I picked up Paul Kearney’s The Wolf in the Attic by chance when I was in Barnes & Noble one day with my mom. I was attracted by the title which interested me, and by the blurb on the back which featured CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. They weren’t huge parts of the story but they did clearly inspire some of the setting and I appreciated that.
The story revolves around Anna Francis, a refugee of the Great War, in England from Greece, where her village was destroyed by (IIRC) the Ottomans. Her mother and brother were killed, and Anna and her father managed to make it to England, where Anna was bullied for being foreign so badly that she was eventually pulled out of school. Aside from her tutor, her only friend is her doll, Penelope, who Anna is aware is not real but is still acknowledged to be her best friend. Penelope is the only one Anna can talk about her homeland and her mother and brother with; her father does not want to talk about it. Her father has become involved with a political group of Greek ex-pats and has taken to heavy drinking.
With little else to do when not studying, Anna explores the house in which she lives and wanders the streets of Oxford and the surrounding countryside. She eventually meets a boy with yellow eyes in the attic and then his family in the woods – and her life takes quite the turn.
This was a historical fiction and fantasy book which I truly enjoyed, even though books like this aren’t usually my jam. Anna is a wonderful character, childlike but still smart and insightful, and her loneliness pervades the entire story. The writing was quite beautiful. I read part of the book on the train to and from New York City, and remember vividly looking out the window, startled to find I was on the Hudson River in New York, not in Oxfordshire.
The book’s ending suggested a sequel and I would not hesitate to read another of Kearney’s books, especially one featuring Anna. I absolutely look forward to this, although it will probably be even further down the line than this review as I have so many other books to read.
That said, The Wolf in the Attic was a wonderful story and I highly recommend it.
Category Archives: fiction
The Wolf in the Attic
Pet Sematary
I didn’t do a lot of Stephen King in 2019, I suppose because I did so much of him in 2018. Pet Sematary is considered one of King’s “classics,” one of the novels everyone points to when no0bs ask where they should start with King.
I am pretty glad I didn’t start with Pet Sematary. This is where it gets a little strange with me. I thought Pet Sematary was really good, but I can’t exactly say that I liked it. I know, I know.
Let’s start with the most obvious thing I had trouble with in this novel: I’m not a big fan of animal deaths, no matter the type, even if it wasn’t horrible torture porn or anything like that. I’m that person who only cares if the dog dies. So there was an animal death in this book, which I didn’t love, but on the other hand the book is so old I knew the general plot and knew it was coming.
Then, there is the main character, Louis. Sigh. It’s not that he’s a bad character, or even particularly dislikeable but I personally tend to dislike characters/people who live in denial and lie to themselves. (No, I don’t have many friends in real life, how did you know?) Honestly, I have a lot of character flaws, but believing my own bullshit is not one of them. How many times do you have to do the same thing before you realize it’s not a good idea? Louis is one of those. How many times do you have to bury things in the ancient Indian burial ground before you figure out the outcome is not going to be better? At least one more, apparently.
There’s also the whole trope of the ancient Indian burial ground. The book came out in 1983 so things weren’t quite as enlightened then but I still probably wouldn’t use that trope today. That said, in this case it was a really effective use of the trope. I also think King may have played fast and loose with the geography of the Mi’kmaq people because while I think they are a tribe of the Northeastern Woodlands, I think most of their territory is in Canada, not as much in Maine. I looked this up when I read the book but it’s been a while. This is one of those things I’m willing to overlook while acknowledging it might be considered culturally insensitive. I also remember reading the Mi’kmaq had really interesting spiritual practices (nothing about cursed burial grounds), but that’s not really relevant.
Anyway, like I said, I enjoyed Pet Sematary but I can’t quite say that I liked it. It is definitely one of King’s best novels, and an excellent place to start with his books. Highly recommended.
Lethal White
Lethal White is the fourth Cormoran Strike novel. As usual, I enjoyed it.
As usual, the main narrative of the novel is a murder investigation, this one triggered by a young man with a mental illness who believes he may have witnessed a child’s murder and burial in the woods near his home some years before the start of the novel.
The case leads to the Minister of Culture, Jasper Chiswell, and the investigation into his son Freddie’s death in Afghanistan, as well as the rest of his family and some left wing environmental activists.
This book also features art, which I am on and off randomly obsessed with.
I enjoyed Lethal White. I thought the motive was excellent and the story was well written.
My favorite part of the series continues to be Robin. She’s smart, determined, quite a bit ballsy, and I admire her struggle with PTSD because 1) it’s hard and 2) she does a lot of things I feel like I would do if I had PTSD. But anyway, I like everything about her except her sticking by her unsupportive boyfriend/fiancé/husband even though he’s a selfish cow. BUT THAT WAS FINALLY REMEDIED IN THIS BOOK. SHE FINALLY DUMPS HIM.
This is clearly setting up Robin and Strike as…endgame? Not 100% sure about that and not 100% certain how I feel about it, but honestly it doesn’t matter because OMG SHE DUMPED MATTHEW AND THANK GOD BECAUSE HE WAS AWFUL.
I don’t want to spoil too much of the case. I enjoy the cases in these stories because I find them interesting and difficult to work out (I don’t enjoy stories where I work out the end too much, makes me feel like I wasted my time). So I’ll cut this off here. BUT ROBIN DUMPED MATTHEW. YAY.
Dragon Teeth
Dragon Teeth is the first of Michael Crichton’s novels that I’ve read. You’d think I’d have read Jurassic Park, as it’s one of my all time favorite films, but no, I never have. I was originally going to listen to Jurassic Park, but it was on loan, and this came up as available.
I wanted to be a paleontologist as a kid. I was obsessed with dinosaur bones and knew an abnormal amount about them for a four to nine year old child. I still have tons of books about them and am still fairly obsessed all things considered. I don’t know why I didn’t follow that dream. It’s one of the things about my life that I really regret.
So this book called to me. It was my second historical fiction book in a row, but not on purpose.
This story follows William Johnson, a college student who gets involved in the rivalry between two men searching for dinosaur bones in the American West during the 1870s on a bet with another student. The ‘Bone Wars‘ as they were called, was a real rivalry between Othenial Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, both of whom are fictionalized and play prominent roles in this story.
Johnson becomes an assistant to first Marsh, who is portrayed as a paranoid lunatic, and Marsh eventually abandons Johnson (a student!) in Cheyenne when he suspects he’s a spy for Cope. Johnson then actually joins up with Cope. They head out west, and make it, in spite of Marsh doing everything in his power to discredit them. News of Custer’s defeat by Sitting Bull at the Battle of Little Bighorn means travel to Montana is banned, but Cope’s group sneaks in and start digging up dinosaur bones.
On their journey back, the group is attacked by the Sioux and are separated, and Johnson is missing and presumed dead. Cope wires his parents and the remaining team leaves for the east coast. Johnson manages to drag himself, injured, to Deadwood Gulch, and the rest of the story is his journey to get home and what happens to the dinosaur bones in his possession.
This book was actually really funny. I listened to a lot of it at the gym, and it was wildly hilarious. Marsh is a lunatic and Cope isn’t much better but is at least not also paranoid, and Johnson kind of can’t believe how in over his head he is. I will have to check out more of Crichton’s books in the future.
It was fun. Everything I wanted in a story about the search for dinosaur bones in 1876. Made me regret not becoming a paleontologist again.
The Winter Station
The first time I noticed Jody Shields’ The Winter Station, I tagged it as a book I had to read based on the title alone. I also remember reading the synopsis and thinking it was interesting, but when I finally got around to reading the book, I must have confused it with another because it wasn’t about what I thought it was about at all.
“So what was it about?” you ask. Good question!
During the freezing cold winter of 1910 in Kharbin, a remote but major Russian controlled rail outpost in Manchuria, Northern China, the bodies of two men are found frozen in the snow outside Central Station. Because the deaths were of two Chinese men, they were not considered relevant, and the city’s chief medical officer, Baron von Budberg, was not called. There were no death certificates, the bodies were not examined, and were quickly forgotten. And then, suddenly, people are mysteriously dying at an alarming rate. Baron von Budberg is a Russian aristocrat who finds himself facing a plague that he and his colleagues are struggling to contain before it spreads to the rest of the world on the trains that come and go so frequently. Bodies are disappearing. The doctor finds himself battling Russian custom, as well as human prejudice, and the dichotomy of western medical science and his own respect for Chinese traditional medicine. In his fight, he finds himself allied with a black market mercenary, a French doctor, and a theatrical Chinese dwarf. He hides from the world in the arms of his young Chinese wife, who also has secrets.
This book sounds a lot more exciting than it is, but it isn’t a bad book. I read a lot of reviews for it after I completed it and the main complaint seemed to be this wasn’t a thriller. I guess the problem with the blurbs on the jacket of the book is that the they’re trying to get you to buy the book, not necessarily enjoy it. The blurb on this book does make it sound like it’s a quick paced race against time, and while it is a race against time, it’s not a mile a minute seat of your pants race against time. It’s an atmospheric slow burning medical drama with someone trying to do the right thing while being pulled in several different forceful directions and frustrated by bureaucracy.
I have to say, it was a bit slow but overall I enjoyed it. It took me awhile to enjoy it though. Much like my experience with Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, I was quite close to the end before fully understanding and liking the book. The protagonist, von Budberg, is a good man who is a well written, fully developed character. Some of the supporting characters could have used some fleshing out, but it wasn’t a deal breaker. There was some beautiful language in this book, but I spotted some incongruities in the writing – sometimes a character would start speaking that I wasn’t even aware was in the room. Again, not a deal breaker, just something that took me momentarily out of the story.
This is another historical fiction work that has highlighted how lacking my historical education has been in many cases. The jacket says this is based on a story that has been lost to history, but it’s not *that* lost, I think. I can find stuff on it with a Google search – the story coming to light again due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Winter Station was based on the 1910-1911 plague outbreak in Manchuria. The general outline of events is this: a pneumonic plague that was believed to have originated from a tarbagan marmot infected with bacterial pneumonia jumped to humans who were probably hunting the marmots for their fur. An airborne disease that was also highly contagious, this plague had a near 100% fatality rate and wiped out about 60,000 people over the course of one winter.
This is totally not fair to tarbagan marmots, by the way, because they are freaking *adorable.* They’re like little fat woodchucks who are mostly harmless but who definitely carry pneumonic disease that can spread to humans when the marmots are eaten (especially if the meat is uncooked) or if a flea bites the human after biting an infected marmot (like the plague spread by rats in Europe, but the marmots are WAY cuter).
The Manchurian plague was one of the first disease outbreaks that highlighted the need for a multi-national response, foreshadowing international medical groups, like the World Health Organization. Because Japan and Russia had economic interests in Manchuria and the disease was so fatal, the Chinese government requested help from the international community and support from foreign doctors.
At least one of the characters in this book was real. Dr. Wu Lien-teh was a Cambridge trained Malaysian doctor who was called in to assist the situation. He advocated for the use of masks as personal protective equipment, to be worn by doctors, nurses, patients, and when possible, the population at large. The mask he developed was a predecessor of the N-95, popular today as PPE medical providers use to protect themselves from Covid-19. In the book, Dr. Wu faces massive prejudice from certain members of the majority white, European team of doctors, but Dr. Wu turns out to be right, so he get the last laugh, as it were. Baron von Budberg, to his credit, thinks very highly of Dr. Wu in the story.
Dr. Wu probably deserves a book all his own. He may have one that I just haven’t found yet, for all I know. But he practiced medicine until he was 80 and helped develop the first hazmat suit.
Again, The Winter Station was *not* a fast paced thriller but a slow burning medical drama. I greatly enjoyed it, although I didn’t realize how much I was enjoying it until it was nearly over. As long as you know it isn’t a Dan Brown novel going in, there’s no reason why you can’t also enjoy it.
Frenchman’s Creek
I’m sure I’ve mentioned it here before, but Daphne DuMaurier is one of my favorite authors. In spite of this fact, I have not read all her books. This is one of the most recent ones I’ve read.
Frenchman’s Creek takes place during the reign of King Charles II. Dona, Lady of St. Columb and some level of aristocrat, leaves London in a fit of disgust with the society of the time. She retreats to her husband’s country estate in Cornwall, which hasn’t been used in several years. She quickly discovers that it’s being used as a base by the French pirate Jean-Benoit Aubéry, who has a notorious reputation and has been terrorizing the coast near by. She meets him and they begin a love affair.
Dressed as a boy, Dona joins the pirate crew and takes part in one particularly spectacular robbery, which brings her husband and his friend Rockingham to Cornwall. With other men, they plot to capture Aubéry, but Aubéry and his clever crew get the best of the search party – tying them up and robbing them.
I don’t remember exactly what happens but Dona has to kill Rockingham because he attacks her in a jealous rage when he figures out she’s in love with Aubéry. Naturally, Rockingham had his sights on Dona as well, and was a lunatic. Aubéry is eventually captured, but Dona helps him escape, and while she’s tempted to go with him on his ship so they can travel and have adventures together, she ultimately chooses to stay with her children and her husband.
This isn’t du Maurier’s usual style of novel – it’s much more romantic than the other works I’ve read by her, and it wasn’t as dark as other stories, with no horror elements. I did not have an issue with this. du Maurier’s language was as beautiful as ever, and the story was fun.
There an be an argument made that this book was semi-autobiographical. du Maurier struggled with identity during her life. As a girl she wished to be a boy and was a fierce tomboy. She described her sexuality as that of two people – a loving wife and mother, the persona she showed the world, and “a lover” which was she described as an overwhelmingly masculine energy. “The lover” was the force behind her creative work. There was also speculation that she was bisexual (but this is just speculation and has been denied by her children/surviving family). She is also remembered as something as a recluse who got tired of the aristocratic society she belonged to and the general public, but this depends on who you talked to.
With that in mind, it’s possible to see that struggle play out in this work. Dona becomes disgusted with her life and takes a break from it and joins a pirate crew dressed as a boy, while also engaging in a passionate fling with the captain. She is tempted to leave, but ultimately decides that her place is with her husband and children (much like du Maurier stayed with her husband and children, despite that her marriage wasn’t entirely happy.)
I really loved this story for the language, though. It’s an almost dreamy love story with a bit of adventure. It’s quite enjoyable and much more lighthearted than her usual stories, which both shows her depth as an author to jump into almost a different genre of work entirely. It’s not my favorite of her works (I think Rebecca will always be my favorite), but it was good work and I highly recommend it.
Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft
Necronomicon is a selection of H.P. Lovecraft’s short stories. For those who don’t know, ‘Necronomicon’ is a fictional ‘Book of the Dead’ by a ‘mad Arab’ that appears in Lovecraft’s work, which contains stories of the ‘Old Ones’ (old gods) and how to summon them.
I know Lovecraft is a problematic author in many ways but I still really love his work. Lovecraft’s legacy is a complex one, as he was both racist and classist, but he did moderate as he got older. His social attitudes were common for his time, especially in New England where he grew up, and he still wrote some great horror stories.
I’m familiar with the Cthulhu Mythos (not an expert, but familiar) but was not much familiar with Lovecraft’s work and I thought this would be a good place to start.
This collection had almost 40 short stories in it, and I had some definite favorites:
‘The Rats in the Walls’ – a story about a man who returns to ancestral roots and discovers some family secrets are better left undiscovered. This story also features a black cat that reminds me very much of my own black cat. In later editions the cat was named ‘Black Tom’ but in earlier editions and as originally published, the cat was named ‘N*ggerMan.’ Yes, quite problematic. In the edition I listened to, they used the original name, which was so completely distracting that it often took me out of the story. I know the context, but it was still distracting. I won’t say I am prejudice free, but to my credit, and to the credit of my entire family on both sides, we don’t use the ‘n’ word and never have. I find it quite repulsive. I know some people use it, but as a 30 something white female of European decent, I don’t out of respect and it’s not mine to use. I read the story again later, with the cat’s new name, and it was much better. It’s a good story, all in all, and I really liked it. It was probably my favorite in the entire book. If you do read it, try to read a later edition with the cat named ‘Black Tom.’ Full disclosure, my black cat’s name is Tybalt, Prince of Cats.
‘Herbert West, Reanimator’ – this story is about a man who reanimates the dead, hence the title. Needless to say, the reanimation of the dead doesn’t go well. Supposedly this was to be a parody of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (a book I hated, by the way – 300ish pages dedicated to the whining of a deadbeat dad). This is considered to be one of Lovecraft’s weaker works and I can see why that is, but I still really liked it. The narrator made it rather enjoyable, and the ending felt good. Very creepy.
‘The Thing on The Doorstep’ – in which the protagonist explains he’s just killed his best friend but isn’t a murderer. It’s as weird as it sounds, but very good.
‘The Call of Cthulhu’ – this is the first story in the the Cthulhu Mythos, published in 1928. The narrator slowly but surely discovers the cult of Cthulhu, and meets Cthulhu up close. The atmosphere is great in this story. You know what’s coming, and it builds slowly. I enjoyed it tremendously.
‘The Dunwich Horror’ – another tale that is considered to be a part of the core of the Cthulhu Mythos. A very unattractive woman has a very unattractive son with an unknown father. That father is revealed/or heavily implied to be the Lovecraftian deity Yog-Sothoth. It goes pretty poorly for the village of Dunwich after that. I enjoyed this one, but not quite as much as ‘The Call of Cthulhu.’
There were a couple of other Cthulhu Mythos stories in there but ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ and ‘The Dunwich Horror’ were my two definite favorites.
I really enjoyed these stories. I went out and bought a hardcover of Lovecraft’s complete works afterwards. It’s still in my TBR pile but that’s where I went back and reread ‘The Rats in the Walls.’
Lovecraft is a huge influence on horror writing, and I don’t regret reading his stuff, even though some of it has issues. His stories are imaginative, creepy, and sometimes even quite funny. Personally, I’d skip Necronomicon and just buy a complete collection, so you can read the whole thing. I don’t usually enjoy highlights being chosen for me, although I’d say this was the exception. Now I’m going to read all the stories anyway, so I probably should have just done this from the start. To each his own. But I did enjoy this immensely. No regrets.
The Winternight Trilogy
Katherine Arden’s Winternight Trilogy is an adult historical fantasy series that consists of three books:
The Bear and the Nightingale
The Girl in the Tower
The Winter of the Witch
I listened to all of them in 2019, and I loved them so much that I bought them as books.
These books contained what was, by far, my favorite story of 2019 and I loved the saga so much that I cried when it was over (not a typical reaction for me).
The series centers on Vasilisa Petrovna, or Vasya, the youngest of five children in a remote Russian village. Her father is the boyar of the village (basically a lord in the Eastern European feudal system), and Vasya is the only (living) member of her family who has the ability to see creatures of Russian folklore, such as the domovoy who lives in their home, the rusalka of a lake in the forest, the bannik of the bathhouse, and Morozko, the frost king.
The story follows Vasya’s journey for personal freedom, from adolescent to young adult woman, within the confines of both her gender and her society’s values in medieval Russia. She is a likable and compelling heroine, and I *really* liked her. Per the author: “She is strong enough to embrace her differences, but she still reads as a woman of her time.” I felt alternately elated and terrible for her, as she struggled to do what was right for herself, her family, and eventually her country. The world building was impressive and immersive, and I enjoyed wandering through the forests with Vasya and Solovey.
There are also clear elements of Russian folklore and Slavic myth woven into Vasya’s tale, and I learned more about the history of medieval Russia than I ever learned in school. My favorite creature was definitely the domovoy, although I liked Morozko a lot too. There is also insight into Russian names, which I have never been able to figure out before (not that I extensively tried), but the explanations of how names work in the translation from Russian to English made this book *much* easier to understand.
In case you can’t tell, I highly recommend this novel series. You know how sometimes you leave a story feeling like you’ve been changed? I felt like that here. I’m not sure why, exactly, but I came out in love with Vasya’s world and plan to reread the series again in the not too distant future. I hope everyone else who reads it enjoys it as much as I did. I loved it.
A Gentleman in Moscow
Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow was the last novel I got through in 2018 and was also, quite possibly, my favorite.
Our protagonist, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, was a Russian born aristocrat in the late 1880s. He and his younger sister became orphans when he was 10 or 11 (his parents died of cholera within hours of each other, IIRC). His father’s companion in the war, another aristocrat (who was a grand duke, IIRC) told 11 year old Rostov that he had to be strong for his sister and that he had to learn to master his circumstances, or else his circumstances would master him.
Rostov was later sent out of the country by his grandmother for wounding his sister’s suitor (a playboy) that broke her heart. When he returned from Paris in 1917, he was arrested by the Bolsheviks and put on trial for being a social parasite. He refuses to confess, and expects to be shot, but is saved by a revolutionary poem that is attributed to him. He is still found guilty but instead of being shot, is ordered to spend his life under house arrest at his current residence – the Hotel Metropol in Moscow.
Rostov is quickly booted out of his luxurious suite and put in the cramped servant’s quarters in the attic. Most of his possessions are taken from him and he is required to work as a waiter at the hotel to help earn his keep. One of his first friends there is Nina, a nine year old girl who is the daughter of a widowed bureaucrat who is fascinated by princesses.
Nina returns in 1938 as a married woman with a child, whose husband is sentenced to time in the gulag. She’s decided to go with him, so she drops her daughter Sofia off with Rostov and requests he take care of her until she gets back. This is the last time Rostov sees Nina, and he becomes Sofia’s surrogate father.
The story goes on from there.
This story was satisfying and optimistic and hopeful, which I loved. I enjoyed the theme of mastering circumstance – the Count, once a Russian aristocrat who had people serving him, finds himself a waiter, and is working with the people who once waited on him – the other waiters, the bartenders, the seamstresses, the doormen. His social standing drastically plummets, and yet, he becomes their peer, their coworker and confidant, and eventually their friend. He was never a bad guy, but he was someone else, and he makes these friends, and his friends make his situation bearable. He masters his circumstance.
I loved this book. It was a great way to end the year, because it was on such a high note. I highly recommend it.
words in scarlet ink 