THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE by Neil Gaiman

I love how Neil Gaiman’s books find both magic and terror lurking in the most mundane places. In The Ocean at the End of the Lane, an introverted little boy finds a mystical world at a farmhouse just down a bumpy road from his house – a place of both wonder and fear. But more fabulous than the full moon that always shines on one side of the house to the little nameless boy who is the main character in the story is actually finding a friend, in the person of a strangely mature 11-year-old girl named Lettie Hempstock.

The little boy meets Lettie and the other Hempstock women when his family car is used by a tenant to commit suicide on their property. This sad act sets off a chain of events that puts the little boy, his family, Lettie Hempstock and perhaps the whole world in danger. But in the background of all the harrowing activity is the absolute calm of the Hempstock farm, where Lettie, her mother Ginnie, and grandmother Old Mrs. Hempstock live in absolute harmony with nature: where the fires are cozier, the kittens are cuddlier and the food tastes better than anyplace on earth. Which makes the juxtaposition of good and evil in this book particularly jarring.

This story certainly bears some resemblance to Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book -- but definitely at an adult level. No children’s book could deal so forthrightly with a father’s attempt to murder his own son – or that same father’s entanglement with an evil nanny. Still, Gaiman brings so much whimsy to the characters that you find yourself lulled into a false sense of security – and then startled back into remembering this is not a “warm and fuzzy” tale. For example, after one near death experience, the young boy’s mind turns to spotted dick, a favorite dessert:

I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I found joy in things that made me happy. The custard was sweet and creamy in my mouth, the dark swollen currants in the spotted dick were tangy in the cake-thick chewy blandness of the pudding, and perhaps I was going to die that night and perhaps I would never go home again, but it was a good dinner, and I had faith in Lettie Hempstock. p. 206

This is a unique story, despite the fact that the Hempstock women are reminiscent of the Fates –- life forms so old and powerful that even the Greek gods could not understand or sway them. But the similarities ended for me there. I absolutely couldn’t put this book down. I imagine many people will have this one on their R.I.P. VIII lists this year, and I don’t think they’ll be disappointed. Thanks so much to Carl V at Stainless Steel Droppings for hosting!

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive a free copy of this book for review. I borrowed the e-book from my public library.

THE RETURNED by Jason Mott

I should not read books about people who lose their children. It upsets me too much. Which is probably why the overwhelming emotion I felt after reading Jason Mott’s impressive and intense new novel, The Returned, was sadness, rather than the expected fear. But that’s okay, because the book was far more thought-provoking and rewarding than I had ever expected.

The premise of the novel is fantastic: What would happen if all over the world, the dead just decided not to be dead anymore? What if the people you’d loved and lost and grieved over most suddenly appeared at your door, in the same state as the last time you’d been with them? Would you welcome them home with open arms? Would you question their motives for returning – or even whether or not they were who they said they were? And what would the returned do, without homes and jobs and all the other things that the passage of time would have taken from them?

The novel begins with Harold and Lucille Hargrave facing that question exactly: their only son, lost in a drowning accident some 50 years ago when he was 8-years-old, is returned to their home by a federal agent after “returning” from death somewhere in China. (I have still not figured out the China angle– there wasn’t enough information to tell me whether or not Mott is making some claim about weird, super power science robbing the graves of their inhabitants. So that thread was a total loss for me.) Harold and Lucille immediately take him in, although they disagree about whether or not he is actually their son, or something else altogether. But what they don’t realize at the beginning is the absolute havoc the returning dead will wreak on their small Mississippi community – and the world in general.

At one point, Lucille spars with former friends from her town who have joined the anti-returned movement:

“I just want to know what your demands are, is all. All sit-ins have demands! You have to ask for something when you organize like this.” A soldier bumped into her by accident. He paused to apologize, then she continued on. “You’ve succeeded in disrupting things,“ Lucille said to Fred. “That’s plain. But what’s next? What’s your platform? What are you standing for?”

Fred’s eyes went full of light. He sat erect in his chair and inhaled a deep, dramatic breath. The other men followed his lead and sat straight as tombstones. “We stand for the living,” Fred said in a flat, even voice.

It was the slogan of the True Living Movement – those fools that Lucille and Harold had watched on television that day so long ago. The ones who’d gone from promises of race wars to full-on racial integration since the Returned. And now there was Fred quoting them.

Without a doubt, Lucille thought, nut jobbery was afoot. p. 179

Mott’s novel touches so many chords – about jealousy, about difference, about loss and forgiveness. But to my mind, it perfectly crystallizes the tragic circumstances faced by refugees around the globe. In fact, it is a meditation on the human ability to live far beyond what endurance should allow – and the aftermath of living outside the normal order of things. Left without their past lives, these refugees appear in a place that seems hospitable at first, is empathetic and even caring in the abstract – but becomes dangerous when the newcomers begin to impact and change the inhabitant’s previously ordered world. This book about returning dead, which I originally thought of as a creepy tale, really made me think about the plight of the Tamils and the Syrians and all the other groups of people who are forced from where they belong, and then must hope for the best from the places they wander into. How difficult it is to remake a life?

This book was very powerful, but I wouldn’t really call it scary, which was what I expected from the description. Still, the returning dead seem to make it a natural for the R.I.P. VIII Challenge – there’s plenty of suspense. And maybe others will see it as more “perilous” than I did. If the main story line hadn’t revolved around a lost child, it might have been a different story for me as well. I read this book as part of a TLC Book Tour, and received a free copy of the book in return for my honest opinion, which is what you’ve got here. Thanks as always to Lisa for including me on the tour. For other opinions on this title, check the links here.

LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET by M.E. Braddon

When I joined The Classics Club, the first thing I did was go through the list on Kindle, to see which of the books were available for free or reduced fees. This is one of the great things about reading classics—many of those in the public domain are available at no cost for e-readers through the volunteers at Project Gutenberg. I figured I would load a couple of Kindle titles immediately so I didn’t waste any late night reading time, which is when I really enjoy using my Kindle. And one of the first items I loaded was M.E. Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret. Lucky for me, a night of insomnia led me to yet another unexpectedly enjoyable classic!

Lady Audley’s Secret is often described as the quintessential Victorian “sensation” novel, providing a glimpse into that tightly ordered world by examining what happens when its conventions are completely abandoned. The novel begins with the poor but beautiful Lucy Graham winning the heart of widower Lord Michael Audley. Formerly employed by the local doctor as a governess, Lucy’s life before coming to Essex is veiled in some sad mystery. Lord Audley adores spoiling his young and charming wife, hoping to make up for her past unhappiness, to the disgust of his own daughter Alicia (who happens to be about the same age as her new stepmother).

Meanwhile, back in London, presumptive heir to Lord Audley’s title barrister Robert Audley runs into a dear old friend, George Talboys, just richly returned from a gold-panning expedition to Australia, who is searching for the young and beautiful wife he abandoned in an attempt to change their dwindling fortunes. The fortunes were dwindling, I might add, because George’s father disinherited his son when he rashly chose to marry the beautiful but penniless Helen. Alas, just as George triumphantly returns to England, her death is announced in the papers, breaking his heart. But fate brings the many threads of the story together at Audley Court – until, of course, George Talboys mysteriously vanishes, and Robert is compelled to find out the meaning of his friend’s disappearance – no matter the cost to his beloved family.

I like to think of it as the Grandmother of every radio serial and soap opera ever produced –many of the motifs that pack this 300 page novel are still playing out on the airwaves and Internet today: revenge, doppelgangers, orphaned children, unscrupulous parents. I read that it was originally printed in installments, which explains why each chapter adds some information about Lucy’s past – and ends in some kind of cliffhanger. Reading it all together makes for quite a rollercoaster. The seven deadly sins get quite a workout in Lady Audley’s Secret, but as you’d expect from a Victorian novel, the heavenly virtues are also in evidence, drawing a very clear delineation of those who live within society’s boundaries, and those who live without. There’s also a healthy dose of the occult. For example, Alicia’s dog seems to have a preternatural fear of the new Lady Audley:

The Newfoundland rolled his eyes slowly round in the direction of the speaker, as if he understood every word that had been said. Lady Audley happened to enter the room at this very moment, and the animal cowered down by the side of his mistress with a suppressed grow. There was something in the manner of the dog which was, if anything, more indicative of terror than of fury; incredible as it appears that Caesar should be frightened by so fragile a creature as Lucy Audley.p. 72

I thoroughly enjoyed every frothy, overwrought minute of this novel. It was so true to its time period, yet edgy in its confrontation of social taboos. I had never even heard of Lady Audley’s Secret until, trying to expand beyond Elizabeth Gaskill, I looked up a list of female Victorian authors and found Mary Elizabeth (M.E.) Braddon. The book also appeared on the Manchester Guardian’s 1000 Books Everyone Must Read: The Definitive List. That’s a pretty bold claim for any list, and I certainly found some striking omissions (not surprisingly, the list is very English-centric), but I think it’s a fabulous resource, conveniently broken up into genre: comedy, crime, family and self, love, science fiction and fantasy, state of the nation, and war and travel. I will definitely be culling this list for more ideas for future challenges, as the recommendations so far have been outstanding.

This book counts as my 19th Century Classic for the Back to the Classics Challenge, hosted by Sarah Reads Too Much, and is my second book for The Classics Club. It was free for my Kindle, which keeps my total for that Challenge so far at $2.51. Since this is considered a crime genre classic, I am also linking it to the R.I.P. VIII Challenge, hosted by Carl V. of Stainless Steel Droppings, which started just a little bit early this year.

Welcome to the Perils of Fall: My R.I.P. VIII Challenge List

I’ve seen some sure signs that autumn will be cooling down the frenzied pace of summer very soon. The students have moved back into their dorms at the university. The leaves on the dogwood tree outside my kitchen window have already taken on a dull, red hue. And reading lists for the R.I.P. VIII (that’s R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril) Challenge, hosted once again this year by Carl V at Stainless Steel Droppings, have begun to pop up around the blogosphere.

This year at least two of my titles will overlap with my Classics Club list – I love those 2-for-1 reads! I’ve narrowed it down to 5 novels I’d like to read so far, but I am waiting for two of them via interlibrary loan, so I will probably read whichever gets here first (thanks, Big 10).

Peril the First:
Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi by Jorge Luis Borges
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing
That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana by Carlo Emilio Gadda
The Returned by Jason Mott

And if all goes well, I will also try to participate in Peril of the Short Story, reading The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton. But it’s a bit early to tell how that’s all going to go at this point.

I’m looking forward to chilling – and hopefully chilly – two months of reading. What’s on your R.I.P. list?