Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Weekly Reader Thursday Next Edition: One of Our Thursdays is Missing (The Thursday Next Series Vol. VI) by Jasper Fforde; Penultimate Thursday Next Book Stretches The Boundaries of Imagination and Weirdness






Weekly Reader Thursday Next Edition: One of Our Thursdays is Missing (The Thursday Next Series Vol. VI) by Jasper Fforde; Penultimate Thursday Next Book Stretches The Boundaries of Imagination and Weirdness

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: I have a theory about the final three Thursday Next books. I think after First Among Sequels was published, someone at Penguin Books doubted that Jasper Fforde couldn't make the series any weirder.

In response, Fforde said “Hold my Jurisfiction Travel Book” and thus One of Our Thursdays is Missing was written or at least that's the only explanation that I can give for this book that is two-thirds weirdness and imagination with less than a third of an understandable plot.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Once you get this far in the Thursday Next Series, by this time, you know normal is not a thing here. With each volume, Fforde stretches his imagination even further showing that he is among the most creative of writers. Just know that if you are looking for something resembling coherence or understanding, by this time well….you should have stopped reading after The Eyre Affair.

To start off with the narrator is not Thursday Next, but Thursday Next. In the previous book, First Among Sequels, it is revealed that Thursday's exploits have been immortalized into fiction. The narrator of One Of Our Thursdays is Missing is the Written Thursday, the star of the books-within-the-books.

Because this Thursday is technically new, she is considered a rookie neophyte more excitable and curious than the more jaded literary detective that we know and love. This Thursday makes rookie mistakes like while on assignment such as leaving her book in charge of a newly created Generic who runs off with her troll boyfriend (fantasy troll not Internet), thereby leaving her book protagonist-less and the other characters with nothing to do and ready to revolt.

The great news for fans of the Book World setting of the previous books will be glad to know that except for a few incidental scenes, this book is almost set entirely in the Book World.
Fforde takes advantage of this setting by doing clever things with it. One of the best chapters has the landscape of Book World change from a Great Library to a physical world sectioned off into various fictional lands such as Fantasy, Mystery, Adventure, Conspiracy Theories, and Excuses For Why You Didn't Do Your Homework. Thursday lives in the Speculative Fantasy area.

The opening featuring the transformation of the New Book World is jaw dropping as Thursday and Co. encounter a fuller external landscape of green grass, blue skies, clear water, and newly created books floating in the sky like clouds waiting to land in their new home, whatever genre that is.

The opening map is a parody of and tribute to the maps found in Historical Fiction and Fantasy Novels with areas like School Essays marked and certain authors like Enid Blyton and Jane Austen getting their own towns and islands on the landscape.

There are some really fun elements that play on the various genres as the written Thursday solves mysteries by visiting such genres as Suspense and Conspiracy Theories. The latter section is particularly clever as Written Thursday encounters Bigfoot, Reptilian Shapeshifter Overlords, and more Elvi than she knows what to do with.

Being set in Book World means that the book falls under Book World Logic which works about as well as Wonderland Logic: completely insane, unpredictable, and nonsensical. Almost no logic at all.
Sometimes this logic purposely contradicts the previous books in the Thursday Next Series. Since the characters in the Thursday book-within-a-book are former Generics playing the roles in the book, they behave like actors playing a role. 
The character playing Thursday's father is not the sweet befuddled time traveler that we saw in the previous books. Instead he is a hammy primadonna who treats Written Thursday like an underling. Acheron Hades is not the feared villain from the Eyre Affair. Instead he is an introverted gentleman who writes bad poetry. Even Written Thursday is different from her Real World Counterpart. She is single, being granted a Designated Love Interest, and still wears the hippy clothes that she wore in First Among Sequels.


There are also some brilliant new characters added. The most prominent is Sprockett, a robot butler (“Everyone needs a butler.”). Written Thursday rescues him from an anti-robot crowd and he serves as a sidekick, advisor, straight man, and a best friend to the detective. Similar to Lola and Randolph, the Generics from The Well of Lost Plots much of the humor derives from him discovering emotions and learning what it means to be alive. He is the star of a failed detective series about a robot mystery solver that was rejected because he didn't have enough emotion. He was in fear of being destroyed “but only in the context that to be destroyed would not give (him) the opportunity to serve cocktails.”

The plot, such as it is, involves Written Thursday mediating in a war among various genres including Religious Dogma and Racy Smut as well as receiving word that the Real Thursday is missing from her home in Real Swindon.

There are some weird moments such as Thursday and Sprockett investigating the crash of a literary character leaving behind only nonsensical words and an ISBN number. She has to rely on a clue provided by a rejected book and has to communicate with its author via telepathy, dream visitation, or impersonating Real Thursday in her world.

The plot sometimes gets too confusing, particularly during the climax when Written Thursday encounters Real Thursday's nonexistent daughter, Jenny who may or may not be preventing Written Thursday from finding the real woman or is testing her heroism or something. Also, the previous book set up a situation concerning Thursday's whereabouts but it is not followed. This is rather irritating because First Among Sequels began an interesting plot thread that is not followed in this or the next book suggesting that with the final three books in the series, Fforde made things up as he went along and dropped angles willy-nilly.

One of Our Thursdays is Missing stretches Fforde’s imagination to infinity. While things can get weird and confusing, sometimes when it comes to Jasper Fforde, then it is best just to sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.




Weekly Reader Philippa Gregory Edition: The Constant Princess (The Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series Vol. VI) by Philippa Gregory; Tudor Portion Begins With Strong-Willed Warrior Katherine of Aragon



Weekly Reader Philippa Gregory Edition: The Constant Princess (The Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series Vol. VI) by Philippa Gregory; Tudor Portion Begins With Strong-Willed Warrior Katherine of Aragon

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: So this is it.

We enter the Tudor portion of the series, the part of history that even non-history buffs will know: the story of King Henry VIII and his six wives: Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard, and Kathryn Parr.

The trick with writing such a well-written portion of history is how to make your version different. What makes your account stand out from other versions? Philippa Gregory accomplishes by personalizing each wife of Ol’ Henry. As she did with the various sides of the War of the Roses, she makes each wife stand out in their goals, relationship with Henry, and their personalities.
She starts the series off right with giving us Katherine of Aragon, daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and turning her into a fiery, strong-willed, deeply religious warrior devoted to her God, her family in Spain, and her destiny as Queen of England.

The book begins by giving us insights into Katherine's upbringing in Spain as the daughter of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile. With the two acting as co-rulers, she sees that a female head of state can wield as much power as a man, sometimes more so because of her dominant nature that gives her the final say in all matters. We also see that Isabella is a formidable leader in battle as well when she commandeers a secret mission to take the Muslim palace Alhambra in Granada. This mission turns the tide for the Christian forces in their holy war against the Moors. Katherine admires the militant firebrand that is her mother and strives to be like her.

Katherine is greatly inspired by her parents’ devotion to their religion. They are devoted Catholics and authorize the Inquisition. Many times, they do horrible things to their Muslim and Jewish enemies, such as refusing to honor pacts that allow them to practice their religions and instead either force them to convert, be tortured, or leave the country. Katherine justifies all of this by saying that the Catholic religion is the only true one and all others are false.

Katherine also comes from a very passionate emotional family whose members often become obsessive in their romantic relationships. While Ferdinand had the occasional mistress that Isabella tolerated barely, he always returned to Isabella considering her his one true love in which she reciprocated to the point of an almost slavish devotion.

The “Of Aragon and Castile” Family obsession with their love lives takes on creepier tones with Katherine's siblings who have unhappy marriages. Her sister, Juana for example threatened and tried to poison any potential rivals for her husband's affections. Then when he died, Juana was so grief stricken that she succumbed to a mental breakdown, causing her father and other relatives to put her in seclusion. This unfortunate turn of events gave her the sobriquet Juana the Mad.

These incidents towards Katherine’s early life help shape her to become the staunchly religious, passionately married, strong-willed queen and fighter that she becomes in her marriage and subsequent leadership as Princess of Wales and Queen of England.

Something that makes this telling of Katherine of Aragon’s story unique is the emphasis on her first marriage to Prince Arthur, the oldest son of King Henry VII and Queen Elizabeth of York. In most versions of the wives of King Henry VIII, Arthur is reduced to a mere footnote and is barely mentioned at all, beyond giving Henry a lame excuse for saying that his first marriage is not valid because he married his brother's widow.

Here not only is Arthur an important presence to the story, but he comes across as a better character than Henry. When he and Katherine are first wed, they go through the usual troubles of an arranged marriage. He brags after his wedding night that he spent it “in Spain” much to her irritation. She underestimates the cold English air and nearly freezes. But once they get past the initial nervousness and arguments, they become a compatible loving couple.

Arthur here is written as a quiet scholar, less active than his feisty wife but is a more strategic and detailed thinker. Some of the highlights in the book are when Katherine tells him idyllic fairy-tale like stories of her childhood in Spain including a beautiful description of Alhambra. They spend many nights making love and taking notes and describing their version of a perfect kingdom that outdoes Camelot. They are such a charming and idealistic couple that this Reader wanted history to rewrite itself so that Arthur would survive to adulthood and become King of England with Queen Katherine by his side and Henry become a mere footnote.

Unfortunately, history does not rewrite itself and Arthur dies, but not before he makes Katherine vow to marry Henry and swear that her marriage to Arthur was not consummated thereby ending any impediments to their marriage. Katherine agrees and promises her late husband that she will mentally still love him even while she physically marries his brother.

The middle half of the book kind of drags as Katherine's title of Princess of Wales is stripped, leaving her alone and penniless with very few companions except her Spanish advisors and Lady Margaret Pole, whose brother Edward was executed after making a try for the throne. Despite the awkwardness between them in that Ferdinand and Isabella would not consent to their daughter's marriage while Edward was alive (so he was executed so Katherine and Arthur could marry), Margaret is very forgiving and she and Katherine form a friendship that is embellished upon in the next volume, The King's Curse.

This section in the book involving Katherine's widowhood emphasizes her solitude when she is left without funds or her parent’s support. Her mother dies and her father withdraws any support for her because he is caught up in issues of his own in Spain.

Katherine is left in England under the watch of King Henry VII who hasn't gotten any better since our last encounter with him in The White Princess. In fact, the lecherous sovereign openly lusts after Katherine while she is married and pursues her after his wife dies. Only his death saves Katherine from being assaulted by her father-in-law.

Henry's death paves the way for Katherine's marriage to King Henry VIII and for her to fulfill her destiny as Queen of England. Henry is not yet the abuser, serial adulterer, and tyrant he would later become but there are already hints of trouble brewing ahead with the young king. He repeatedly puts himself in the spotlight demanding attention when it is given to someone else, such as at Katherine and Arthur's wedding when he does a complicated dance with his sister, Margaret. He is spoiled endlessly by his grandmother, Margaret Beaufort and is not denied very much.

He also has a strong libido that does not let a little thing like marriage vows get in the way of his sexual pleasures. When Katherine is confined during her first pregnancy which results in a miscarriage, she learns that Henry spent most of that time dallying with one of her lady's in waiting. Already, Henry's character doesn't amount to much and he gets worse as the series goes along.

Katherine however improves as she matures in The Constant Princess. One of the ways that she improves is by stepping out from her parent's shadows and forming her own beliefs. During her miscarriage and second pregnancy, she relies on the advice and medicine provided by a Muslim physician. This assistance from the only doctor that wasn't afraid to be honest with her causes Katherine to rethink the beliefs from her parents. She realizes that they were wrong to throw the Muslim and Jewish people out. She sees her parents not as superhumans who could do no wrong. Instead she sees them as people who made mistakes.

Katherine also gets the chance to become a strong leader in her own right. When Henry declares war on France, Katherine is declared regent in his place and has to defend the north from the Scottish forces led by King James IV, Henry’s brother-in-law and husband to his sister, Margaret. When James is killed in battle, Katherine triumphantly has his body buried in London and his blood stained coat delivered to Henry as proof. This and the birth of her daughter, Mary give a high note to the young queen.

The Constant Princess while great in capturing Katherine of Aragon is very flawed mostly because it is too short. In fact, it is one of the shortest books in the series. The book mostly ends with Katherine's victory against Scotland and it time jumps into the future when Katherine interrupts the Privy Council meeting to challenge Henry's divorce throwing her over for Anne Boleyn.

Major parts to this story are missing. How did Katherine feel about Anne? We have a brief mention of her when her mother is Katherine's lady in waiting, but nothing of her as a character. Since it is established in this canon that Katherine did consummate her marriage to Arthur and that she still loved him, how did that affect her feelings towards the separation? Did she manage to stay true to her vow even after she was left alone? What were her thoughts during her isolation and her separation from her daughter, Mary? Was she glad to die so she could be with Arthur? A couple hundred more pages could have really helped.

While yes Anne Boleyn had been covered before and Gregory dwells on these events in The King's Curse, Three Sisters, Three Queens, and The Other Boleyn Girl. She didn't shy away from covering multiple views of the same events in her Plantagenet Series.
In fact the multiple viewpoints in different books makes the series interesting. They show that there are no good guys and bad guys in history and there is more than one voice that can tell a story.

The exclusion of the conflict with Anne Boleyn is egregious and makes the book rushed and almost empty like there is nowhere else to go. But the Reader knows that is not the case. Instead they have to wait until the next volume of the series for the story to continue.

Despite the rushed book, Philippa Gregory writes Katherine of Aragon as an excellent character: strong, feisty, clever, spiritual, faithful and a woman who was always true to herself, her beliefs, her family, and her loves.

Classics Corner: Daisy Miller and Washington Square by Henry James; Two Very Different Female Protagonists Reveal Henry James’ Gift of Capturing the Female Psyche






Classics Corner: Daisy Miller and Washington Square by Henry James; Two Very Different Female Protagonists Reveal Henry James’ Gift of Capturing the Female Psyche

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: In a previous review of A Turn of the Screw, I wrote about Henry James’ interest in the psychology of his characters.

This is particularly felt in his female characters. Even though he was a male author, he had no problem plowing through the depths of the female mind and how women felt about their roles in society and their individuality. In most of his works, the female characters are the most interesting such as the Narrator of A Turn of the Screw, Wings of the Dove’s Kate Croy, and Portrait of a Lady’s Isabel Archer (my favorite James book which will be reviewed on a future date.).

Two of his most prominent female characters are also in two of his shortest works: Daisy Miller, the protagonist of the novella of the same name and Washington Square’s Catherine Sloper. These two women couldn't be more different in terms of appearance, thoughts, actions, and their relationships. However, in their different ways, they both question and challenge their roles as women and maintain their individuality in a society that frowns on that individuality, especially from a woman.

Daisy Miller is a pretty American flirt taking the obligatory “Grand Tour” of Europe with her mother and brother. In Switzerland, Daisy meets Winterbourne, an American student.
Winterbourne is captivated by Daisy’s beauty and free spirit. She doesn't mind going to sites without an escort (even though it's forbidden for young ladies of her stature) or making statements that would be considered impertinent. When Winterbourne says that he is afraid to introduce Daisy to his domineering aunt, she taunts him. “You shouldn't be afraid. I am not afraid.”

Daisy captivates Winterbourne because she is rebellious, even though she is masquerading as a typical single young woman of her status. She appears to be no different than any other young woman of her age. At one point Winterbourne's aunt confuses her with the other women at the hotel they are staying in. Winterbourne however detects there is something different about her. She doesn't hide behind the etiquette rules of courtship and outright tells Winterbourne how she feels about him.
When Winterbourne tells her that he might go to Rome to visit his aunt in the winter and if he has time he may see her, Daisy says “I don't want you to come for your aunt. I want you to come for me.”

Daisy knows what the courtship rules and rituals are supposed to be. She is supposed to visit relatives, act demure and docile, and wait for her man to show. But by outright telling Winterbourne what she has in mind, she shifts the balance of power during a courtship in her direction.

Daisy's name plays into her character. A daisy is a spring flower and like the season, Daisy Miller is a breath of fresh air and represents new life, new experiences, and new ways of doing and thinking. However, Winterbourne's name suggests the opposite. He is winter, cold, and reliant on old ways and traditions. While winter turns into spring, the two are never together and James’ novella says the same about its two protagonists.

Daisy and Winterbourne's incompatibility reaches its head when they are in Rome. Winterbourne's conservative outlook towards men and women clashes with Daisy's more liberal free spirited ways. He does not approve of her familiarity with an Italian man, Giovanelli and constantly asks if the two are engaged. At one point, he tells her that he doesn't want her to speak to Giovanelli, Daisy sarcastically says “Do you think I mean to use signs?” She is puzzled why this American man feels that he has to have power over her. He keeps warning her to stay away from Italian men because they may take her flirtations the wrong way.

However, he is less concerned about her virtue than he is about his ownership over her.
He is jealous of her flirtations with other men and thinks that Daisy should behave like a respectable woman of her day.

The irony is that Winterbourne himself doesn't exactly have a stellar reputation for fidelity. At the beginning of the novella, his mind is on an unnamed foreign lady. Then at the end after his relationship with Daisy comes to an end, his mind is on another foreign lady. Winterbourne is a product of his time. He lives in a world where the rules are made by men and to enforce women to follow them. Rules that men don't necessarily follow themselves.

Daisy is someone who is so youthful and brings the promise of spring, that winter and age are not on her mind. She behaves very recklessly and puts her health at risk when she accompanies Giovanelli at the Coliseum at night, despite the warning of yellow fever. After she and Giovanelli are caught at the landmark by Winterbourne, she succumbs to the illness and dies.

This trip could be considered a thinly veiled metaphor for a sexual encounter. Daisy had been repeatedly warned not to be alone with Giovanelli so when she succumbs to temptation, she pays for her encounter with her chastity and her life. (Perhaps the yellow fever is a metaphor for syphilis). However, Giovanelli is never seen as predatory and the people that warn her such as Winterbourne and his aunt are filled with the snobbery and hypocrisy of their day. (Remember, Winterbourne's foreign ladies?) Giovanelli even clears Daisy's name posthumously by saying that they were never engaged and that she was completely innocent. So if it was a warning against young ladies having sexual encounters with foreign men, why does it include this curious detail of Daisy's innocence?

There are some hints that Daisy's death is a result of the patriarchal society that surrounds her. She is looked upon as a “Madonna-Whore” by the male characters, particularly Winterbourne. In Geneva, he sees her in purely virginal terms as a young harmless innocent who is all whites and yellows and girlish charm. He defends her from his aunt by saying that her actions are harmless and that she is merely a flirt.

In Rome however, Winterbourne is constantly suspicious of her behavior. All of the traits that he once loved about her, such as her outgoing nature and blunt speech, are now sources of irritation when they are given towards other men. Instead he sees her as someone treacherous who is inviting trouble. Winterbourne doesn't believe Daisy when she says that she and Giovanelli were not engaged, until Giovanelli confirms it until after her death. In Winterbourne's eyes, Daisy corrupted the image he had of her, so she is guilty until proven innocent.

James himself meant the story to be a character study of the young American heiresses that he saw while in Europe who took the Grand Tour to see the sites and to marry a man of title and fortune. This was the era of American heiresses becoming titled ladies such as Winston Churchill's mother, Jennie. Many of these women experienced a wider world than they had seen before, but were required to set the standards for the American women at home. This experience of Americans abroad interested James and was a common theme in his works. He was fascinated by American tourist's insecurities of being from a young nation as compared to these Old World Aristocrats. The Americans in James’ works often struggled to compete with the Europeans and tried to behave according to their standards, even creating tighter standards of their own. In their drive to overcompensate, the American characters lose their authenticity and mannerisms that made them so unique in the first place.

Daisy is authenticity personified. She isn't afraid to be herself, a young flirtatious vibrant spring-like person. She lives for the present only for the moment. She is similar to a mythical character like Persephone who represent a promise of spring, youth, adventure, and rebellion. Unfortunately, youth cannot last forever and the young rebel grows into the older rule maker. For Daisy, that moment never comes.

It is unknown what Daisy may have been like had she settled into marriage and lived to an older age. Maybe she would be like Winterbourne's aunt, a snob looking down on the younger generation of women. Maybe she would be a scandalous figure with multiple marriages trying to recapture her lost youth. She never gets to that age. Instead, she burns out and dies young. Daisy Miller is unable to accept the compromise that comes with age. She cannot play by rules that tell her that she can't speak in a friendly manner to a man without suspicion or that she cannot go to monuments by herself or with her love interest. Instead of accepting the role that she has been given since birth and entering the winter of age, she remains spring-like and youthful forever by dying young.

Daisy concedes defeat the only way that she can and remain true and authentic to herself. She dies young.

Washington Square presents a different character and setting from Daisy Miller but also asks the same questions about the role of women in society. Catherine Sloper is the polar opposite of Daisy in many ways: plain where Daisy is beautiful, shy where Daisy is outgoing. Even the setting favors the internal claustrophobia of swank New York studies and parlor rooms rather than the exterior of old world European castles and monuments. However, Daisy and Catherine both are surrounded by the expectations placed on wealthy 19th century American women and in some ways that still surround women today. Both Daisy and Catherine also have their own ways of questioning and fighting against those expectations.

Catherine Sloper lives in a world that is devoid of emotion and is in favor of reason. She is dominated by her widowed physician father who takes pride in having an analytic mathematical mind. He boasts that he can take “a man's measure” by observation. He can guess the type of person by observing and analyzing their appearance and behavior, like an even scarier Sherlock Holmes.

Sloper is able to fully control and dominate his daughter by using his icy logical analysis.
He controls where Catherine goes, who she associates with, and makes clear that he has the final say in who she marries.

Standing on the opposing side of Dr. Sloper is Aunt Lavinia Penniman, Sloper's widowed younger sister. Romantic where Sloper is Reason, Warm where her brother is cold, Aunt Lavinia tries to steer her niece towards a more sociable nature, but her father commands that she must train the girl to be clever. (“You are good for nothing unless you are clever.”)

Using his measuring, Sloper reasons that Catherine is not beautiful, that goodness makes her insipid, so she might as well be smart. While Sloper's motivations to make Catherine learned and intelligent seems progressive for the day, he only sees Catherine as an object of his making and she can only go from one extreme (very beautiful, outgoing, and good) to another. (very plain, intelligent, and socially awkward). When Catherine reaches 18, Sloper is disappointed that Catherine isn't clever enough and that she doesn't seemingly fit the mold he built for her. He verbally abuses his daughter and considers her ugly and stupid.

Despite this, Catherine's aunts try to help her. Catherine's Aunt Marian Almond throws a party for her daughter's engagement and Aunt Penniman accompanies Catherine. The two meet Morris Townsend, a man-about-town who is handsome, but unemployable and living off of his sister and her family.
Morris and Catherine fall in love and begin courting to Dr. Sloper's chagrin. He bases his information on Aunt Almond's knowledge of Morris and his own observations of the man during interviews. He believes that Morris is a fortune hunter who has only one thing on his mind during his courtship: Catherine's money.

Catherine ends up caught between the two men. Morris demands that she stands up to her father and wait for him. Sloper tells her that he does not approve of her engagement and even threatens to cut her off if she marries him. He is so insistent that Catherine not marry Morris that he alters his will so that Catherine will not inherit money from him should she marry Morris. (He can't do anything about her mother's inheritance, however. That's still hers.)

Morris and Sloper's differing views clash when during an interview Sloper says that Morris belongs to the wrong category. Morris, however, insists that Catherine does not marry a category, she marries an individual. Sloper's intellectual reasoning sorts and categorizes everything and Morris has to remind him that human beings are not like that. They are individuals who contain multitudes and he and Catherine cannot be sorted.

Like he did with the characters in Daisy Miller, Henry James had fun with names. Instead of seasons, Washington Square uses mathematical and urban terms for description. The Sloper's family name is from an algebraic equation.The title Washington Square has a double meaning. Besides being a prominent area in New York City that was the height of wealth and sophistication at the time, the name “Square” is a geometric shape. Catherine and Sloper live in a world of mathematics, measuring and counting the world to fit the doctor's view.

Morris's name is a contrast to the Sloper's mathematically precise world of facts, figures, and sorting. His last name Townsend, reveals him to be a man-about-town and all of the social obligations that come with that role of attending parties and befriending the wealthy elite, a world that Sloper deprives her from. The second half of Morris's name “-end” suggests an end to Catherine's current life and either the decline of her relationship with her fiancé or her father.

Both Sloper and Morris want to own Catherine. Sloper manipulates Catherine's courtship in ways that are in his favor. He orders Morris's sister not to let him marry Catherine. He takes Catherine to Europe solely with the intention of making her forget about Morris. His hold on Catherine is not out of concern for her welfare or that Morris will break her heart. It is out of a selfish obsessive need to control her and to prove himself right.

Like Sloper, Morris has a desire to own and possess Catherine but uses different means. He writes passionate letters to Catherine extolling his love. He tries to convince her to be more sociable and surrender to him.Like Sloper, Morris, too, manipulates a relative. He makes arrangements with Catherine's Aunt Penniman to meet Catherine at her house.

While Morris is more emotional than the intellectual Sloper, he is no less domineering to his fiancée. He constantly insults and gives Catherine ultimatums forcing her to choose between him and her father.
Even Aunt Penniman has her own stake in this. She subtly encourages the romance to continue as if to experience it vicariously. She allows them to meet at her apartment and when Catherine is terrified of her father, Aunt Penniman suggests that she lay in bed and fake an illness to appeal to his sentimental nature. Her romantic nature seems to be inspired by the literature of the time and she tries to shape Catherine and Morris into the romantic couple of her dreams who are torn apart by cruelty but elope and live happily ever after.
Sloper, Morris, and Aunt Penniman see in Catherine what they want to see: an obedient daughter, a loving fiancée, or a passionate romantic. They don't see her for a full woman.

The irony is that Catherine does not hate any of them, especially Sloper and Morris. She does not risk upsetting her father nor ending her engagement. The expectations that others have bestowed upon her have starved her for affection. She willingly submits herself to their control rather than lose them. When they force her to submit to them, she cannot make up her mind because she doesn't want to lose the people whom she believes loves her, but in reality want to own her.

Sloper is right that Catherine and Morris's engagement does not work out but not solely for the reasons that he believes. When Morris learns that Catherine will not inherit her father's money, he breaks things with her. However, his decision is made easier by Catherine's indecision. The indecision is caused by the intense pressure Sloper puts on her. In preventing his daughter's marriage to someone he deemed unsuitable, Sloper becomes part of the reason that the engagement ends.

Sloper's control over Catherine works all too well. The end of her engagement becomes the end of Catherine's emotional outlook. She becomes a creature without emotion, one solely of intellect and reason. She becomes every bit the mathematical analyst that her father was. She becomes Daddy's girl.

Catherine learns the lessons from her father so well that when he suggests that she get married to other men, she refuses. Her heart is not only broken by her failed engagement. It is shattered beyond repair. Sloper feels his age and wants to have a grandchild to inherit and create a legacy. However, Catherine will not allow this, so she refuses to marry or have children.
Sloper squashed Catherine's emotions. Now he has to live with what he has created and knows that his family line will die with him and Catherine.

Catherine's lack of emotion continues long after her father's death when she inherits his money. She is a serious, analytical woman deprived of any feminine institutions. She refuses to play the game of courtship. Even when an older Morris proposes to her again, she flatly turns him down. She knows that her love for him or for anyone else has died.

However, Catherine still has regret and sadness over what her life has become, shown by the final moment when she holds onto her needlework as “if for dear life.” She knows what she has become, but she can't change. She is unable to change.

Instead of dying young, Catherine rebels against the institutions of marriage and primogeniture by aging into permanent singlehood. In claiming her own independence from the people who want her to become the Catherine that they want, Catherine chooses not to marry at all. Her independence is at the expense of emotional connections and she claims it by living in solitude and regret.

Daisy Miller and Washington Square gives us two women who use different means to rebel against the rules of courtship and family. One plays the game, but concedes defeat by dying young. One enters the game, but ultimately chooses not to play at all.

Thursday, September 12, 2019

Weekly Reader: Cogrill's Mill by Jack Lindsey; Cute Charming Romance Has A Lot of Laughs and Weirdness






Weekly Reader: Cogrill's Mill by Jack Lindsey; Cute Charming Romance Has A Lot of Laughs and Weirdness

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Jack Lindsey's novel, Cogrill's Mill is sort of what would happen if you transported P.G. Wodehouse's characters to modern day and had someone like Richard Curtis write about their current love lives.

It is a cute and charming story about a spoiled rich man with very little common sense who goes into a business partnership with a Bohemian photographer and he opens his business to her artist friends. You just know this is one of those types of books where people will fall in love and hilarity will ensue. Luckily, it is a genuinely funny sweet book that even though the journey is familiar, it is also a lot of fun.

On his 30th birthday, George Cogrill is given the riot act by his Aunt Jane. He is not married, has not held down a job, and has done nothing with the money he inherited from his father. There is a codicil in the will that states that if he hasn't done anything with his fortune by the time he is 30, then he forfeits his inheritance.
Aunt Jane has a suggestion to start. Years ago, George's father cheated his former business partner, Victor Gloam, and built his financial empire off of that. Jane commands that George give half of his inheritance to Gloam. Unfortunately, Gloam died leaving his daughter, Vicky.
When George is ordered to give that half to Vicky, Vicky has some ideas to create business. One of them is to market and sell the delicious apple cider that George produces from his mill. The cider is highly recommended but only available at the local pub. Vicky also wants to expand the mill to open a fashion photography studio and maybe an artist's colony inside the small English village inhabited by George and Aunt Jane.

Cogrill's Mill is hilarious, partly because it deviates from expectations.
While Aunt Jane seems to be borrowed from Wodehouse's elderly pesky dictatorial aunts, she is not from the Edwardian Age so much as she is a retiree from the Age of Aquarius. Instead of the stereotypical “old lady” hobbies like gardening or crocheting, Aunt Jane likes to ride motorcycles. She has plenty of them but only British variety: Triumph Bonnevilles, Norton, and BSA. “These Japanese and continental machines are much too inferior,” she insists. Later, when someone mentions Harley-Davidson, she asks who that is. Though nationalistic in her choice of vehicles, Aunt Jane welcomes Vicky and her new friends. She finds new people to befriend and be nosy towards while biking across country roads.


Lindsey also does a great job of writing George, Vicky, the villagers, and the visiting artists making them a delightful community of likable characters.
Jack, a local pub tender, is the first to cheer lead for George's cider and ends up being at the forefront of selling the stuff. The cider makes a killing of Jack's pub business, much to his chagrin, when tourists keep arriving at his pub for the cider.

There is Justin, an artist that George believes is involved with Vicky until he is informed that Justin is involved with Jonathan, a model. Justin and Jonathan are frequently together so it is no surprise to the Reader as it is to George, thereby showing that George really needs to get a clue.

There is Tom Firkin, a gamekeeper who hides artistic talent and develops a romance with Vicky’s model friend, Miranda, despite his bucolic shy exterior. His dialect reveals that he is far from the dumb rural stereotype. Instead he is a sweet man who just needs encouragement from the right woman.
Miranda inadvertently causes a running gag by revealing her real name, Mabel, to George. George covers up for Miranda's embarrassment by telling Vicky that Mabel is the name of Jane's cat which she doesn't have. Vicky then spends some of the book looking for Aunt Jane's nonexistent cat.

Of course George and Vicky have some cute moments where the ambitious Vicky bickers with the complacent, George. There are also plenty of misunderstandings such as George proposing a business idea to Vicky and both she and Aunt Jane think it's a marriage proposal.
These humorous moments are driven by the characters’ personalities and behaviors giving a sweetness and gentleness to the events.

There are some weird moments towards the end. A smooth relative of Vicky's turns out to be a crook who takes some unnecessarily violent repercussions on the other characters. One wealthy character dies and leaves their fortune to their dog and another character gets amnesia and spends some time with a British Country-Western band.
The last third of the book becomes silly and farcical instead of the gentle character-driven comedy but most of the book produces some sweet moments that make you root for the characters and want to see them succeed.

Underneath the sweet characters and humorous plot points, there is an underlying theme of moving out of one's comfort zone and taking chances. Once George and Vicky share the fortune, they discover hidden talents in other people like Tom, Jack, Justin, Miranda and other characters. They also discover talents within each other.

George is revealed to make a great cider that he has never wanted to market until Vicky convinces him to. He also has a good eye for photography so he starts taking his own pictures becoming an honorary member of the artists’ colony.

Vicky also has some talents that encourages her to step onto the other side of the camera. She is very photogenic and becomes a model. She also acquires an acting talent and accepts the lead in a romantic comedy (inside the romantic comedy that is the book, Cogrill's Mill). The two achieve success once they display those talents to the world.

With success comes problems like the rush of tourists, sycophants who suck up to the newly famous, and in one chapter, George having to speak at conferences while hung over. But those problems help turn the lives of George, Vicky, Aunt Jane, and their friends around into something different.

The characters in Cogrill's Mill move on from their lives into new experiences that change them, sometimes better and more fulfilling and sometimes worse and with more headaches. But, the new experiences move them beyond their exteriors to become characters that are sweeter, funnier, more authentic, and more real.

New Book Alert: Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies That Nearly Killed Me by Erin Khar; Deeply Emotional Account of Heroin Addiction, Recovery, and the Psychology Behind the Addiction




New Book Alert: Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies That Nearly Killed Me by Erin Khar; Deeply Emotional Account of Heroin Addiction, Recovery, and the Psychology Behind the Addiction




By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: It is interesting that I am reviewing Erin Khar’s Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies That Nearly Killed Me for this blog at the same time that I am reviewing The United States of Opioids by Harry Nelson for another site. Both books illustrate how large the Opioid Crisis has become and how it affects both society and the individual. The latter book is a dry fact based account of the Crisis and how it began as well as the various institutions and people that put the Crisis in motion. What it lacks is the personal and the individual case story of people with addictions. It sacrifices the details for the picture of the crisis at large.

Erin Khar's memoirs fills that need. It fills in the details and makes the Opioid Crisis personal. It tells the story of Khar's struggles with drug addiction as well as the mindset that led her down this path as well as her recovery from her addiction.

Khar, a radio advice columnist, was inspired to write this memoir after watching a news report on opioid addiction with her then-twelve-year-old son, Atticus. Atticus asked if his Mom ever had taken drugs. Khar was stunned at the question and hoped that she would never have this conversation with her son, so she could maintain his innocence. She explained why people became addicted and realized that she had to open up about her own past.

Khar writes the mindset of a person with an addiction really well. One way that she accomplishes that is by showing the reasons behind the addiction. Many people think that the addiction is the problem, full stop. When a person breaks their addiction, then they will be fine. Khar's writing shows that is not always the case.

Even before she first sneaked Darvocet from her grandmother's medicine cabinet, Khar was beset with problems that made her young life impossible. Her parents’ divorce along with her father's behavior in trying to buy her love with material possessions and her mother's involvement with an abusive boyfriend traumatized her. Khar had low self-esteem and even as young as four years old, she cut herself and held notions of suicide.

Throughout her young life, Khar derided herself as “ugly” and a “monster,” feeling insults from other children and rejection from boys deeply.
In a later chapter, Khar encountered an old family friend and had a panic attack. She remembered that he molested her when she was four years old and blamed herself ever since. These incidents reveal the lost soul that Khar was before she stole the Darvocet and injected heroin with her boyfriend at 13 and began an addiction that claimed her teen and young adult years.

Khar's book is graphic in its detail about her addiction and how it affected her friendships and romances. Through high school, Khar lived the exterior of the perfect A+ student who was a cheerleader, volleyball player, and horseback rider. In her spare time, she swallowed pills from friend's medicine cabinets, cut herself, took heroin, and slept with her boyfriend, Ted. Much of Khar's retreat into her addiction stemmed from her trying to act like the perfect student in front of everyone so she could hide the pain underneath. Readers with addictions and psychiatric disorders will completely understand this exhausting masquerade that they use to hide the lost soul underneath.

After her grandmother's death when she was fifteen, Khar withdrew from her egocentric father and depressed mother and explored the night life in ‘90’s downtown L.A. that involved her going to clubs, dating several unappealing men, and of course frequent drug use. She lost many of her friends and boyfriends. Ted and Khar broke up after Sam, Ted's cousin and another drug user that she was seeing on the side, died of an aneurysm. Her best friend Ellen, with whom Khar saw many rock bands, broke up with her after she spent too much time with another boyfriend, Ian. Ian, an older man, ended things with her because they were far apart in age (though Khar suspected that he was seeing someone else.). The breakups sent Khar in an even further downward spiral as she experimented with crystal meth and pills.

She dated a drug dealer named Mike-Jim (“He said his name was Mike, but really it was Jim or the other way around,” Khar said) so he could supply her with her new drug of choice,crystal meth. Another unstable boyfriend, Will admitted that he put thirty phenobarbital in her spaghetti after she broke up with him.
These chapters grimly show how each break up, each disappointment, and each instance of abuse and mistreatment can bruise an already fragile personality. To cope, sometimes a person with an addiction can use that as a reason to continue their addiction.

Even when she tried to find a fresh start, Khar was surrounded by her old demons. She spent some time in Paris attending Sorbonne University, going to cafés and museums, making new friends, and trying her best to break her addiction. She became involved with Vincent, a Frenchman, who eventually moved to Los Angeles with her. When she discovered that he hadn't broken up with his old girlfriend, he moved out and she relapsed back into heroin.

In 1997, during the height of the so-called “heroin chic” trend, Vincent and Khar’s mother forced her into rehab. While she tried to follow the twelve-step program to the letter and bonded with many of her fellow patients, her addiction was never truly far behind. A friend at the rehab overdosed during his release and she was too terrified of a relapse to go help him, sending her mother instead.
When she was caught between two men, she missed heroin and returned to the drug.

During a psychiatric session with her mother, Khar's PTSD from her earlier molestation was mentioned. Her mother's denial of the events sent Khar into depression and a return to cutting as well as the drugs.
It is truly heart-breaking to read about this woman travelling from place to place, friend to friend, lover to lover hoping to break her addiction. But the seemingly endless cycle continues and she once again finds herself alone and reaching for the needle or the bottle.

There are some truly chilling moments that reveal how a drug addiction can be unpredictable and frightening, to the point that a person with an addiction can't trust their own mind, body, or the people around them. During rehab, Khar hallucinated spiders crawling up and down her room.

After she and her friend, Diana, had shot up, Khar accidentally o.d.’ed, to the point that she almost died.
A pregnancy with Jack, a troubled boyfriend, ended in an abortion, but Khar continued the relationship because of the drug access they provided for each other. Khar knew the relationship was unhealthy (“The difference between us was that Jack was a drug addict and I was a mentally ill person who had an addiction,” Khar said), but stayed with him.

Many of Khar's transactions put her at the forefront of the socioeconomic gap and she realized that as a biracial woman from a wealthy family, she had advantages such as access to good rehab centers and treatment programs, that many of her fellow addicts and dealers did not.
She bought drugs from many people who were on the lower economic scale and were primarily black and Latino. She witnessed many of the unfair treatment they got such as harsher prison sentences or deportation while she and others of her background were given court appointed rehab.

In one haunting moment, Khar bought drugs from a 12-year-old African-American boy. She reasoned that a 12-year-old doesn't just wake up one day and decide to sell drugs. He sells them because he has no other options in the neighborhood in which he lives and is denied many of the employment, education, and health access that Khar had.

Khar finally kicked her addiction for good, when she was pregnant with her son, Atticus. However, many of the reasons behind her addiction such as low self-esteem and unhealthy relationships continued. Atticus’ father, Michael continued to hold her addiction over her head and refused to admit his infidelities causing Khar to solely blame herself for the end of their marriage. She also started a clothing line with a friend that fell apart so she avoided situations and her friendship ended for a time.

These last chapters reveal the end of the addiction is not the whole story, especially when the reasons behind the addiction remain. When she held Atticus for the first time, Khar repeated a mantra: I love him more than I hate myself realizing that she still had the capacity for love.

She began to make healthier choices like hanging out with better friends who encouraged her sobriety or had recovered themselves and acted as guides to aid her. She got involved with Yoga to help change her mindset and outlook. She found her gift for writing and took to blogging essays and an advice column, Ask Erin.(“She's made all the mistakes so you don't have to.”) She also fell in love with and married Seth and had a second child, Franklin finding stability and happiness in her family.

Erin Khar's book is brilliant at capturing not only a drug addiction, but the reasons and mindset that created the addiction and the resources, healing, and emotional support that one needs to make a full and complete recovery.

New Book Alert: Corruption Behind Bars: Stories of Crime and Corruption in Our American Prison System by Gary York; Gripping Eye-Opening Accounts of Criminal Activity In American Prisons



New Book Alert: Corruption Behind Bars: Stories of Crime and Corruption in Our American Prison System by Gary York; Gripping Eye-Opening Accounts of Criminal Activity In American Prisons




By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: Gary York knows a lot about corruption in the prison system. As a Senior Prison Inspector, he spent twelve years conducting criminal, civil, and administrative investigations in many state prisons.

He wrote books on the subject and his book, Corruption Behind Bars: Stories of Crime and Corruption in Our American Prison System is a gripping account of many of the situations inside these prisons. What he found were buildings full of lawbreakers, both inmates and employees. York's book is filled with 42 chapters of such stories.

York begins his book by discussing how a prison becomes a den of more illegal activity than the outside.
“Imagine taking a group of dishonest individuals and putting them all in the same location. Now add, a few corrupt staff members…..This mixture can cause numerous illegal activities. Just one corrupt staff member...can cause a chain of events that lead to months of investigative work in order to infiltrate and dissolve the illegal activity. Corruption causes citizens to feel officers are not trustworthy and leaves them wondering who the officers are working for, the citizen or the inmate.”


In the first chapter, York chillingly explains the recruitment process that he calls “The Inmate Recruitment Game.” Once they enter the Graybar Hotel, inmates are denied certain privileges, such as drugs, sex, even simple things like a home cooked meal. They get by these restrictions by either making sure their friends get hired in the prison or, failing that, find a way to blackmail or entice a staff member. They may find information on the staff member, such as an extramarital affair or financial dirty dealing, from friends on the outside.

York's profile of these inmates show them as master manipulators. They befriend the staff member and learn secrets on them, then trick them into giving them a simple contraband item like a single cigarette or a can of beer. Then, they will ask for bigger items. If the staff member refuses, the inmate then threatens to reveal the secret they learned as well as the earlier contraband. Suddenly, the inmate has a new friend, that gives them whatever they want including illegal contraband and , lo and behold, the corrupt inmates and employees rule the Big House.

One chapter in York's book illustrates this concept clearly. Helen, a classification officer, supervised inmate orderlies in a move from her old office to a new one.
A handsome inmate began smiling at her. She smiled back in a more flirtatious manner. The inmate then began writing her poems and painting floral pictures as gifts.

Helen was flattered by the attention and already was in trouble for not reporting the gifts. She and the inmate sneaked into the old classification office and had sex. The captain entered the office to find Helen and the inmate in flagrante delicto. The inmate was locked up in disciplinary confinement and Helen was removed from her job. However, when the inmate was transferred to another prison, Helen was added to his visitor's list.
This chapter reveals how the inmates use the staff members’ insecurities and loneliness against them. By manipulating Helen’s need for romance and telling her the right things to make her think she loved him, the inmate’s sexual needs were met.

If not sex, sometimes the inmates wanted other urges to be satisfied like their drug and alcohol addictions.
A drug treatment center was under investigation from York for this very reason. York searched the financial records and discovered that there were frequent requests for new window screens. York learned that male offenders often broke through the screens, either to be with female offenders or to pick up drugs that friends and family members dropped off in the woods outside the treatment center.
The male offenders picked up the drugs and entered the female's section through the window. The offenders engaged in sex, drinking, smoking marijuana, and taking other drugs. “They were angels by day and vampires by night,” York observed. The entire program was shut down and the officers and other staff members were relocated.

Women's prisons can also be hotbeds for contraband. Many of the items demanded are things to enhance an inmate's femininity, such as make up, perfume, and jewelry, particularly tongue rings. In a women's prison, York discovered that two female officers made extra money on the side by bringing the inmates tongue rings and name brand makeup. The makeup was provided to replace the generic makeup approved by the prison and hated by the inmates. The tongue rings were a fashion statement because they were stylish and cool and also because the inmates used the tongue rings on each other for oral sexual pleasure and arousal. After York confiscated the tongue rings and makeup, he learned the names of the officers from the inmates. The officers resigned and surrendered their correctional officer certifications for life.
Sometimes the officers are just as corrupt as the employees as York shows in his chapter involving Florida's former Department of Corrections Secretary James Crosby. Crosby hosted wild parties with bigwigs, booze, and girls. He and other officials accepted kickbacks from private vendors and state funds. Other officials imported and sold steroids to give to the prison softball team. Crosby also protected officers who abused and intimidated inmates and staff.
Many of Crosby's cohorts were exposed and investigated. Some came clean particularly about the steroid use and the parties. Eventually in 2006, Florida governor, Jeb Bush ordered Crosby to resign. He agreed to plead guilty for accepting kickbacks and was sentenced to eight years in a federal prison.
The chapter on Crosby shows what happens when a prison official is as corrupt and scheming as the inmates. When that happens, the whole system can fall apart when citizens can't trust that law officers will protect them.

Sometimes the favors that staff members grant inmates seem innocuous but are symbols of power one has over them. This is particularly true for Warden David Farcas of the Charlottesville Correctional Institution. Farcas recruited captains, officers, and supervisors into what was called “The Family” a small group of prison officials who did favors for each other like covering up abuse. While inmates spoke up against the mistreatment, authorities did not take their claims seriously. Officers were supposed to testify as well, but the officers were too afraid of “The Family” to protest.
Farcas also granted favors to prisoners that he liked such as letting some use his cell phone to make long distance calls. In his previous position, Farcas gave an inmate and his father a steak dinner. He later had the same inmate transferred to Charlottesville.
One of the more bizarre favors that Farcas granted the inmates was to invite a skydiving team land on the prison compound during their annual Christian program. It is forbidden to allow airplanes to enter a prison without receiving approval from the State Capitol, conducting background checks on those who use the plane, and searching the plane for contraband or potential escapees. Farcas sidestepped these regulations and granted the skydiving team permission for no motive but to show off his power and prove that he could grant such a huge favor.
The Inspector General's office received various complaints on Farcas’ behavior from inmates and officers who were willing to talk about the Family's doings. Farcas was removed from his position, but temporarily received a new wardenship at Cross City Correctional Institution during the rise of Secretary James Crosby (see above). When Crosby resigned, Farcas was one of several prison employees terminated by Governor Jeb Bush’s actions to end illegal activity in Florida's prisons.

Juvenile correctional facilities also have their share of illegal activity going on inside those walls. In Hillsborough Correctional Institution, The young offenders got into fights, arming themselves with broom handles and padlocks as makeshift weapons. Warden Roderick James declared “If you want to act like animals, then you will be treated as animals.” Officers then handcuffed the young men to a chain link fence then laughed as a thunderstorm poured down on the boys.
James ordered the officers to use pepper spray on any dissenters. The inmates spent the night on the gymnasium floor handcuffed on the basketball court floor and sleeping on thin mattresses. The young men spent 33 hours handcuffed, before being released.
The inmates and officers, lieutenants, a major, the assistant warden, and the prison chaplain all testified that James ordered the punishment. James denied being involved in punishing the boys, but his attendance on the court log told a different story. James was demoted, suspended for a few days, and transferred to Avon Park Correctional Institution where he was eventually promoted to warden once again.
This chapter highlights a heart-breaking reality in America's prisons that sometimes when officers are caught breaking the laws that they swore to protect, unfortunately they receive very little punishment.

York's book is an eye opening look inside prisons where instead of rehabilitating and receiving second chances, the people on both sides of the law are often guilty of doing more of the same.

Friday, September 6, 2019

New Book Alert: Succubus Affair by R.E. Wood; Erotically Charged Supernatural Thriller Brings Mythological Villainess to Modern Day Manhattan




New Book Alert: Succubus Affair by R.E. Wood; Erotically Charged Supernatural Thriller Brings Mythological Villainess to Modern Day Manhattan


By Julie Sara Porter


Bookworm Reviews





Warning: This review will frankly discuss the sexual themes and descriptions in this book of which there are plenty. Reader discretion is advised.

Spoilers: Lilith is an intriguing character in Jewish folklore. A figure from the Apocryphal Bible, she was Adam's first wife and was created from the dust like him. She refused to take a secondary position and she was cast out of the Garden of Eden and Eve grew from Adam's rib to emphasize her subservience.
Lilith's legend has taken on various characteristics depending on who reads her legend and interprets the analytical and allegorical meaning behind her.
Starting in the Medieval Era, she had been seen as a Succubus, a female spirit that visits homes at night to steal the breath from infants and render men impotent and powerless. (Some believe that her mouth explained the origin of nocturnal emissions.) In some literary and legendary accounts, she is seen as an unrepentant demon from the depths of Hell.
In more recent times, she has gained a different outlook. Many feminists see her as a symbol of rebellion against the patriarchy that in her willingness to leave Eden instead of obeying Adam, she was declaring her independence. She is seen as a vibrant sexually charged character who takes control of her life.

R.E. Wood gives us this complex figure in his novel, Succubus Affair. Wood transports the legendary demon to Modern day Manhattan in this erotic sexually charged supernatural thriller which is also a commentary on modern consumerist desire for self-gratification and the sexual and emotional power plays between lovers.


When Lilith enters the novel, she proves to be a seductive force to be reckoned with. She seduces a man at a nightclub and after some mind blowing sex, she drains the life from him turning him from a horny young man in his early twenties to an emaciated old man drained of life. She also literally grows a pair to seduce a gay customer service representative with the same results.

However, Lilith is not just in Manhattan to satisfy her hunger and sexual urges. She has long-term goals to get money and power. She gets both in Norman Gleason, CEO of Gleason Financial Services. She manipulated her way into the job of Norman's personal assistant removing his suspicious former assistant then moves into his house alienating Norman's gorgeous wife, Judith who not surprisingly wants a divorce.
Lilith thinks that she has it made or is going to get it: a billion dollar fortune, a powerful position as assistant and possibly CEO once she receives Norman's finances and seizes control of his company, and enough men in Manhattan to satisfy her hunger. But she is drawn to Bob Martin, a newlywed employee of GFS. He at first resists her and she is incensed and curious about why Bob is so different and why he has such a hold on her.


Succubus Affair is a superior book to Voodoo Warning in every way: superior in suspense and fear, superior in description, and superior in characterization. When the plot of a horror novel involves relationships, the author better make them interesting and Wood does.

The most interesting figure is Lilith herself. She is not identifiable or relateable, but she is mesmerizing. As she draws in her prey, she seems to draw in the Reader so that they are not rooting for her but they are fascinated by what she does and how she operates. She painfully emasculates a potential rapist and completely destroys seven men in a bloody terrifying group orgy. She is like a villainess in a soap opera or a psychological thriller (of course being Lilith, she is the O.G. of female antagonists). She wants and she isn't afraid to take what she wants sometimes in the most destructive, illegal, and painful way imagined.

It makes sense that Lilith comes to the modern 21st century. In a time when consumerism and self-gratification is high, here comes a creature who is the living embodiment of that desire to please ourselves.

It is no coincidence that Lilith ruins romantic and familial ties. When dating can be disposable, people change couples as fast as they change their clothes, and love can sometimes be hard to find and define, of course there would be a creature who survived by severing those ties.

It is also no coincidence that it's a female character doing this. Lilith is not an outsider from another time. She exhibits those patriarchal alpha characteristics of dominant sexuality and instant gratification and turns it around on the male characters in the story.


This leads to an interesting question: how much of Lilith's behavior is mesmerism and do her assailants have any free will or control over their behavior? Many characters that she seduces are the types who are drawn by sex and their own bravado.

When Judith learns the truth that Lilith is a succubus, she points out that Norman is still responsible for leaving her and allowing Lilith to gain access to his accounts and business. Judith continues divorce proceedings and obtaining her assets from her ex-husband and his demonic mistress.

Bob is able to resist Lilith for a long time because he is happily married to his wife, Mags. Even when he succumbs to Lilith, he is torn between being led by his heart for Mags and his dildo for Lilith. That is what fascinates Lilith so much, that he is able to resist her magnetism for so long. His love is a shield from his desires and that makes Lilith so determined to have him and break those desires.

Succubus Affair is a novel that is graphic and erotic in how it reveals the characters’ sexuality but it is intelligent in how it turns that sexuality on the characters’ heads into something seductive, and dangerous. passpassionate, and dangerous. AN

New Book Alert: Voodoo Warning by R.E. Wood; Thriller About Plane Crashes and Zombies Is Reminiscent of 1970’s Films




New Book Alert: Voodoo Warning by R.E. Wood; Thriller About Plane Crashes and Zombies Is Reminiscent of 1970’s Films





By Julie Sara Porter


Bookworm Reviews





Spoilers: R.E. Wood’s horror novel, Voodoo Warning is reminiscent of those old disaster and horror films from the 1970’s. It doesn't have much in the way of deep characterization or themes beyond mere survival. But it makes up for that in genuine suspense, graphic description, and the kind of thrills that you expect from this kind of book.

The book begins on a passenger airplane in the 1970’s. It has many of the standard characters you expect in such a story: the stalwart Colonel with his fed-up wife, the doctor who is conveniently on board in case they need a medical emergency, the arguing couple and the hippy couple (this is the ‘70’s), and the hero caught in a love triangle between an innocent naive college student and a sharp tongue experienced school teacher, and of course the crew: the gorgeous flight attendant, the handsome pilot, and the loyal co-pilot. The characters are pretty flat. They are more like plot devices for the thrills and horrors to happen to them rather than people who are suffering because scary horrible and things are happening to them.


This is one of those books where the plane no sooner takes off than you know it's going to crash.

And crash it does. It crashes in the uncharted areas of Peru. The first couple of chapters make the Reader think this is going to be a survival story somewhere between Lord of the Flies and The Poseidon Adventure in which the survivors pull together and


find a way out becoming either closer because of the journey or turning on each other brutally. Unfortunately, the disappearing corpses (not to mention) the book's title) lead the book into horror-zombie territory.

There are genuine chapters that produce chills particularly when the characters enter a creepy mansion. They are being stalked by a sinister mambo and his bloodthirsty tribe. Yes, uncomfortable stereotyping is present in this novel too. Voodoo practitioners are the antagonists here. Though one character does the Readers a favor by differentiating the Voodoo practiced in this book from the Voodoo practiced in Haiti and New Orleans. However, most of the book features passages this side of Voodoo presented in Hollywood movies. The novel pays as much attention to real life spiritual paths as it does to its characters.

But that's not what is to be looked for or found in this book. Reality and characterization take a back seat to chills and scares. Wood delivers on those. Does he ever.
Many creepy moments occur when the characters are caught inside the mansion with the Mambo outside and they fall prey to creatures floating in and out of the shadows, chanting whispering among the trees, and a deep voice warning them to get out.


Not to mention that many of the characters are equipped with their own personal emotional baggage that already puts them on the edge. Couples fight. Lisa, the naive student has jealous eyes for Mary, the schoolteacher when she and Jim, the hero flirt with each other. Some characters are mourning the deaths of the other crew and passengers.
The atmosphere is scary enough when the creatures are outside allowing the supernatural creatures to creep in slowly with the emotional tension. When the Mambo unleashes his powerful attacks on the survivors, it is graphic and bloody, but almost not as scary as the tension that preceded it.


When the survivors are taken out one by one and some characters are witness to the rituals, it is everything you expect from a horror novel. There is blood here and mutilations there and a native tells the plane crash survivors how his mother died in a ritual when he was young. The chapters with the Voodoo tribe should produce some chilling mental pictures and nightmares.


However, for genuine fear, the build up is scarier than the execution. Sometimes, the creatures in the shadows are more terrifying when they are subtle and left to the imagination than when they are present in all of their gory glory.

Voodoo Warning is an exciting novel even if it's kind of predictable including the end which is one of the most clichéd obvious endings in the genre. But if you want a genuine scare for Halloween, this is a good suggestion for that. However, R.E. Wood wrote novels that are scarier and are better written making them more memorable as well as scarier.