Archive for January, 2009

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

ISBN: 0618871713
232 pages
published in 2006.

My “Literature And Sexualities” course this semester is responsible for me reading this ‘graphic memoir’. It tells the story of Alison Bechdel (yes, the author) and her experiences growing up, coming to terms with her sexuality and, coincidentally the sexuality of her father as well, who seemed to have been hiding his own sexuality until the day he was hit by a truck (a death that Alison herself saw as a suicide).

I never expected to be so excited by this book. When I saw we were going to be reading a graphic novel in my literature course, I got a bit peeved because, well, it’s a LITERATURE course, goddamnit! Where are my novels?! But I was so pleased with this. It has made me love my professor even more than I already did. So far, her books for the class have been incredibly good. The ease with which I found myself relating to Alison (and, oddly, some of her habits – such as the OCD she describes as a child) helped draw me into the books. Her illustrations are just perfect. The allusions to literature that this memoir is THICK with helps appeal to me as a reader and an English major as well as another gay person.

She is not just a good writer, as her story is compelling and well written, but an impressive artist as well. This is a very important book, I think. I feel privileged in that I was able to learn about her life.

Pet Sematary by Stephen King

ISBN: 0743412273
576 pages
published in 1983.

This was definitely – by far – the scariest King novel I’ve read to date. There was something so vivid and real about this book that it gave me serious chills. I found myself walking around my apartment tonight while reading it feeling really uneasy and uncomfortable and unsafe (and a whole bunch of other un-s). Pet Sematary is the story of a family that moves to a small town in Maine – a family that seems to be doing very well for itself, in fact. A husband, a wife, a daughter, a baby son. Soon they all settle into a new routine in their new home. Louis – the father and husband – becomes good friends with an old man that lives across the street and finds himself having a beer or two with him every night. Louis is a physician at a local university and the family doesn’t seem to want for much. Unfortunately, one day his neighbor Judson Crandall decides to take the family and their little daughter Ellie for a hike in the woods to see the pet cemetery (misspelled ‘Pet Sematary’ on the entrance) that the neighborhood kids tend. It all seems innocent enough – Ellie has a bit of an adverse reaction to her first glimpse of what death really means – but it’s very reasonable and understandable and doesn’t seem the least bit unhealthy.

However, it’s what lies beyond the pet cemetery that is the real problem in this book. A plot of land in the woods that once belonged to the Micmac Indians and seems to be able to bring the dead back to life – or so Louis finds out when his daughter’s cat is killed in the road near their house and Jud brings him on a trek into the woods.

The monsters were perhaps the least scary thing in this book. What was truly frightening was the depictions of just what could go wrong. The death of a family pet, the death of a child, the death of people you love and the idea that perhaps there are things worse than death – a reality that many of us are not very comfortable with confronting. “Sometimes dead is better” Judson Crandall tells us in the novel, and after reading through this book, that is something you may find yourself accepting.

Dingo by Charles de Lint

ISBN: 0142408166
224 pages
published in 2008.

This book was just astonishingly lovely. I know I am biased in very many ways – I love the author, I love Australia, I love Australian wildlife and the subject matter of the book seemed to have been written just for me. But Dingo is just an extraordinarily original work of young adult fantasy. This story is about Miguel, a 17-year-old highschool senior with a father that owns a store that caters to comic books and vintage music and the day this beautiful teenage girl from Australia with red-gold hair works into his shop with her curious looking dog. Suddenly he is tied up in a fantasy story involving animals and bloodlines and Aboriginal mythology. I’ve been dying for someone to write a novel involving Aboriginal Australian mythology forever and I couldn’t be more pleased with how this one was done.

Although there was no mention of my particular animal, I loved the descriptions of other native Australian wildlife – the pademelons and kangaroos and baobab trees and gum trees and all manners of ferns and other things. I love how the story tied into real mythology and the respect de Lint had for these things. He seemed to capture a real essence with this tale. You could feel yourself falling in love with Lainey just as the main character did and the world that they exist in. I can’t believe how fast this book went. It ended far too soon. Gorgeous, rich novel.

Ask The Bones by Arielle North Olson and Howard Schwartz

ISBN: 014230140X
160 pages
published in 1999.

This was a pretty cute story book. Ask The Bones is a collection of 22 scary stories from around the world. All of them are told simply enough to appeal to young readers, but the stories have enough variety to entertain even someone my age (and probably older!) The most interesting thing about these stories is how unique many of them are. This isn’t a collection of over-told cliche scary stories. Some of them are gruesome. Some of them are even a little bit silly. There are a few that fall a little flat, but for the most part the stories in this collection are a refreshing reminder of the variety of stories that are circulating the world.

My favorite story in the collection has to be The Bloody Fangs – a tale about a young Japanese boy that spends most of his time drawing cats. He doesn’t seem to have his heart in any other activity he tries. Art appears to be his calling. After being told to pursue this by a priest that he was previously studying under, he comes across an abandoned temple. Wanting to help, he stays and waits for people to return, however, there are many white screens in the building and he can’t help but draw cats on all of them. Heading the priest’s earlier warning, he settles inside a small cabinet to sleep and wait. However, he hears a horrible noise coming into the temple. Sure enough, it’s a huge rat that had been terrorizing the temple, thus causing the fleeing of all its inhabitants. However, while locked inside his cabinet, he hears yowling and growling and hissing and awakes the next morning to find blood smeared on all the mouths of the cats he had drawn. Cool stuff.

99 Fear Street: The House of Evil – The Third Horror by R.L. Stine

ISBN: 0671885642
176 pages
published in 1953.

What the hell was this about? This is the third and final book in the 99 Fear Street trilogy by R.L. Stine. In this book, Kody returns to the house that she left over two years ago. Her goal? Make contact with her dead sister, Cally, like she promised she would. Oh – and shoot a movie, also – based on her life and the events that occurred while her family was living in that house. Of course horrible things start happening on the set. People get injured, die, etc.

What the hell kind of conclusion was this? It went from halfway-amusing teen horror fiction to this piece of crap. I don’t even know why he bothered publishing this. Honestly, even amongst a supernatural story the actions are completely unrealistic. Who the hell would return to a house where their sister and brother were killed by ghosts? And how did she get movie rights sold for it if no one there believes in ghosts in the first place? This book makes absolutely no sense. Furthermore, the antagonists of the book actually turned out to be rats in human form! What is THAT about?! It’s like he had to end the mini-series somehow and had absolutely no idea how to do it. I’m really disappointed.

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