this book are mostly a love it or hate it situation, and I confess I am dismayed at falling into neither camp. It’s really just an OK book: it’s not badly written, but the prose isn’t especially remarkable, the story and characters are interesting and the ideas wild, but nowhere near as shocking as I was led to expect, and the end is very anti-climactic. So 3 stars it is, though I am tempted to bump it to 4 to credit Beagin with her frankly hysterical and accurate description of a wand vibrator. It IS like a cudgel that tries to beat your happy spot to death!
On a personal note, I came across a few reviews that were like ‘finally a book that’s not about a millennial complaining!� and I just want to say that, for the record, the older millennials are now in their 40s, myself included. So, sure, Greta is a bit older than the average millennial, but not by that much... Millennials are no longer the young kids some people (Greta included: she really fucking hates them, despite being obsessed with one) still seem to think we are � the youngest ones are about to turn 30! Plenty of us have arthritis and are experiencing perimenopause � along with a wide range of other very adult problems; and I for one I’m looking forward to the day where my status as a grown-up will be accepted in spite of the generation I belong to because it’s getting old, pun intended. Thanks for listening to my geriatric millennial rant/nitpicking....more
Books like this make me feel like such an easy mark.
Bookseller: “Hey, Gabrielle! Would you like to read a gothic mystery with characters inspired by �Books like this make me feel like such an easy mark.
Bookseller: “Hey, Gabrielle! Would you like to read a gothic mystery with characters inspired by ‘Sherlock Holmes� and ‘Dracula�, two of your favorite stories? Also, sapphic romance! And it’s set in Paris during the Belle Époque! Have you seen this insane cover art??!!�
Gabrielle: “Sigh� Give me that book immediately!�
Since I am a sucker for Victoriana, and this book is based on classic works I have been reading and rereading since childhood, I threw money at a pre-order, obviously, but I was still a touch weary. Feminist and/or queer retellings of classics can be very tricky: sometimes they are brilliant and very creative, and sometimes they are� eh.
“Strange Beasts� is about Samantha Harker, daughter of Jonathan and Mina Harker. She inherited a strange gift from her mother, the ability to see into the minds of monsters. This gift makes her work with the Royal Society of Abnormal Phenomena very interesting, but also risky: if she is found out to be one of the so-called monsters she should be studying, she might be locked up. When a case involving the brutal murder of several men comes up, Sam notices a specific detail about the crime scenes that makes her go against her natural inclination to stay in the library, where she works as a researcher, and go investigate on the field. But she is only allowed to do so if she will work alongside Dr. Helena Moriarty, the daughter of Holmes� nemesis, who is now a famous detective herself. Sam is less than excited about this team-up because the last few partners who worked with the infamous Lady M all died by murder during the course of previous investigations. Both women obviously have secrets, but they find out really quickly that if they want to solve this mystery and stay alive, they have to trust each other.
This book is a seriously fun and rollicking fantasy-mystery: we follow our heroes through the Paris underground, both literal and figurative, and get an often-neglected female perspective on life at that time, and how limiting one’s gender could be. This is obviously not new information, but there are precious few interesting female characters in the Holmesian cannon, and I really appreciate this attempt at correcting this. I also think the characters were well-developed, and an interesting speculation on what the next generation of people who had lived adventures with Sherlock and the Harkers would be like. It is safe to assume they would carry some weird baggage, having been raised by vampire slayers and criminal masterminds, and so on, and I think Sam and Hel to be interesting and believable.
It lost a star because I had slightly higher expectations with regards to the prose. Morris isn’t a bad writer at all, but this is her debut and I am sure that her style will develop a bit more over time.
I will shelve this book alongside “Our Hideous Progeny�; the tone was completely different, but both those books truly honor the works that inspire them, and I will keep my eyes peeled for more works by these authors. Recommended to all fans of Sherlockian literature and the tv show “Penny Dreadful�. I hope there will be sequels!...more
As soon as I managed to get my hands on a copy of “Paladin’s Hope�, it immediately went to the top of the book pile. If you had told me last year thatAs soon as I managed to get my hands on a copy of “Paladin’s Hope�, it immediately went to the top of the book pile. If you had told me last year that I would be squeaking in excitement about this sort of book, I might have laughed in your face, but I guess T. Kingfisher is the one laughing now, because as soon as I realized book 4 was available in paperback, guess what I did?
As with the previous books in this series, this is a fantasy/romance (gag) involving one of the surviving paladins of the Saint of Steel. This time, the story focuses of Galen, who is known in the series so far for being a ginger and not really into women, if you catch my very obvious drift. The story begins when a body washes up on the shore of the river, dead from a large wound that seemed to have punctured his back, but there is no clear way to determine what could have caused such a wound, even for Piper, the lich-doctor the paladins have worked with before. Earstripe, a gnole belonging to the city guards seems to think, however, that this death is connected to other dead bodies that were discovered recently, but his captain won’t let him investigate further. But Galen and Piper agree that something seems odd, and they decide to go with Earstripe to see if they can’t solve this mystery, and proceed to get stuck in a strange place that makes the cave at the end of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade� look like a cake walk.
I am quite excited about Piper the pathologist (that’s not really what they call him, but I love an alliteration) being brought front and center in this story because I always find that line of work fascinating, and it is not often written about in fantasy settings. He also has a fantastic gallows� humour that I really enjoyed � as one might expect from someone in his line of work. The budding romance with Galen is just sweet enough for me, and I really appreciate that Kingfisher created a fantasy world where no one freaks out at queerness and just lets people be who they are. The idea that as a society, they decided that they had bigger problems to worry about than who sleeps with who is so refreshingly sane! Alas, just like the White Rat being an order of kind and efficient bureaucrats, that’s how you know this is fantasy� The point is, those two are cute together, and even people who have shrivelled husks where their hearts should be would be mollified by the way they behave around each other. More than with the previous two books, this one addresses gnoles and their place in society on a deeper level, with Earstripe being such an integral part of the story. That seemed a bit forced to me at first, but as the world expands and the stories involve the little guys more and more, it actually makes sense to expand our view of their society and their relationship to humans at the same time.
As with the previous books of the series, the humor � dry, a little dirty, very witty - shines on almost every page and makes it a delight to read. Kingfisher also has such a charming and quirky way with words (like when she describes Galen has having cheekbones you could slice cheese with, or when Galen wonders if Piper got toned lugging dead bodies around, because those are heavy!), and I am really enjoying the way she broadens the world with each book. I know these technically belong to a larger series set in this universe, and I might get around to them some day, but until then, I am loving the way she introduces the reader to new elements of world-building with each book, which keeps the series fresh because there is always something new to discover. The mysteries of the Ancients and their machines is awesome, though I suspect it has been explored in some of her other books�
I have so much more fun than I expected with this series, these books are my new favorite treats, and I can’t wait for the fourth book to arrive!...more
Edgar Allan Poe retelling involving a lot of mushrooms? Well, of course I’ll read that! I had never read anything by T. Kingfisher before, but her namEdgar Allan Poe retelling involving a lot of mushrooms? Well, of course I’ll read that! I had never read anything by T. Kingfisher before, but her name pops up on my GR feed constantly, and I figured this short novel was the perfect way to dip my toes in her work.
While I enjoy “The Fall of the House of Usher� in its own right, it’s about 15 pages, so while it’s a wonderful taste of Poe’s talent with creating ominous atmospheres and weird scenarios that still haunt our nightmares, there isn’t much room there for an explanation or character development. Add to that the current trendiness of mushroom and fungus related plagues and contagions and you get not only an explanation for Poe’s weird tale, but wonderfully creepy way to enrich his original story.
The fungal horror was a little reminiscent of “Mexican Gothic�, but that is really all the books have in common: Moreno Garcia and Kingfisher’s styles are so different that it would be unfair to compare the two. Kingfisher has a levity in her writing, a whimsy that I was not really expecting but that delighted me. Her characters are witty and fun to get to know, which is not something that could be said of Poe’s characters, who tend to be rather flat.
If you love creepy mushrooms and old school horror stories, this one is a little delight....more
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