Books: Straub, Gaiman

[woodwardiocom]

-Finally finished Ghost Story by Peter Straub. I picked this up 'cause Stephen King considers it one of the best horror novels of the 20th century. I mostly disagree. I get that Straub was trying to create a nice syncretic union of a bunch of different kinds of horror stories, but it really didn't work for me. Plus, A) on page 440, three of our heroes enter a haunted house, whose resident has killed a half-dozen of their friends and neighbors, and the first words said are, "Let's split up." This was so frickin' stupid that I nearly put the book down right there. Would've, if I hadn't been only 120 pages from the end. And, B) the book was written in the mid-70s, and it shows, particularly in the way it handles marital infidelity, which is an odd combination of, "Cool, it's the 70s, and I can actually mention infidelity in a book and still get published," and, "Aren't we worldly and jaded, with all the affairs going on, this is just the way things are," and, "Infidelity is the worm at the root of this society." And yes, the second and third attitudes are kinda contradictory. Anyway, mildly glad I read it the once, but it's going in the book swap box.

-Also, finally read Gaiman's Coraline, which is a fine little modern fairy tale. The kind where fairies are scary-@$$ individuals. Recommended.

(Hmm. I seem to talk more about the books I don't like, than the books I like. I should work on that. But really, I don't have much more to say about Coraline . . . )

Comments

[beowabbit]

I need to read Coraline. I think I have a copy in a box somewhere.

On a completely unrelated topic, once upon a time you announced a Friends group you'd set up that you called your recommended reading list, and I duly lunk to it. Now that link doesn't work any more. Did you retire it, or just rename it?

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

-I retired it. No one expressed any interest in it, and it turns out there's a limit on how many groups you can have, so . . .

[beowabbit]

Ah, OK. I was interested for a few days after you announced it, and today was the first day I’d noticed it was gone, so I suppose that’s not a bad decision. :-)

[futurenurselady.livejournal.com]

I read Ghost Story too.

If you look at the more mundane aspects of the book as a product of its time (the 70's were very confused about far more than infidelity, and that shows in the book too), and focus more on the detailing of the supernatural elements, there's more to take from the experience of reading it.

I love the idea of the shapeshifting manitou. I also love the "initials" motifs, and the fact that A.M is the first two letters of manitou reversed. I also was intrigued by the multi-generational hauntings, the many guises of the antagonist.

As far as the "let's split up" thing, there is always some point in any horror novel where the protagonists see themselves as either expendable or immune. Often they are neither. Sometimes they are both. Always they have vengeance issues. In any case, two of these three individuals were elderly, and didn't have much to lose. The third had lost pretty much everything.

In addition, the logic of "if she won't appear to the group then we must let her get each of us alone in order to confront her" is very valid here. A.M. only attacked a group once, and that time she was almost destroyed. I thought Straub had made it relatively clear that she wasn't likely to make the same mistake twice.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

-Hmm. Thank you for the insights. I'm still not likely to go back and re-read it, but I appreciate understanding it better.

[futurenurselady.livejournal.com]

Oh, and by the way, have you ever heard of a RPG based on the Darksword series, by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman?

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

-Not that I can recall.

[sunspiral.livejournal.com]

Coraline was the book that made a very young Gabriel demand a nightlight in his room.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

-Heh heh heh. Traumatizing young minds is still one of the joys of parenthood, I see . . .

[sunspiral.livejournal.com]

But of course. And my kids are obviously deeply scarred by my parenting style.