Weekly Reader: Julien's Terror by Laura Rahme; Gripping Historical Fiction Novel Explores Real and Supernatural Horrors of France's Reign of Terror

Weekly Reader: Julien's Terror by Laura Rahme; Gripping Historical Fiction Novel Explores Real and Supernatural Horrors of France's Reign of Terror

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: The period between 1789-1799 in France is among the most tumultuous times in World History. French government transformed from a monarchy, to a republic, to a dictatorship, to an empire over the course of ten years.

It's understandable that those times would have filled the people with plenty of stress, uncertainty, anxiety, and fear. People wondered if their closest friend during the Revolution would then denounce them to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. It was hard to trust or rely on anyone.

Laura Rahme's novel Julien's Terror explores that stressful frightening time. Like good historical fiction, she fills her book with plenty of details about the time from clothing and activities to key players like Maximilian Robespierre, the Dauphin Louis-Charles, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Francois de Charette. Rahme however does not give us a dry history. She gives us an interesting story with fascinating characters to go with this exciting detailed history.

The most intriguing characters are Julien and Marguerite D'Aureville, the protagonists. They are a married couple who are on opposite sides of the political spectrum and it doesn't take long for them to be at odds with each other.

Julien is the son of former Revolutionaries who protested the French monarchy and got swept up in the subsequent Reign of Terror. However, Julien's father also brings terror to his own home. He is an alcoholic who physically and mentally abuses his wife and son. He is so reprehensible that it is actually a relief when Julien uses some stolen anti-Revolutionary pamphlets placed in the right positions to have his father arrested. What saves this from being a completely reprehensible is Julien's age 9, that he is protecting himself and his mother, and that he only intended for his father to be arrested and removed from the family. When his father is guillotined, Julien is sickened with the carnage and filled with remorse.

Marguerite is also a victim of these brutal times. She is the daughter of Royalist sympathizers who are imprisoned then killed in the opening chapter. She is adopted by her uncle and sees battlefields up front as she and other Royalists march with Charette but many are wiped out. She is filled with such trauma from these times that she is troubled well into her adulthood.

When Julien and Marguerite marry, things try to become normal. Julien develops an engineering career. Marguerite adjusts to becoming a middle class wife and bickers with her domineering mother-in-law. The troubles from their childhood seem to be behind them. Then Napoleon takes power and things get worse.


Julian becomes obsessive and paranoid with Marguerite. While he is not physically abusive, Julien is verbally abusive towards her. He is highly suspicious of her former aristocratic life and her relationships with other men particularly Max Von Hauser, an Austrian man. Marguerite also has her own mysterious behavior as well. Julien's admiration of Napoleon Bonaparte causes her to avoid speaking with him about politics while keeping her former allegiances with Royalists. She also meets Max at a cafe in private who provides an understanding ear and more. Julien and Marguerite's marriage is an example of a self-fulfilled prophecy. Julien's coldness and jealous suspicions that Marguerite is having an affair causes her to confide in friendship with Max and that friendship develops into a potential romance.

Julien's Terror explores how the times shaped Julien and Marguerite and their marriage. Since, they were on opposite sides during the war of the Revolution, they cannot fully trust each other when there appears to be peace. While the Terror of the old days is still in their subconscious, it infiltrates into their lives giving them their own terrors.

What starts out as a straight forward historical fiction about the French Revolution, takes a very bizarre turn halfway through giving the novel a supernatural tone. Julien visits a fortune teller whose predictions are right on the nose. There is a creepy apparition of a young boy who frightens Julian that may be a ghost or may be a hallucination. Then there is Marguerite whose behavior gets progressively stranger. She takes on different voices, acts like she doesn't know Julien or anyone else, and sings vulgar songs she didn't know before. She also disappears for several weeks with no memory of where she went. Is she lying? Does she have Dissociative Identity Disorder or has she been possessed by spirits?

The supernatural aspects turn Julien's Terror into a different kind of book than it was before. At first glance, it appears abrupt but the more the Reader thinks about it the more it makes sense. The magical aspects are given more realistic possibilities like they could be products of their insanity or repressed guilt and memories of what had gone on before.
The bigger possibility is that in the world of Julian's Terror, the disruption in the political and social world of the Revolution and Reign of Terror brought the disruptions in the spiritual world. The ghosts and possessions are  symbols of the horror that happened before and still occurs within a country that has not recovered and whose people continue to suffer.

Laura Rahme's book focuses on the terror that comes from a country in great political strife and from the people who lived during it and afterwards.

Classics Corner: Fear of Flying by Erica Jong; Frank and Funny Feminist Novel from the 1970’s about Liberation, Sexual and Otherwise

Classics Corner: Fear of Flying by Erica Jong; Frank and Funny Feminist Novel from the 1970’s about Liberation, Sexual and Otherwise

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: I would like to give an advanced warning that this review will contain strong language which may be offensive to some Readers. Normally, I try to avoid such words but it's difficult with this book considering how prominent the terms are. Read at your own discretion.

It's difficult to imagine now how much of an impact that Erica Jong's Fear of Flying had on the public consciousness when it was first published in 1973. Based on Jong's experiences with her first two marriages, the book was published during the Second Wave of American Feminism and was loathed and lauded by critics and readers alike. Many found it vulgar and offensive and criticized its stance on marriage. Others found it refreshing that a woman could write so honestly about marriage and sexuality. It's legacy was assisted by prominent authors like John Updike and Henry Miller writing essays praising Jolng's work. Miller even compared Fear of Flying to his own landmark work calling it the female version of Tropic of Cancer.

After 46 years, Fear of Flying deserves that praise and more. It's a frank and funny book that is brutally honest and biting about a woman's marriage and her desire to break free from it.

Isadora Wing, the novel's protagonist, is accompanying her husband Bennett to a psychoanalyst's convention in Vienna. Observing that the flight includes Bennett's fellow convention goers, Isadora wittily realizes that she had been treated by most of the analysts including the one she is married to.

Isadora appears happy or at least settled in her second marriage and considering her first marriage was to an unstable man who was under the delusion that he was Jesus Christ at least her marriage to Bennett is uneventful. But inside, Isadora is unfulfilled and bored.

Isadora longs for what she terms “the zipless fuck.” A “zipless fuck” is an affair based on sex and nothing else. You're in and out quickly. There are no strings attached and no remorse. It is simply a means to relieve hidden lust, sexual frustration, and desires.

While at the convention, she finds her potential “zipless fuck” in another psychoanalyst, Adrian Goodlove. Unfortunately as the two begin to fancy each other, Isadora realizes the reality of her fantasy is not at all zipless. The affair goes on longer than she expected and she joins Adrian on a road trip through Europe at the cost of her marriage, a marriage that she is not sure that she wants.

Isadora's narration is filled with dry sarcastic remarks and one-liners turning her into the Dorothy Parker of the Me Decade. She has a rejoinder about everything even the darkest subjects. She lived in Heidelberg, Germany with Bennett for a time and felt out of place as an American Jewish woman living in Germany less than 20 years after WWII ended. (“Germany was like a stepmother: utterly familiar, utterly despised. More despised in fact for being so familiar.”) Isadora is constantly at odds with her mother, Jude, who blames her marriage and giving birth to four daughters for ending her artistic career and warns Isadora that she has to choose to either be an artist or have children. (“With a name like Isadora Zelda it was clear what I was supposed to choose: everything my mother had been offered and given.up.”) Isadora studies English Literature earning a fellowship but finds it unable to hold her interest particularly as she reads the various analyses of Tom Jones. (“I had gone to graduate school because I love literature, but in graduate school you were not supposed to study literature. You were supposed to study criticism.”)

Even the men in her life are no match for Isadora's sharp wit. After the difficulties of her first marriage, Isadora is drawn to Bennet's silent steadiness which proves to be a burden. (“At what point had I started to pretend that Bennett was somebody else? Somewhere around the end of the third year of our marriage. And why? Nobody had been able to tell me that.”) When doodling variations of her name with Adrian's such as Isadora Wing-Goodlove, M.B.E. she cheekily tries to make her vision of a third marriage different from her previous one, even if it is to another analyst. She begins a facetious invitation to a housewarming party but adds at the bottom “bring your own hallucinogens.”

These one-liners and wit while funny are also seen as a defense mechanism. They are Isadora's way of understanding the tangled relationships around her and help her make sense of the world.

As Isadora plunges headlong into her journey with Adrian, she alternates between having sex with him, trying to avoid difficult conversations about the future, and recalling events from her past. The flashback chapters are key as we understand how they shaped Isadora to the choices that she made. Besides her depressed mother, Isadora also has strained relationships with her three sisters each of whom made seemingly rebellious choices for husbands: Randy the oldest marries Pierre, a Lebanese businessman and gives birth to nine children. Lalah, her younger sister marries Robert, an African-American doctor and gives birth to quintuplets. Chloe, the youngest, marries Abel, an Israeli businessman and gives birth to one child. Isadora watches bemused as each of her sisters once unconventional settle into conformist marriages and motherhood and keep badgering her to give up her poetic ambitions and have children. (“Why must marriage always include children?” Isadora wonders)

Isadora gets a close up taste of her sister's brands of married life when she, Lalah, and Chloe visit Randy and Pierre at their home in Beirut. Pierre then attempts to rape Isadora who is disgusted by the thought of committing incest with her brother-in-law and is even more startled by Lalah and Chloe giggling about the whole thing. This moment opens her eyes about the hypocrisy with married couples particularly her sisters who live contented lives on the outside but are depraved and hypocritical on the inside.

Isadora's first marriage also provides necessary explanation for why she is so miserable in the present. Brian Stollerman is at first a brilliant eloquent man who is knowledgeable in everything from Medieval literature, Shakespeare's plays, to old gangster films. Isadora admits that “(they) blew it by getting married” as he pressured her to marry him or he would leave her. Brian's terrifying delusions begin to take hold as he keeps Isadora up all night with disconnected ramblings and questions about her religious beliefs and the Second Coming. When he believes that he is Jesus Christ, Isadora is so beaten down by his mental illness that she is unable to fight his abuse towards her. She surrenders custody of him to his parents with whom she does not get along and his institutionalization. It's no wonder that she then settles into the quiet of her marriage to Bennett Wing, considering an analyst a safe release after a mentally ill man.

Even Isadora's marriage to Bennett and her affair with Adrian are not without their struggles. While Bennett is not a cruel man, he does not fully understand or appreciate Isadora behaving less like a husband and equal and more like a mentor or father figure. He treats Isadora like a project always trying to analyze and place her in a little confined box. What was once a reprieve from the conformity of her family and the insanity of her first marriage, becomes suffocating as Isadora is afraid of losing herself to the ennui of married life.

Instead of Adrian being the release that she hoped for, he turns out to be more of the same. He claims to be a Nihilist but is actually using his beliefs as an excuse to be a controlling manipulator. He nags Isadora to leave Bennett and live freely with him yet does not cut himself off from his wife and children. When they finally end their relationship, Adrian abandons her in Paris. Instead of being zipless, Isadora just gets fucked.

However, when she's alone, Isadora finally comes to terms with what she has wanted all along. She wasn't looking for a casual sexual affair, or a third marriage. She was looking for a way to be herself. She was trying to liberate and free herself from the expectations set by her family, husbands, and Adrian and she does it.

The title comes from the opening chapter when Isadora admits that she has aviophobia, which is a fear of flying in airplanes. As the book continues, it is apparent that Isadora is afraid of flying away from the standards that she had placed on herself. Though she always questioned and ridiculed those standards, she never had the courage to separate herself from them. The book ends when she finally finds the courage to be herself and fly.

Weekly Reader: Emmie of Indianapolis by Kay Castaneda; Brilliant Slice of Life Stories Detail A Girl's Coming of Age in Indianapolis

Weekly Reader: Emmie of Indianapolis by Kay Castaneda; Brilliant Slice of Life Stories Detail A Girl's Coming of Age in Indianapolis

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: Kay Castaneda's Emmie of Indianapolis is one of those coming of age books that take various moments in the young protagonist's life to depict their developing maturity. Emmie of Indianapolis takes that standard and does it well.

12 year old, Emmie's mother announces that she is divorcing her father and moving to Indianapolis with Emmie and her younger sisters, Jennie and Cassie. Understandable but difficult today, rare and even more difficult in 1963.

Emmie and her family have to adjust to moving to a small apartment above a tavern where their mother works. There are some tense moments as the girls have to deal with some pretty tense situations such as a pedophile visitor entering their apartment to be stopped by a neighbor, a disgusting landlord nicknamed “Ogre”, and their mother's slow descent into alcoholism.

Emmie befriends Joey, an African-American boy, George, a Chinese boy, and Polly, a Romanian Gypsy girl. Emmie encounters racism as her new friends are bullied by other kids in school. When Emmie defends her friends, she is ostracized because of her friendship with them and also because of her family's Catholic religion contrasting with the mostly Protestant student body.


While there are hardships in the book, Emmie of Indianapolis also has plenty of sweet engaging moments to spare. Many of them involve Emmie, her sisters, and friends exploring her new city. Many of the streets and landmarks like Monument Circle, are accurately described and the kids have fun shopping and sightseeing.

They also are able to one up their bullies by their scholarly efforts. They participate in a Spelling Bee and it's a genuine victory when George wins to the pride of his friends and parents. Emmie and her friends really shine in these moments.

Emmie's parents shine in their moments with Emmie and her sisters. The reasons for their divorce is never explained but they clearly love their daughters. The secret is that they are flawed but not irredeemable. Emmie's father takes them on weekend visits and is there during an emergency. While her mother is beginning an alcohol dependency that is noticeable when Emmie withdraws from uncomfortable with conversations about alcohol, her mother is still written as a kind loving woman. She cares for the girls and wants to protect them from danger. The alcohol may just be a sign that she is overwhelmed.

Besides finding strength in her friends and family, Emmie finds strength in her Catholic faith. When they arrive in Indianapolis, Emmie looks for a Catholic Church and is pleased when she finally finds it. She uses her knowledge in religion to serve others like her friends and feels a spiritual presence during times of stress. It makes sense that Emmie wants to become a teacher or a nun so she can serve others as an adult.

Emmie of Indianapolis is a charming slice of life with plenty of darkness but plenty of sweetness to spare.

Weekly Reader: Greenspell: A Fantasy Anthology by Kathy Ann Trueman; A Brilliant Anthology of Lovely Fantasy Stories About Female Magic Users

Weekly Reader: Greenspell: A Fantasy Anthology by Kathy Ann Trueman; A Brilliant Anthology of Lovely Fantasy Stories About Female Magic Users

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


Spoilers: There is a new name in epic fantasy literature and that name is Kathy Ann Trueman. Last year, Trueman's book Stories of the Vale: Path of the Dragonfly was a strong character driven look at epic fantasy tropes such as feudal lords, magical creatures, spells, and adventurous quests. Another book, Greenspell is an anthology though not as epic in scope or plot is still rich in character and magical detail.


A common thread in all the stories is that the protagonists are all female and the majority are magic users of some kind. While there are some feminist moments in the stories that explore the solidarity and companionship of sisterhood and features female characters challenging many fantasy tropes by being active leaders, the stories aren't political so much as they are fantasy stories in which the lead characters happen to be female.

Magic is a huge presence in the stories in which characters use magic for different means some in defense and protection of others and some for greed or vengeance. There is no definite good vs. evil black vs. white magic set up. Instead some character's fates are sealed by the choices they make without any moral philosophy thrown at the Reader.


Greenspell is a very short anthology, only five stories but they are all good. The stories are:


“The Sow's Ear”- This story was also featured in Marian Zimmer Bradley's Swords and Sorcery anthology. If Rod Serling and George R.R. Martin ever collaborated on a fantasy driven episode of the Twilight Zone, this would be it. (Actually George R.R. Martin did write some episodes of the 1980’s Twilight Zone series so I'm not too far off.)
This story follows the theme of “Be Careful What You Wish For” to a clever conclusion. Janell, a sorceress is hired to aid a woman who was once young and beautiful and wants her original appearance back.
The plot turns on a few twists as Janell realizes too late that the woman is not what she appears and Janell is trapped inside a curse that is unique and continues the story's meaning of appearance concealing the true nature.

“Thief from Thief”-This sequel to “A Sow's Ear” has both drama and humor. Janell is still punished by the previous story's curse. Trueman devotes many paragraphs describing Janell's three year torment in an extremely small confinement well. Janell is driven to near insanity trying to find a way out of her imprisonment as well as the boredom of such a small area. While she never ages (because it's a magic curse), she is aware the world has changed around her and can't be a part of it.
Her enemy, also a carry over from the previous story, is good at psychological torture as well often giving Janell just enough of a glimpse of the outside world to let her know what she is missing and creating illusion spells so if a wayward knight or wanderer enters their lair, it mistakes Janell for a rock formation and goes on their way.
Humor is found as Janell finds a thief who could rescue her. She weaves a spell to end the illusion on her so he could see it. She uses various magic to get his attention just about doing anything but holding up a large neon sign that says “I'm down here, Idiot!”
Keeping her magical knowledge and cleverness in soliciting the thief's help, Janell manages to break free from her enemy and the curse.

“Friends in Spite”- I hate vampire books and stories. Anne Rice's Lester books are overrated. I found Dracula to be less a brooding tortured soul than a creepy perverted rapist. Don't get me started on Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel. In fact I will go out on a limb and say the only literary vampire that I can for sure say I like is C.D. Bitesky of Mel Gilden's Fifth Grade Monsters. The reason that I am saying this is I want the Reader to understand the full scope of my meaning when I say “Friends in Spite” is my favorite short story in this anthology despite or because the main character is a vampire sorceress.
Elianne, the aforementioned vampire/sorceress and her friend, Trevia, a swordswoman are in a village in which two people are attacked mysteriously. Elianne sees the lack of blood in the bodies and knows the killer was like her: another vampire.
There are some clichéd moments such as Elianne turning into a bat and having the urge to levitate (even vampires that cross genres have standards to uphold). But thankfully not many.
There are genuine moments of horror and graphic violence. The vampire killer not only kills it's victims and takes their blood but it mutilates them so people think it was murdered by a wild animal. To find the vampire, Elianne casts a spell that makes all vampires including herself lust and hunger for blood. These moments give the story genuine horror.
Elianne and Trevia's friendship is the true heart of this story as they are able to complete each other with Elianne's knowledge of magic and vampires combined with Trevia's swordplay and muscle. Through her friendship and trust in Trevia, Elianne reveals vital information on how to kill the vampire and is able to combat her spell cast blood lust for Trevia. While it is a story of strong fantasy and horror, it is the friendship between Elianne and Trevia that is the real core of “Friends in Spite.”

“Just Until Sun-Up”- Another friendship story between a magic user and non-magic user though this one favors humor rather than horror.
Neikei, a witch and Karra, a minstrel/juggler's horses and gear have been stolen by a group of thieves… and that's it. That's the plot. It focuses mostly on the theft and the duo trying to get their stuff back.
While not long on plot, the story features some byplay and one-liners as Neikei and Karra go after the thieves. (When Neikei reminds Karra that her spells are to protect her person not her possessions, Karra sarcastically remarks “Oh and if the thieves had tried to take you, that would be different.”) Karra's sardonic anxiety plays off Neikei's calm rationality rather well as the two act like a comedy team, the Female Fantasy Answers to Abbott and Costello or Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in the Road To… movies. (Road to King's Landing.)
Though unlike the other comedy teams Neikei has some magical ways of defeating their antagonists whivh she shows Karra in a way that gets their horses back and dispenses justice in a hilarious and original manner.


“The Sun God's Reading”- Similar to “A Sow's Ear” this one also plays on “Be Careful What You Wish For” but in a less vindictive manner. This focuses on the idea of aspiring to reach a certain goal but once it is met evaluating whether one is able to achieve that greatness ever again.
Yula, Gunnie, and the Narrator attend a school in which the students develop their talents and

connections with the Gods. Brilliantly, the story makes no distinction between the various pantheons as Odin, the Norse God of Wisdom pals around with Apollo, Greco-Roman Sun God.
The three students are granted one wish at the end of the year.(“Nothing frivolous like world peace,” The Narrator tells us.) and only one will be granted. The Narrator wants a lute made of gold. Gunnie wants a ship to sail the seas and Yula wants to meet Apollo and to have him read one of her poems.
Despite the mystical setting, there is a contemporary theme to this story of goal setting and being ready to meet those goals and move on once they are met. The three students are very capable in their studies of music, maritime travel, and poetry but they are filled with self-doubt and worry about their studies and whether they are really good in their chosen fields.
Once the wish is granted, the students go through transitions which are true to life as well. Two continue with their studies even getting their wishes granted on their own. The other abandons them feeling that she will never be as good as she was then. Instead she settles into a different life with a husband, children, and a job which is tied to her earlier ambitions but isn't as fulfilling. These divergent paths the student take is similar to the many graduates who peak at young ages. Some continue down their paths to their brand of success. Others end up elsewhere that while not necessarily bad was not what they envisioned.

Greenspell is a great example of how fantasy authors can create magic, 

believable  characters, and built worlds in a few short pages just as well as they can through a novel or a series. Trueman excels at both: the long and the short of fantasy.