Gittel by Laurie Schneider
This is a brief summary of my review. The main review can be found on LitPick
Gittel by Laurie Schneider is reminiscent of many coming of age books like Anne of Green Gables and The Little House books. It's not long on plot. It prefers instead to focus on various individual conflicts in Gittel’s life that test her character and teach her various lessons.13 year old Gittel Borenstein is part of a Jewish family that emigrated from East Europe because of a pogrom to Mill Creek, Wisconsin with 12 other Jewish families. The book focuses on various events in Gittel’s young life such as bullying from Antisemitic classmates, conflicts with her more traditional Orthodox family, a budding romance with a local boy, and her participation in a Chautauqua.
The book is strong on character, time, and place. The Borensteins emigrated for their safety but still feel out of place in this rural American country. Gittel has to suffer from insults and threats from other students, particularly Karl Leckner, whose religious Antisemitic father takes every opportunity to compare them to demons. Gittel shows her strengths by using witty comebacks and verbally challenging her antagonists. She even describes her mouth as the sharpest weapon that she and her friends, Irene and Emily, have.
Gittel struggles with not only societal conflicts but those within her own family. Gittel is a maturing young woman who is fascinated with the American way of life while her traditional Orthodox family mostly clings to the tight-knit Jewish community around them. Gittel makes gentile friends, develops her interests in singing, dancing, and reading, and uses her talent in public speaking during a Chautauqua. She nurtures aspirations to continue her education and become an actress or writer despite some of her family's concerns and soft objections.
The most heartwarming moments are when Gittel and her family come to an understanding about her aspirations and interests and she recognizes their own adaptability as well as her own. She recognizes loving bonds which while hidden and not always expressed out loud, but are always felt.
Gittel is the Yiddish word for “good” which is a decent description of the book. However, it's more than good. Gittel is great.
This is a brief summary of my review. The main review can be found on LitPick.
Speechless in Achten Tan is a Fantasy novel that will appeal to YA and Adult Readers with its captivating lead character and her search for her personal power.
Mila, a mute cavern gnome, goes through a test to be considered worthy to study magic. After she fails the test, her mentor, Nora, sends her to the desert world of Achten Tan to study magic under Gerwyn, a wise and powerful witch. While in Achten Tan, Mila finds romance and friendship, becomes involved in a power struggle against the despotic Bone Chief Opu Haku, and discovers her strength and voice.
After her test, Mila is in despair because she doesn't conform to what her community believes are their standards of maturity. She is deprived of the ability to speak and to practice magic. She cannot ascend in their world so she is deprived of her agency. The dramatic irony is the reason behind her failure. Mila’s brother, Turosh, drowned over the same waterfall where she was being tested. She was temporarily overcome with grief, lost control, and failed the test. A moment of emotion remembering a traumatic event that shaped her youth and motivated her to continue studying ended up becoming a barrier in her pursuit of magic and full acceptance into her society.
As with the heroes in many legends and books in the genre, Mila is sent to continue her journey elsewhere. She has to leave to continue her studies. Her journey to Achten Tan also allows her to connect with her past, present, and future. Her boyfriend from the village, Geb, is also in Achten Tan to train as a healer. He provides an emotional center and keeps Mila focused as her abilities increase.
She also befriends Kaii, son of Opu Haku, the Bone Chief. Mila's friendship allows the son to step out from his father's tyrannical shadow and fight against him. Mila widens the scope of her magical pursuits to make long lasting changes with other kingdoms including her own.
Mila is even able to reconcile her grief over Tarush’s death. She comes to terms with the loss and its aftereffects. While death and loss are still painful for her, she is able to set them aside and move forward on her path to maturity.
This is a Fantasy novel that many, especially young people, will relate to as they follow their own paths, discover their own abilities, and gain their own voices.
Slumber Nevermore by R.J. Garcia
R.J. Garcia knows how to keep Readers up at night. With the anthology, Slumber Nevermore she crosses genres to give the Readers a full effect of dark twisted tales that deliver on chills, ominous energy, and unforgettable mental images.
There are seven stories but the best are:
“The Stolen Child”-This story is a Dark Fantasy that plays on those frightening magical creatures: Fairies.
Garcia refrains from the wholesome fairytale Disney image of fairies and focuses instead on the variations from myth and legends where they are powerful, capricious, demand to be respected, and should be kept at a safe distance.
Mae is anxious about her sister, Emmie, who disappeared right in front of her. She has this sensation that they had been watched and out of the corner of her eye, she thinks that strange figures appear and disappear. She always suspected that there were fairies in the woods. Could she be right? Spoiler Alert: She is.
The fairies are written as ominous and secretive. They appear as orbs of light, shrill whistles, or silhouettes. Mae isn't sure if they are dreams or if they are real. Then when she finally talks to them, she isn't sure if they are good, evil, or neutral with their own moral code. They could go either way. Their ambiguity is their strength and while she is with them, Mae is completely at their mercy. As long as she is in their world, they could do whatever they want to her and no one would know about it.
“The Stolen Child” is a modern fairy tale told to a Horror loving audience. Anyone who reads fairy tales knows that fairies can be sinister or helpful but are rarely the main antagonists. Instead the real villains are often a lot closer to the protagonist’s home than that. Those villains are cruel, malicious, and bring the worst misfortunes.
“Lipstick”-This story is a Paranormal Horror that should not be read by anyone with coulrophobia.
10 year old Billy sneaks out one night to see a carnival. The night of rickety rides, junk food, and fun to be scared thrills turns to terror when he encounters a demonic looking clown. The clown not only makes a formidable impression but makes him an offer that haunts him for years.
Dark carnivals might be cliched and scary clowns even more so, but they are used so often because they work. Carnivals can give off a sinister vibe when one thinks about it. These places of supposed amusement contain rides that are quickly put together by people who might have dubious reputations and are certainly in a hurry. A guest’s safety depends on them. Is it any wonder that they inspire fear? If you read books like Something Wicked This Way Comes or saw movies like Freaks or Carnival of Souls among others, you know what I am talking about.
Then there are clowns. They hide their true faces, come up close and face to face with children, seem impossibly cherry, and wear garish makeup. Lest we forget fictional clowns like Pennywise or real ones like John Wayne Gacy who certainly had dark sides. A clown can be terrifying. A carnival can be spooky. A clown in a carnival is frequent but also can give you that instant chill down the spine, the chill that warns you that maybe you should have stayed home.
Billy ignored that chilly warning and ultimately paid a huge price for it. This brief moment changes his life in many disturbing ways that leaves him traumatized and alone. The final paragraphs show the complete impact that this demonic clown had over his life to the point that Billy can't separate himself from him.
“Sister Witches”-It’s rare to have a Horror short story told from the point of view of the monster, but this story does and turns a story that would normally herald fear for the victim instead invites pity and regret for the monster.
Cassandra is one of three witches. The other two are her sisters, Sheba and Celeste. The trio kill mortals and absorb their youth to remain forever young and beautiful. Their latest victim is Tommy, an aging man who is residing in a nursing home.
The witches' goal is to preserve their youth. Their absorption of others’s essences is graphic but is comparable to an addiction rather than an unexplainable supernatural or demonic force. It ruins the mortals but also the witches as well.
Cassandra and her sisters absorb the essence not because they want to, but because they think that they have to and are unable to survive without it. This takes a toll on Cassandra in particular. She has become someone who isn't terrifying or frightening. Instead, she's weary and tired of life. She is ready to die but is unable to.
In a way the fear doesn't come from an outside source, but from within. If we compare their immortality to an addiction, the fear comes from feeling forced to get that immortality and what it would be like to live without it. Cassandra fears what they have done, what they will do, and what would happen if that eternity would end. She is simultaneously longing for death and afraid of what happens if it comes.
“The Axeman Among Us”-Of the stories, this is the most realistic. Instead of Dark Fantasy or Supernatural Horror, this is more like a Psychological Thriller. It features an infamous real life serial killer. The Axeman of New Orleans was a serial killer who murdered mostly Italian immigrants or Italian-American men from 1918-1919. Most notably, a letter allegedly from The Axeman said that he would not kill anyone on a certain night in homes where jazz played. Musicians played in hundreds of homes that night. The Axeman was never identified and no arrests were made.
Vincent and his friends, Mikey and Dupree are startled one night by the sound of a scream and a dark mysterious figure hastily leaving a building with an ax in hand. They suspect that he might be the Axeman. The trio become obsessed with the case and go to extreme lengths to stop the Axeman's reign of terror.
This story’s tone and atmosphere are on point. The Axeman is certainly human but he carries a demonic aura. He haunts Vincent's dreams and is described more of as an otherworldly presence than an actual human being. He invites the possibility that he might not be human at least in this version. But the fact that he is, somehow makes him even more chilling. He has a human way of planning and analyzing how to commit the murders without getting caught and an inhuman desire to hack a human body to pieces.
There are some interesting twists to the story. Since it is set in New Orleans, we get motifs like voodoo and jazz. Voodoo presents the only supernatural link in the story and even that might just be within the minds of those who believe in it. It also makes sense that in absence of any physical legal help to stop the Axeman, the boys would turn to more esoteric means. Voodoo is a large part of New Orleans life but it is also held in suspicion by non-practitioners. There is something supernatural and eerie about it, the type of thing that would draw someone like the Axeman. The boys are using one unusual potentially dark path to capture one unusual dark person.
Jazz music also plays a large part most prominently practiced by Vincent's brother, Peter. It not only plays into the physical location but the time period as well. Jazz is improvisation mixed with deep emotion like pain, anger, sadness, and love. While popular, it was also controversial and considered an outsider’s choice of music like rock or rap would be later. The kind of music someone who stands on the outside fringes of society would listen to.
It's also worth noting that Peter is a WWI veteran. This is the time of the Lost Generation, when soldiers returned home with deep trauma. Where flappers and college kids decided to live freely without a care. It was a time where people were aware that life could end at any moment, so might as well grab all that you can. This deep emotion is played by someone who saw death up close and killed people because his government told him to. Maybe Peter feels a disturbing connection to the Axeman, an understanding about what it's like to live on the outside fringe, with longing and emotions that he can't express openly, and living with a violent and bloody past.
These stories deliver scares to the characters and the Reader making their sleep a truly unpleasant one.
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