![]() My rating: 3 of 5 stars A Framed Whodunit Outperforms Its Whodunit Frame? Editor and fan of whodunits Susan Ryeland has barely finished reading the typescript of one that her company Cloverleaf Books is keen to publish when she finds herself caught up in a real murder mystery. The manuscript is called Magpie Murders, and it's the ninth entry in the best selling Atticus Pund detective series by the popular author Alan Conway. Conway's novel is set in the 1950s in the small fictional village Saxby-on-Avon and features the "accidental" death of the housekeeper at Pye Hall, the bloody murder of Sir Magnus Pye, the host of locals with motives and opportunities kill him, and the famous detective Atticus Pund wanting to solve this last case before a brain tumor can kill him. Just after Susan discovers that the typescript is missing some crucial chapters, she learns that author Conway has apparently committed suicide. Her search for the missing pages leads her to believe that he has been murdered, and despite saying things like "I wasn't a detective. I was an editor," Susan is soon using her keen intelligence, observation, and whodunit chops to play detective. And because Conway was not the world's nicest author or man, Susan is soon dealing with multiple suspects and motives for murder. Has the extraordinary number of murder mysteries in books and TV shows made her imagine a murder where none exists, as a local police chief scolds her? Will butting into an affair best left to the police get her in some danger, as her boyfriend Andreas warns her? Will her investigation risk her job with Cloverleaf, as her boss Charles cautions her? Will she ever get to the bottom of it all or get to read the rest of Magpie Murders? Alan Horowitz' novel Magpie Murders (2017), then, is a whodunit nested within a whodunit. Susan's "real" framing story takes place in contemporary England (partly London, partly the countryside), Conway's fictional framed story in 1950s England (wholly in the countryside). Conway used Agatha Christie's oeuvre as a reference, so his part of Horowitz' novel reads like an excellent pastiche of Christie. Horowitz is an expert in the genre, so the Conway part of his novel also reads like a Sherlock Holmes mystery, with Pund's brilliant and observant detective Pund evoking Holmes, his obtuse and good-natured assistant Watson, and the well-meaning but misguided police detective Lestrade. Such is the power of Horowitz' writing and his knowledge of the genre, that for the long interpolated passage of Conway's novel about the investigations of Atticus Pund we nearly forget that we are reading a fictional mystery inside a "real" one. The characters are interesting enough and the mystery challenging enough and the sense of time and place vivid enough. The contemporary frame part of his novel in which Susan endeavors to find out what happened to Conway and who did it is also a compelling read, enlivened by many self-referential remarks on the whodunit genre and by many references to other detectives and mystery writers, including Holmes and Poirot and Conan Doyle and Christie. The audiobook readers Samantha Bond and Allan Corduner do excellent work here, Bond reading the frame narration from Susan's point of view, Corduner reading Conway's framed Magpie Murders from a variety of point of view characters, though I did prefer Corduner's Pund (refined and elegant German accented English) to Bond's (so it's lucky that Bond reads very little of Conway's novel). Anyway, having different readers for the different whodunits works well. Finally, as often happens when I finish a whodunit, I felt somehow let down and wondered, "It was entertaining and has lots of human nature and drama, but was it worth it?" Part of me sympathizes with Andreas when he tells Susan that the mystery genre is unworthy: "Eighty-thousand words to prove that the butler did it?" Sure Horowitz' book has going for it all its commentary on the whodunit genre (it is very much a whodunit about whodunits), and some interesting things about gender (a fine use of and explanation for the c-word at one point), but… More criticisms. It's uncool when a writer has a character like Susan say something like, "I dislike coincidences in a whodunit" just before running into a whopping one, and I am not a fan of unnecessary sensational action scenes in the climaxes of mysteries like what happens in Horowitz' frame mystery here. Worse, I think Horowitz indulges in excessive pastiching, as when he has Susan (and us) read an entire chapter by an amateur who can't write well and then an entire chapter by Conway who stole the plot from the amateur so we may compare the two, even though they have nothing to do with Magpie Murders, or an extended passage of the serious "literary" novel by Conway that will never be published because it's "derivative rubbish" aping contemporary novelists like Martin Amis and Will Self. (Actually, I enjoyed that part because it's short and demonstrates that Horowitz can write pretentious, sour, and witty "literary" fiction with the best of them, but…) Finally, Andreas (Susan's middle-aged, understanding, Cretan hunk of a boyfriend) is a bit unbelievable (he was married to Aphrodite!), and the resolution of Horowitz' frame narrative is a bit disappointing. Complaints aside, fans of mysteries will like this book; it is clever, funny, and compelling. It does have plenty of neat lines on crime and life, etc., as when Pund speculates "on the nature of human wickedness… how it is the small lies and evasions which nobody sees or detects but which can come together and smother you like fumes and a house fire," or as when Susan supposes that people around the world like murder mysteries because they provide certainty in an uncertain world. But that the best lines come from Conway's Magpie Murders, makes me think that the framed mystery is better than its frame. View all my reviews
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![]() My rating: 3 of 5 stars Swords, Death, Girls, and Ice Magic Swords and Ice Magic (1977), the sixth book in Fritz Leiber's atypical sword and sorcery series about the complementary anti-heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, is comprised of eight stories. The first six are short and variously depict the attempts of Death to deal with the heroes and/or of the heroes to deal with exotic sexy "girls." The last two tales are a linked novelette and novella that occupy twice as much space in the book as the first six. This is good, because while the first six works are mostly disappointing, the last two are mostly excellent and make the book worth reading. The Sadness of the Executioner (1973) is a turgid vignette in which Death finds it a bit harder to dispatch our two heroes in twenty of his heartbeats than he'd expected, not entirely to his chagrin. There is no suspense or joy, and the story seems less organic than programmatic. The earlier stories in the series were usually more exuberant and less mean-spirited. This one features a rape that's supposed to be funny. In "Beauty and the Beasts" (1974) the Mouser and Fafhrd are stalking a beautiful girl who happens to be entirely white (and "sorcerous blonde") on one side and entirely black (and "witching brunette") on the other, when the Mouser suggests physically splitting her with his comrade, and something surprising and unpleasant happens. They are the beasts in the title, but the vignette has nothing in common with the fairy tale. In "Trapped in Shadowland" (1973) Fafhrd and the Mouser are again targeted by Death, who, finding them lost in a terrible desert surrounds them with a Shadowland (his home) that follows them wherever they go. They want to escape because they fear meeting their dead first loves Vlana and Ivrian again. "The Bait" (1973) is yet another unsavory and unamusing vignette. The two friends are dreaming of treasure when they wake up to find a "delicious chit" in their bedroom ("It looked thirteen, but the lips smiled a cool self-infatuated seventeen… Naturally, she was naked") and are about to fight over her when they are attacked by demons. While in earlier stories Fafhrd is attracted to womanly women like Vlana, here he has, like the Mouser, turned his mind to "nubile girls." "Under the Thumbs of the Gods" (1975) is an enjoyable short story. In it three ignored gods decide to teach Fafhrd and the Mouser a lesson when they hear the friends bragging about romantic conquests. "I believe, gentlemen, it is time they suffered the divine displeasure." The gods arrange a series of tantalizing fantasy scenes featuring the heroes' past amours, all of whom caustically reject the guys--until they really meet again the two best thieves in Lankhmar, Eyes of Ogo and Nemia, now aged, who quickly get the men making dinner, washing their feet, going out for wine, etc. Though still too turgid and fixated on "girls," "Trapped in the Sea of Stars" (1975) is fine. While the friends are sailing in their compact ship, they are visited in dream by "beautiful, slim, translucent girls, mirror-image twins," one of whom tells the Mouser to go south to "Life and immortality and paradise," the other of whom tells Fafhrd to go north "to Shadowland and Death." Which way will they go? "The Frost Monstreme" (1976), is a solid "novelette." Two mysterious women, one tall (Afreyt), one short (Cif), hire the now nearly middle-aged heroes as mercenaries, each being told to bring 12 men just like him to legendary Rime Isle in the north to prevent a Sea Mingol horde (aided by the Wizard of Ice Khahkht) from raping the world. The women pay the friends before vanishing. Leiber writes some neat descriptions (e.g., of the ice magical Frost Monstreme) and some funny touches (e.g., the Mouser hiring 12 thieves who are all shorter than he and Fafhrd hiring 12 giant berserks in need of some refining). The last story in the book, "Rime Isle" (1977), is the longest and best. The apocalyptic invasion manipulated by the Ice Wizard Khahkht looms ever closer as Fafhrd and the Mouser show up at Rime Isle. Their involvement with the affairs of the atheistic population of the island in the face of the frenzied Mingols is complicated by the presence of two renegade gods from our own world with agendas of their own. The story features a surprising climax and a satisfying resolution, as well as much humor (especially involving the Mouser) and melancholy (especially involving Fafhrd). It's a neat story for things like Leiber's idiosyncratic take on the traditional heroic fantasy climactic battle, his development of the two aging heroes into leaders, his exploration of gender (ranging from cringeworthy to cool), his nostalgic frame of mind as his heroes recall past loves and family members and homes, some sublime scenes (like the possession of a god and the whelming of a whirlpool), and plenty of great lines ranging from the comical to the Shakesperean to the numinous, like the following. -"We two-footed fantasies will believe anything." -"A small sound close by, perhaps that of a lemming moving off through the heather, broke his reverie. He was already mounting the gentle slope of the hill he sought. After a moment he continued to the top, stepping softly and keeping his distance from the gibbet and the area that lay immediately beneath its beam. He had a feeling of something uncanny close at hand and he scanned around in the silence." -"He and Cif were brought up against the taffrail along with a clutter of thieves, whores, witches (well, one witch), and Mingol sailors." -"The sail sang and the small waves, advancing in ranked array, slapped the creaming prow. The sunlight was bright everywhere." -"Even Mingols relish life." Although this sixth book should probably be called something like, Swords, Death, Girls, and Ice Magic, although readers new to Leiber should begin with the first entry in the series, Swords Against Deviltry (1970), and although I detect Leiber goatishly, morosely, and verbosely if not imaginatively aging in this collection, thanks to its last two stories, this is finally a fine, rewarding, unique sword and sorcery book. View all my reviews ![]() My rating: 5 of 5 stars "A god moved him--who knows?" Like The Iliad, The Odyssey is culturally, psychologically, and aesthetically fascinating, moving, and entertaining. Recently I re-read it by listening to two different audiobook versions: Fitzgerald's 1961 translation read by Dan Stevens and Robert Fagles' 1996 translation read by Ian McKellan. Both translations and readings are superb. I don't know Greek so I can't compare their accuracy, but their English is dynamic, beautiful, and flexible. Here are two versions of a great moment when Medon tries to explain to Penelope why her son went on a dangerous voyage: (Fitzgerald) “A god moved him--who knows?--or his own heart sent him to learn, at Pylos, if his father roams the wide world still, or what befell him.” (Fagles) “I don’t know if a god inspired your son or the boy’s own impulse led him down to Pylos, but he went to learn of his father’s journey home, or whatever fate he’s met.” Both versions capture the Homerian ambiguity about why we do what we do, but Fitzgerald does more compellingly in 28 words what Fagles does in 34, and I did find that Fitzgerald is usually more concise. Fagles tends to be more colloquial (catch my drift, cramping my style, etc.), while Fitzgerald uses unusual, "authentic" spellings of names with k for c etc. (Kyklops, Akhaians, Telemakhos, etc.). The above two translation examples are similar in meaning, but there are other places with greater differences, like when Odysseus blesses the royal house of the Phaeacians by saying he hopes they'll pass their riches down to their SONS in Fagles but to their CHILDREN in Fitzgerald, and I wonder which is closer to the original Greek. As for the audiobook readings, both Dan Stevens and Ian McKellan are excellent, versatile actors with appealing voices and manners and great intelligence and empathy. Neither strains artificially for male or female or young or old characters. Both greatly enhance Homer's poem. I did find that, perhaps because of his greater age and experience, Ian McKellan revealed a wider and deeper range of emotion than Stevens. McKellan does a great Cyclops giving Odysseus a "gift," Circe enticing Odysseus to her bed, Menelaus predicting a blood wedding for the suitors, and so on. The 40-page Postscript by Fitzgerald is missing from his audiobook, while Fagles' informative 65-page introduction is missing from his. Anyway, I highly recommend both audiobooks of The Odyssey, which was after all originally meant to be listened to rather than read. The first four books of the poem begin not with the beginning of Odysseus' epic ten-year effort to return home but in its last year, and concern not Odysseus but his son Telemachus, introducing the situation in Ithaca where for the last three years many reckless suitors have been hanging around the hero's wife Penelope in hopes that Odysseus will stay missing so one of them can marry her. Telemachus has been helplessly watching the greedy suitors devour his patrimony, until Athena decides to spark his maturing into a man by inspiring him to travel to his father's old Trojan War comrades to ask them what happened to his father. The next four books recount Odysseus' long longed for departure from the island (and bed) of the minor goddess Calypso and his arrival at the island of the Phaeacians, where, in the next four books he suspensefully narrates to his hosts his past adventures trying to return home after the Trojan War (encountering lotus eaters, sirens, Cyclops, wind gods, Circe, the House of the Dead, and more). The last half of the poem depicts Odysseus finally back in Ithaca, disguised by Athena as an old beggar, recruiting an ally or two, visiting his palace to assess the suitors and servants (and to suffer their affronts), and plotting some ultra-justice on the people who've been living without proper manners and morals. The poem features many memorable fantastic and or emotional scenes. When Zeus complains about the tendency of foolish mortals to blame the gods for their troubles, when Athena prays to herself for a smooth journey, when Odysseus meets the shade of his mother ("like a shadow dissolving like a dream" in Fagles), when Odysseus treats Polyphemus to some wine and a sharpened stake (in an exuberantly gruesome scene), when Odysseus meets Nausica, when Odysseus tells Athena another fake autobiography ("You chameleon, bottomless bag of tricks," she calls him in Fitzgerald), when Telemachus sneezes at something Penelope says, when Penelope interviews a beggar, when Odysseus tests his sad old father, when the shade of Agamemnon happily hears the shade of a suitor recount what Odysseus has done to his fellows and him. And many more. There are many interesting aspects of the poem, like the following: --divine interference in our affairs may be explained by human nature or chance. --Odysseus travels around sleeping with goddesses, while Penelope must stay chaste at home. --Odysseus is willing to raid strangers in their homes but expects the people he visits to be friendly to strangers (and that in a sense his treatment of the suitors resembles what monstrous hosts like Polyphemus and Hercules do to their guests). --Odysseus metes out disproportionate violent justice, especially to a dozen slave girls and a disloyal goatherd. --Homer addresses the loyal swineherd Eumaeus as "you." --Homer really likes poets (especially blind ones). Finally, such is the richness of the poem's characters and imagination and language (including the epic similes comparing, for example, Odysseus to things like an octopus dragged from its lair, children who feel relief after their father recovers from illness, and a sausage turned back and forth by a cook over a scorching blaze), that even though from the start Homer repeatedly foreshadows what will happen, it all manages to be suspenseful and entertaining every time one reads it. View all my reviews ![]() My rating: 4 of 5 stars Can a Leopard Change Its Spots? Should it? Just as Freddy the Pig is finishing a poem in which he yearns for a useful tail like a dog or cat's, a robin called JJ Pomeroy mistakes the poet's short curly tail for a worm and gives it a painful tug. The bird apologetically explains that he's near-sighted and constantly taking inedible things home to his children. He also tells Freddy (after the pig recites his poem) that he ought to be proud of having the only purposeless tail on Mr. Bean's farm. Freddy is much impressed, nearly tears up his poem, and offers to help the robin get a pair of tiny glasses from the town optometrist. On the way to Centerboro to fulfill his offer the next day, Freddy is ambushed by Jimmy Witherspoon and his slingshot. Jimmy is the son of a Xenas Witherspoon, a skin flint farmer who refuses to pay for clothes or shoes for the boy so that he's always barefoot and raggedy so that he's ostracized at school, so that his only entertainment is watching animals jump when struck by pebbles from his slingshot. Later that day, Freddy and JJ run into Mrs. Church, the local rich woman who's come to town (driven on a tandem bicycle by her chauffeur because the war has made saving gasoline a patriotic priority) to get wedding invitations printed for her niece. The invitations will display the Church coat of arms (which her husband recently bought) featuring an unknown bird which Freddy is inspired to call a popinjay: because it's an imaginary bird, no one can say it's not a popinjay! Thus begin the three main plot lines of Walter R. Brooks' Freddy and the Popinjay (1945), which deals comically and complexly with themes relating to identity and change. Should we be content with ourselves as we are? Are we capable of changing ourselves for the better? If we change our outer appearances, does that mean we also change our inner selves? Do we have the right or responsibility to "help" other people change? Should people be given second chances to improve? Etc. The story produces comical or interesting developments like the transformation of a robin into an imaginary bird; a new fashion by which live birds are paid to act like ladies' hats; a war between farm animals and a lonely and indomitable boy; an Arthurian jousting tournament featuring pillows, a duck pond, and bovine chargers; a school run by bears; a wild cat family that wants a new start (the parents promising that their kids won't eat their fellow pupils anymore); a milliner who decides she'd rather walk around in the woods than make a fortune; an overly eager to help wasp; an elephant trap that turns into a thinking hole; and more and more and more. Like Brooks' other Freddy books, this one is very funny in many different ways. It features whimsical information about animal nature (e.g., "Wasps are no diplomats") as well as satirical takes on human nature (e.g., "Being a banker's wife, she was very difficult to please"). Its humor ranges from the philosophical (Hank the simple horse musing, "It's kind of hard to tell, sometimes, though, whether it's somebody outside that pushed you or somebody inside") to the farcical (Freddy and his friends waking Jimmy up every half hour all night by howling or mooing etc. so as to make him too tired to use his slingshot on them). Much of the humor focuses on Freddy, as when the not overly old pig writes a poem about his lost youth, "When I was a piglet, the grass was much greener," or attends the wedding of Mrs. Church's niece and is mistaken for an ambassador and then partakes in the nuptial fare: "Freddy, like most pigs, was always up in front when the refreshments were handed round." Like other Freddy books, this one also works in much good-hearted and helpful wisdom (e.g., "Freddy did not think she looked funny any more than most people in Centerboro, because if you like people a lot it doesn't matter what they look like") and vivid description ("Mrs. Church laughed harder than ever, and when she laughed, she shook and all the ten-cent store diamonds sparkled and glittered in the sunshine, until she was quite blinding"). One of the interesting features of the Freddy books is that, after the first three or so, in which the animals can only talk to other animals (humans being too dense to understand animal speech), Freddy and his animal (and insect) friends can speak with people as well as with other animals. It makes for a charming narrative world. John McDonough is, once again, the perfect reader for a Freddy audiobook, his slightly high and rough voice seriously enjoying Brooks' fantasy fun and never over-doing anything, modifying his voice slightly for rich old ladies, spunky mice, conceited robins, obstreperous boys, mercurial pigs, and so on. All just right. People who like things like Charlotte's Web (with more humor and less pathos) and Dr. Doolittle (with less traveling around the world) should give Freddy books like this one a try. I am happy to be rediscovering them now after having forgotten them for 45 years. View all my reviews ![]() My rating: 3 of 5 stars “Clean and bleed, bleed and clean” My favorite part of Gone Girl (2012) was the first part, in which author Gillian Flynn alternates chapters narrated by Nick Dunne with chapters comprised of entries in the diary of Amy Elliott Dunne, because we cannot decide if A) Nick killed his wife Amy on their fifth anniversary, B) someone else like a former “Amy obsessive” kidnapped and or killed her, C) Amy disappeared herself to frame and punish Nick, or D) Nick and or Amy are playing games with us. For about the first third of the novel, Flynn ratchets up the ambiguities, as Nick’s narration and Amy’s diary become increasingly incompatible accounts of reality. Someone must be delusional or scheming or both. Throughout the novel, Flynn writes impressively in the voices of Nick and Amy, making them feel like interesting real people. She makes us want to find out what happened “on the day of” Amy’s disappearance while entertaining us with the couple’s witty comments and original figures of speech. Through the minds of her co-protagonists (co-antagonists?), Flynn autopsies American culture, through references to TV shows like Eight Is Enough and CSI, movies like The Last of the Mohicans and Godfather II, novels like Something Wicked This Way Comes and Huckleberry Finn, shop names like Costco and Goodwill, differences between Manhattan and the Midwest, and contemporary trends like the economic crash of 2008, the replacing of traditional print media by the Internet, the increase in the number of fertility treatment enabled twins and triplets, and the desolation of abandoned shopping malls. She also incorporates into her novel lots of provocative views on gender (e.g., what is a “good” or “bad” husband, how women try to be “cool girls” to attract men, how abuse may take the form of brutal violence or smothering care, and so on), all while never quite taking sides--though I can understand why some feminist readers may dislike the book, I think Flynn is really exploring ways in which both men and women can be awful to each other. Perhaps the real target of her realistic satire is the pervasive and unhealthy influence on the public mind of mass media, including children’s books, blogs, SNS, and of course popular TV shows exploring unsolved crimes and celebrity lawyers championing accused criminals, everyone seemingly manipulated by media and or trying to manipulate it, because whoever controls the narrative has the best chance of winning the game. Nick goes on a great riff about how difficult it is to have an authentic individual soul when inundated with modern media: "I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters." Ultimately, though, I was disappointed by the book. Without giving spoilers, I’d just like to say that the first part of the novel was more fascinating and exciting than the middle and last parts of the novel, wherein the ambiguities have been resolved and we know what’s been going on and wherein Flynn has some things happen that I couldn’t believe would happen and does not have some things happen that I couldn’t believe wouldn’t happen, all in order to get to the ending she wants to get to. And my failure to enjoy (or buy) the ending made me retroactively notice earlier hard to believe points in the plot. Flynn does write some great scenes, including a nighttime visit to a vast abandoned shopping mall, a daytime visit to a dilapidated miniature golf course, a televised missing person vigil, a rehearsal for a TV interview, a surprising robbery, and a strange wedding anniversary gift. And she creates memorable and believable characters--Nick and Amy of course, but also Nick’s twin sister Go, Detective Rhonda Boney, Amy’s parents Mary Beth and Rand, and even Amy’s ex-boyfriend Desi Collings and a pair of Ozarks “grifters” named Jeff and Greta. And she does lots of fine writing in Nick’s voice, as when he sees a homeless man squatting in one of the abandoned super-houses in his neighborhood, “floating in the dark like some sad aquarium fish” or describes Amy as “no longer my wife but a razor-wire daring me to unloop her,” and in Amy’s voice, as when she describes her parents’ relationship, “They have no harsh edges with each other, no spiny conflict, they ride through life like conjoined jellyfish--expanding and contracting instinctively, filling each other's spaces liquidly” or criticizes women’s expected roles implied by TV commercials for tampons and cleaning aids, “as if all women did was bleed and clean.” Both readers of the audiobook, Kirby Heyborne and Julia Whelan, do convincing Nicks and Amys, whether as “themselves” or as their spouses, and fine other characters, too. Whelan is especially great when voicing an irritating cuckoo clock, a misogynistic man with Alzheimer’s, a resentful Nick, or a smarmy Amazing Amy. I think anyone interested in thrillers about contemporary American culture and gender and media and bright, flawed, and charismatic characters should like Gone Girl. View all my reviews |
Jefferson Peters
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by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
Elias is an elite Martial soldier, Laia a naïve Scholar slave. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon rea...
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"It must be due to some fault in ourselves"--
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an anti-totalitarian-communist allegory in which the exploited animals of the Manor Farm kick Farmer Jones out and set about running the farm. At first...
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by Lu Xun
Perfect Stories of Life in Early 20th Century China
Chinese Classic Stories (1998) by Xun Lu is an excellent collection of seven short stories by perhaps the most important 20th century Chinese writer of fiction. Lu Xun (1881-1936) stu...
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Fine Writing, Great Characters, Immersive World
The Surgeon's Mate (1980) is the 7th novel in Patrick O'Brian's addicting series of age of sail novels about the lives, loves, and careers of the British navy captain Jack Aubrey and the ...
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An Overwritten, Oddly Compelling Gothic Father
Matthew Lewis' notorious and influential Gothic novel The Monk (1796) takes place during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Ambrosio, the monk/friar/abbot/idol of Madrid, is nicknamed ...
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