Review: Foxfire by Rowan Hill

Posted on December 17, 2023 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

In a remote Finnish resort, a group of potential investors gather to enjoy the Arctic beauty and the mesmeric Northern lights. But many of the guests aren’t who they appear to be, and everyone is hiding something–from the gaudy Americans to the adventurous German and Australian couple to the quiet Yakuza and his former Geisha wife.Owner Mattais and his skeptical daughter, Aino, have ignored family legends, dismissing the warnings of honoring their ancient forest as silly, old-fashioned traditions. But when the guests start to be picked off one by one, their blood soaked in the snow, the old tales don’t seem so far-fetched anymore. A spectre haunts the forest and the survivors must decipher who–or what–is taking revenge.”…FOXFIRE combines all the best elements of a tense, well-paced thriller with compelling folklore and horror, all in the stark, deadly and glittering setting of the frozen north…. ” – Laurel Hightower, author of CROSSROADS and BELOW

Review:

Rowan Hill’s latest novel, Foxfire, is hard to define. Part thriller, part mystery, and part folk horror, there are several aspects that scratches different reader itches. The story is set in Finland, at a remote resort where the owner, Mattais, and his daughter have invited potential investors to their property in hopes of expanding the resort and making it a true isolated getaway. The three couples are as different from one another as can be. It is hard to develop eight characters in a meaningful way in a short book, and some of the characters rely on stereotypes. Rocky Armstrong is the strong jawed, short tempered Texas oilman, his wife Regina is the abused trophy wife, the two Japanese characters, Tetsuya is a yakuza member and Mimiko is a former geisha, and Carly, the Australian is a survivalist. Hiding behind all of the somewhat generic roles of all of the characters hides a mystery of who can be trusted. The answer is none of them.

The best parts about this is the setting and how desolate and unforgiving the landscape is. When characters start to die, the challenges of fleeing in a -15 degree, snow-covered forest are only overshadowed by the relentlessness of the murderer. The action is fast paced, and the mystery makes the story compelling. The biggest climax of the novel is when we learn the identity and motivation of the killer. and new natural element that creates more danger for all of the characters. During this section there are some scenes, particularly when two of the characters meet in Japan, that kills all of the momentum that had been building. While my mind wandered during this scene in particular, because I wanted to get back to world crashing down around the resort, I tried to figure out a better place for this meet cute story. I think I would have deleted it because by this time, I did not care about those two characters anymore. There is a new danger stomping through the snow. 

Foxfire is a solid, entertaining novel that kept me guessing until the end. I like the setting and the large cast of characters are interesting, if not a little cliche. Besides a few moments when the story slows down for background instead of remaining at the same breakneck speed, I was completely engaged in what was going to happen next. The ending is satisfying, and I will recommend this to all of my reading friends, whether they are into thrillers, mysteries, or horror. 

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Review: The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2022 Edited by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Eugen Bacon, and Milton Davis

Posted on December 15, 2023 by ghostvillehero

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Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

This is the follow up to the highly acclaimed 2021 anthology described as containing “some of the most exciting voices, old and new, from Africa and the diaspora, published in the 2020 year.” The first won the World Fantasy Award for best anthology and was met with widespread critical acclaim from across the world, with the science fiction trade magazine, Locus , calling it a “must read.” Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, who created the first anthology now joins forces with Eugen Bacon, a 2022 World Fantasy Award finalist and Milton Davis, an award-winning Black Speculative fiction writer and editor to introduce readers to an ever more diverse set of writers associated with Africa. Timely and relevant to today’s world, the set of stories in this book will astonish, shock and amaze the reader while introducing them to a whole new world.

Review:

Speculative fiction is such a broad umbrella that so many categories of story falls under. Anything that is current world adjacent or set in the future, whether post-apocalyptic stories, horror stories, space science fiction, climate change sci-fi, fantasy stories, superhero stories, technology stories, and even magical realism all live in the speculative space. If any story has a world built outside the realms of the current world, whether be in the future or in an alternative timeline, it can be classified as speculative. I love these kinds of stories, and an anthology like The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2022 not only fits into these interests, but it also stretches my ideas of what speculative fiction can be.

I recognized a few authors when I decided to read this anthology. Nalo Hopkinson is a legend, I know P. Djeli Clark from Ring Shout and A Master of Djinn, and one of the editors Eugen Bacon has books released on Meerkat Press. The rest of the authors in the collection are new to me. I knew I was going to like the collection, but I did not know I would like it as much as I did.

Like the large umbrella that is speculative fiction, there is a large variety of different types of stories and voices in this collection. With so many different types of stories, there is no way a reader can like them all, but it is pretty close for me. A few of the stories really stick out for me and made me immediately look up and even order some of their books.  “Old Solomon’s Eyes” by Cherly S. Ntumy, about a village that is battling a demon that lives in the sunflower fields,  “Them Doghead Boys” by Alex Jennings, about a street gang and police being found torn to pieces, and “Kaleidoscope” by Milton J Davis, about a Christmas gift from an uncle’s mysterious new girlfriend, are just a few of the great stories in the collection from authors that are now on my reading list.

My favorite stories in the anthology are the two written by Tlotlo Tsamaase. “Peeling Time (Deluxe Edition)” might be one of the best stories I have read in years. The premise is actually a well worn story, dealing with the devil for fame, but the structure, writing, and voice honestly make it so much better than it should be. Tlotlo Tsamaase also has “District To Cervix: The Time Before We Were Born” which is a sci-fi, reincarnation story that proves that she is not just one story, but a fantastic writer that needs a bigger audience. In January, her novel Womb City will be released, and I am already in line for one of the first copies. 

The last section of the anthology is a group of the year’s best speculative poems. I do not know much about poetry, but I do know that many of these poems evoke strong emotions in me. “The Revenge of Henrietta Lacks” by Cecilia Caballero, “Tons of Liquid Oxygen Buckle Too Late Under Strain” by Eugen Bacon, and “That Poor Woman” by Gerald Coleman are powerful and memorable. 

The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2022 is one of the surprises of my year. I knew that I would like the anthology, but I did not expect it to be one of the best books I read, and I did not know I would feel so compelled to read more from most of these authors. I hope they continue to release these anthologies. I will preorder next year. 

I received this as an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: Elogona by Samantha Kolesnik

Posted on December 10, 2023 by ghostvillehero

Buy it Here:

WeirdPunk Books, Amazon

Synopsis:

An evocative tale of sapphic love in a post-apocalyptic world dominated by religious zealots and supernatural monsters.

Kolesnik’s Elogona transports readers to a time after the world’s end, when a long-dormant sea creature has awoken to stake its claim against one of the last human settlements.

Verna must battle both man and monster to protect her family and her newfound love for Audrey, a refugee from the mainland.

Meanwhile, the Elogona calls…

Review:

When the new Samantha Kolesnik novella was announced to be released by Weirdpunk Books, I was overwelmed with excitement. One of my favorite writers releasing a novella on one of my favorite presses is the best gift I could ever receive. Samantha Kolesnik has made a name for herself with two smash hit novellas True Crime and Waif. Both of these novellas, along with a couple chapbooks, some anthology stories, and editing the anthology Worst Laid Plans, has made her book announcements always rocket to the top of my most anticipated releases list. Elogona is no exception.

Set in a post-war apocalyptic world, the novella is about two girls, Verna and Audrey. They live on an island that is terrorized by a sea creature, Elogona. The way the Council helps appease this creature is to give a yearly sacrifice at the Maiden’s Feast. Since Verna and Audrey’s love for each other is blossoming, it is not surprising that they become the targets of the island Council to be the next maidens for Elogona.  

The story is compelling, and the writing is so perfect. Kolesnik has a talent for the way she tells a story, constructs scenes, and develops worlds in a way that cannot be taught. Within the first five pages, with just Audrey and Verna talking as friends on the beach, we know so much about the community they are living in, the dangers in the sea, the corruption of the council officials, and how no woman on the island is safe. She naturally portrays the power dynamics on the island between the men and women, the original settlers and newer refugees, and the clash of the generations. She does this with no long paragraphs of information dumps for world building. The scenes feel so organic that it would not take much to convince me that there really is a huge sea creature that is eating the inhabitants of an island, and Samantha Kolesnik is right there documenting events as they happened. Her writing is so clear and her stories are so compelling because they all feel believable.


I received Elogona as an ARC from the author in exchange for an honest review. I am excited to have a new Samantha Kolesnik novella, and I hope to read more of her work in the future.

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Review: My Weil by Lars Iyer

Posted on December 7, 2023 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

“Memorable characters make this a singular exploration of the human condition.” – Publishers Weekly

A scathingly funny look at a group of quirky graduate students majoring in Disaster Studies who are forced to reconsider their cynicism when they confront a new student who, remarkably, has the same name as the 20th Century Catholic mystic philosopher Simone Weil …

My Weil follows a group of twenty-something PhD students of the new-fangled subject Disaster Studies at an inferior university in Manchester, England, the post-industrial city of so much great music and culture. They’re working class, by turns underconfident and grandiose (especially when they drink) and are reconciled to never finishing their dissertations or finding academic jobs.

Their immediate enemies are the drone-like Business Studies students all around them, as well as the assured and serene PhD students of the posh university up the road. And they’re working together on a film, through which they’re trying to make sense of their lives in Manchester and, in particular, to the Ees, a mysterious patch of countryside that appears to have supernatural qualities.

Into their midst arrives Simone Weil, a PhD student, a version of the twentieth century philosopher, who becomes the unlikely star of their film. Simone is devout, ascetic, intensely serious, and busy with risky charity work with the homeless. Valentine, hustler-philosopher, recognises Simone as a fellow would-be saint. But Gita, Indian posh-girl, is what’s with Simone’s nun-shoes? And Marcie (AKA Den Mom), the leader of the pack, is too busy with her current infatuation, nicknamed Ultimate Destruction Girl, to notice.

The narrator, Johnny, who was brought up in care and is psychologically fragile, and deeply disturbed by the poverty of his adopted city, gradually falls in love in Simone. But will his love be requited? Will Simone be able to save the souls of her new friends and Manchester itself from apocalypse?

Review:

“But by the time the first bombs fell,

we were already bored.

  We were already, already bored.”   

~ Arcade Fire “Suburbs”

I could not get this lyric from the title track of Arcade Fire’s album Suburbs out of my head while reading the newest Lars Iyer novel, My Weil. This is the story of a group of academics working on their Disaster Studies PhD projects, spend all of the novel doing everything but working on their Disaster Studies PhD projects. The group, who refer to themselves as the Collective, drink pickle backs (whisky with a pickle juice chaser) from bar to bar, play badminton, go to house parties of rich alumni, hang out in a junkyard, and genuinely fear life outside of their little bubble. They live in a dangerous Manchester, go to the second best university, and feel like their entire purpose is to avoid anything outside of their friend group. 

At the beginning of the novel, a new member is added to the Collective, one that has changed her name to Simone Weil, after the French philosopher, and is doing her best to live the life that is inspired by Weil’s work. Johnny wants to save her from this and from the dangerous situations that she gets herself into, with the same passion as a character who is trying to save a prostitute from her life of sin. While she is trying to learn compassion and grace by working outside of the friend group, the rest of the group sit around, drink, and talk about philosophy. Most of the group’s conclusions and eureka moments really do not add up to much because they are constantly bored with the idea of actually applying themselves to these ideas. The only one who is doing anything close is Simone and Johnny is trying to stop this. 

Most of My Weil is interesting and funny. The first half really keeps me wondering where the entire plot is heading, and the last thirty-five pages could honestly be the beginning. At one point Johnny mentions that his PhD project feels like Zeno’s arrow, the closer he gets to the end, the further the end moves away. I feel this immensely in the second half of this novel, and I wonder what would have happened if Lars Iyer started the novel with the last thirty-five pages and built from the end. Overall I know what I was getting when I started Lars Iyer’s novel, long passages with deep discussions about philosophy and applying it toward life, but I wish that My Weil was a little more concise. 

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: Nineteen Seventy Seven by David Peace

Posted on December 4, 2023 by ghostvillehero

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Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

Half-decent copper Bob Fraser and burnt-out hack Jack Whitehead would be considered villains in most people’s books. They have one thing in common, though. They’re both desperate men dangerously in love with Chapeltown whores. And as the summer moves remorselessly towards the bonfires of Jubilee Night, the killings accelerate, and it seems as if Fraser and Whitehead are the only men who suspect or care that there may be more than one killer at large.

Review:

Nineteen Seventy Seven the second in the Red Riding Quartet. This installment takes place during the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, where everyone is celebrating twenty-five years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. This celebration is tarnished by a person killing prostitutes, and a police force trying to catch this criminal that is just as corrupt as the thieves, rapists, and murderers they are sworn to stop. The narration of Nineteen Seventy Seven is split in two. Chapters are in first person with alternating narrators. One is disgraced investigator Bob Fraser. The other is has-been journalist Jack Whitehead. They both have their problems with alcohol, women, and ghosts that haunt their every move. The biggest key to understanding what is happening is keeping track of who is narrating at the time, even though sometimes it is purposefully vague.

David Peace has written a novel that feels like less of a crime novel, trying to find a serial killer who is murdering and mutilating prostitutes, and more of a study of two deeply flawed men who are so thick into the mud of their poor decisions and trauma responses that they cannot find their way out. Instead of finding a way to escape or redeem themselves, they both sink deeper and deeper into the muck and slime of their poor choices. They are sick over the murders that are happening in their city and the sickness eats at them. 

I honestly cannot decide how much I like this novel. David Peace has written a crime novel that at moments feels dreamlike and hallucinogenic, but mostly, Nineteen Seventy Seven is ugly and very brutal. There are not only killings and mutilations, but there are violent rapes, racism, and abuse. The police are even dirtier than the criminals, and in the end, the only characters that we have to root for are the women who are running away from the men. Every man is angry and dangerous in this novel, able to do anything to anyone. They all have a capability to be a killer at any moment. This putridness rotting the soul of every character in this novel really makes for a place where you do not want to stay. Because it just is not safe for anyone.

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Review: Treacle Walker by Alan Garner

Posted on December 1, 2023 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

Treacle Walker is a stunning fusion of myth and folklore and an exploration of the fluidity of time, vivid storytelling that brilliantly illuminates an introspective young mind trying to make sense of everything around him.

‘Ragbone! Ragbone! Any rags! Pots for rags! Donkey stone!’

Joe looked up from his comic and lifted his eye patch. There was a white pony in the yard. It was harnessed to a cart, a flat cart, with a wooden chest on it. A man was sitting at a front corner of the cart, holding the reins. His face was creased. He wore a long coat and a floppy high-crowned hat, with hair straggling beneath, and a leather bag was slung from his shoulder across his hip.

Joe Coppock squints at the world with his lazy eye. He reads his comics, collects birds’ eggs and treasures his marbles, particularly his prized dobbers. When Treacle Walker appears off the Cheshire moor one day – a wanderer, a healer – an unlikely friendship is forged and the young boy is introduced to a world he could never have imagined.

Review:

Alan Garner has been telling his version of British Folklore and writing children’s fantasy novels for decades. I have not read him before, but Treacle Walker caught my attention because of a nomination for the Booker Prize, and I liked the cover of the new edition published by Scribner. 

The story starts with Joe, a young kid who is seemingly up to his own devices at all times. He meets Treacle Walker, a wanderer, healer, and someone who Joe becomes friends with. Joe is a lonely kid, reading comics, wearing an eyepatch to correct a lazy eye, and collecting bird eggs and marbles. When he gets attention, any attention, he is drawn to the person, and in this case, Joe gets into quagmires where only Treacle Walker can help him.

Joe’s life is changed when he meets Treacle Walker, and there are many odd things that happen to Joe after they meet. The world around him does not seem real, or real to him. The whole of the novel is Joe trying to find his place in a world that he does not quite understand. The fantasies that he has, about his comic book characters coming to life and his eye that has been under the patch being able to see into a parallel universe when he takes his eyepatch off, are way that he tries to figure out a world that does not make much sense. He is supposed to trust adults, but the adults are only there to trick him, so he spend the whole story trying to find his moorings. Treacle Walker is his only help, and even in this, he is not very helpful.

I enjoyed this short novella, even with the language being somewhat difficult at times to navigate. There are many words and phrases that are very colloquial to the area where Joe lives. This can be distracting and not terribly inviting for a reader who has no clue about this region of the world. I feel like Garner does this on purpose, like those who are outside of this region needs to be off of their moorings like Joe is throughout the novella. He tries and is somewhat successful in repeating Joe’s experience by making his confusion our experience as well.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: Bear by Marian Engel

Posted on October 29, 2023 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

‘A strange and wonderful book, plausible as kitchens, but shapely as a folktale, and with the same disturbing resonance.’ – Margaret Atwood

Lou is a shy and diligent librarian at the local Heritage Institute. She works monotonous and dusty hours long into the night but she has found nothing – and no one – to go home to. She has resigned herself to passionless sex on her desk with the Director of the Institute.

When she is summoned to a remote island to inventory the estate of Colonel Cary, she takes it as an opportunity to get out of the city, hoping for an industrious summer of cataloguing.

Colonel Cary left many possessions behind, but she didn’t expect the bear. She soon begins to anticipate the bear’s needs for food and company. But as summer blossoms across the island and Lou shakes off the city, she realises the bear might satisfy some needs of her own.

Review:

In the Werner Herzog documentary Grizzly Man (2005), there is a part where Timothy Treadwell, a man who spent thirteen summers with the bears at Katmai National Park in Alaska, thought that he had a personal connection to the bears, had gained the trust and friendship of the grizzlies around him. In one of his home videos, he films a bear and he says he can see the bear’s friendship and compassion in it’s eyes. At this point, Herzog has a voiceover during the same scene. He says something to the effect that instead of the compassion and friendship that Treadwell sees, Herzog sees coldness and indifference the comes from the bears being wild animals.

I was constantly reminded of this scene while reading Bear by Marian Engel, a short novella from 1976 that has kind of resurfaced in some TikTok posts. Bear is the story of Lou, a librarian who catalogs things for the Institute. When the Institute is given the Colonel Cary Estate, she travels to the remote island to catalog it’s belongings and library. She gets there and learns that there is also a bear on a chain in the backyard that she has to feed. Lou and the bear quickly become closer than they should because she trusts his friendship and compassion. Lou’s behavior reminds me of naiveté of Timothy Treadwell, someone who feels like she has more of a connection to a wild animal than she actually does.


Bear is Marian Engel’s most popular book, but this is also her fifth novel. Reading Bear has made me extremely curious about her and her other books. There is something deeply disturbing and haunting about not only the plot of this book and the character of Lou but also the way that it is written. She tells the story of Lou in a poetic but also sad way, where we can feel the isolation that Lou feels in her life. This loneliness seeps into every aspect of Lou’s life, from her job to being on an island alone for an entire summer with a bear to the way that Lou should not have been put into this situation. Bear won the Governor General’s Award in 1976, which is Canada’s equivalent to the National Book Award, so this bizarre novel was at least critically well-received, which also brings up more questions, particularly what  was going on with novels in Canada in the 70s. I need to know more about the award winning Canadian books at this time and about the life and works of Marian Engel.

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Review: Sonic Life by Thurston Moore

Posted on October 25, 2023 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

From the founding member of Sonic Youth, a passionate memoir tracing the author’s life and art—from his teen years as a music obsessive in small-town Connecticut, to the formation of his legendary rock group, to thirty years of creation, experimentation, and wonder

“Downtown scientists rejoice! For Thurston Moore has unearthed the missing links, the sacred texts, the forgotten stories, and the secret maps of the lost golden age. This is history—scuffed, slightly bent, plenty noisy, and indispensable.” —Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Underground Railroad and Harlem Shuffle

Thurston Moore moved to Manhattan’s East Village in 1978 with a yearning for music. He wanted to be immersed in downtown New York’s sights and sounds—the feral energy of its nightclubs, the angular roar of its bands, the magnetic personalities within its orbit. But more than anything, he wanted to make music—to create indelible sounds that would move, provoke, and inspire.

His dream came to life in 1981 with the formation of Sonic Youth, a band Moore cofounded with Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo. Sonic Youth became a fixture in New York’s burgeoning No Wave scene—an avant-garde collision of art and sound, poetry and punk. The band would evolve from critical darlings to commercial heavyweights, headlining festivals around the globe while helping introduce listeners to such artists as Nirvana, Hole, and Pavement, and playing alongside such icons as Neil Young and Iggy Pop. Through it all, Moore maintained an unwavering love of the new, the unheralded, the challenging, the irresistible.

In the spirit of Just Kids , Sonic Life offers a window into the trajectory of a celebrated artist and a tribute to an era of explosive creativity. It presents a firsthand account of New York in a defining cultural moment, a history of alternative rock as it was birthed and came to dominate airwaves, and a love letter to music, whatever the form. This is a story for anyone who has ever felt touched by sound—who knows the way the right song at the right moment can change the course of a life.

Review:

Sonic Youth has been a part of my life for over thirty years, after I bought Dirty when it first came out because I read a review in Spin or Rolling Stone. I have spent my entire life looking for new bands, and while Nirvana was starting to blow up, I wanted to be adjacent to this change in music culture, focus on bands that inspired Nirvana and/or were contemporaries. Sonic Youth was the best band for me, and Dirty is the album that changed everything. 

It is no surprise that I was excited about Thurston Moore’s new memoir, Sonic Life. We get the story that he wants to tell in the way that he wants to tell it. The main focus of the book is the early days of him discovering the New York music scene, falling in love with bands and songs (“I Wanna Be Your Dog” being the best song ever written), and experimenting until he finds his musical voice and vision. In the five hundred pages, Sonic Youth is not even a blip until about a quarter of the way through, and the 90s are not mentioned until close to the 75% mark. The focus on the earlier albums, the touring and the reception, seem to be more important to Thurston’s story because these are the albums where he learned about himself and the band. This is when the music is more a labor of love than anything. 

He talks freely about the music, the bands, and the musicians that he loves, but he is very reluctant to talk about himself. Toward the end he glosses over the fact that he has poor memory when it comes to Sonic Youth lyrics, that he has had the words posted behind the monitors or amps. He also talks about the last decade of Sonic Youth in the last twenty pages, and the disintegration of his band due to him and Kim getting a divorce in the last ten. I know that this is Thurston’s story, and he tells it the way that he wants, but there is very little time spent on anything other than the music that he creates and the people that has met and learned from. This skirting of the personal makes Sonic Life feel a little shallow for a memoir and more of a history of Thurston Moore, as if many of the stories that he tells could be stories that we could learn if we researched hard enough. There could be a second part, a sequel that focuses on the second half of Sonic Youth, but I also know we probably will never get it. 

What we do get is a greater understanding of the music scene that nurtured Sonic Youth. Those early albums, from Sonic Youth to Daydream Nation are informed by Avant Garde art and noise rock. Moore mentions hundreds of bands that are worth checking out, and the whole idea of Sonic Life is that Sonic Youth and Thurston Moore is as influenced by as many bands as they have influenced. This is  not Thurston Moore’s book about Thurston Moore as much as Thurston Moore’s book about Sonic Youth. There is a definite distinction, and those who are looking for a tell-all book about Moore’s personal life are going to be sorely disappointed. Instead we are given a testament of his recollections of being in the most influential noise rock band of all time. 

I received this as an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz

Posted on October 23, 2023 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

A book deal to die for.

Five attendees are selected for a month-long writing retreat at the remote estate of Roza Vallo, the controversial high priestess of feminist horror. Alex, a struggling writer, is thrilled.

Upon arrival, they discover they must complete an entire novel from scratch, and the best one will receive a seven-figure publishing deal. Alex’s long-extinguished dream now seems within reach.

But then the women begin to die.

Trapped, terrified yet still desperately writing, it is clear there is more than a publishing deal at stake at Blackbriar Estate. Alex must confront her own demons – and finish her novel – to save herself.

This unhinged, propulsive, claustrophobic closed-door thriller will pull you in and spit you out…

Review:

Julia Bartz’s debut novel, The Writing Retreat, starts with a compelling premise. Five female writers are invited to the estate of Roza Vallo to spend a month writing a new book. Blackbriar Estate is also rumored to be haunted. The five writers are given the challenge to write a novel in thirty days, each other them working hard and the best novel is the winner. The main character Alex has writer’s block when she goes to Blackbriar. It does not help that an old friend, Wren, who had a falling out after a drunken night, is another of the contestants. Not only does Alex have to navigate this competition, but she should also try to mend the relationship with her old friend.

There is so much potential in this plot, and for the first half, it moves along as expected. When the story slowly shifts into a completely different second half, my interest evaporates. The second half pretty much abandons the first half, and I no longer care what happens to these characters. Let the ghosts get them, if the ghosts were really part the second half that is. My lack of engagement might be the fact that the most interesting parts of the first half, like the house being haunted, are pretty much abandoned. And the new story, about betrayal, psychopaths, and lies, is not compelling at all. 

The Writing Retreat would have also been better if I liked the writing more. I found Bartz’s writing style to be irritating and distracting. Her taglines for dialogues, which pretty much all follow the same formula, are amateurish and boring. And the excerpts of Alex’s novel within the novel are so uninteresting that I was really tempted to skip them, even though most are less than two pages long. Instead I read the words with no interest in what they were saying. By the last third of the novel, I just wanted to be done. I did not care about what happened to any of them. I wanted out of Blackbrair estate just as much as the girls did. This not the worst novel that I read this year, but it is close to the bottom of the list.

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Review: Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) by Sly Stone

Posted on October 19, 2023 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

Not many memoirs are generational events. But when Sly Stone, one of the few true musical geniuses of the last century, decides to finally tell hislife story, it can’t be called anything else.

As the front man for the sixties pop-rock-funk band Sly and the Family Stone, a songwriter who created some of the most memorable anthems of the 1960s and 1970s (“Everyday People,” “Family Affair”), and a performer who electrified audiences at Woodstock and elsewhere, Sly Stone’s influence on modern music and culture is indisputable. But as much as people know the music, the man remains a mystery. After a rapid rise to superstardom, Sly spent decades in the grips of addiction.

Now he is ready to relate the ups and downs and ins and outs of his amazing life in his memoir, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) . The book moves from Sly’s early career as a radio DJ and record producer through the dizzying heights of the San Francisco music scene in the late 1960s and into the darker, denser life (and music) of 1970s and 1980s Los Angeles. Set on stages and in mansions, in the company of family and of other celebrities, it’s a story about flawed humanity and flawless artistry.

Written with Ben Greenman, who has also worked on memoirs with George Clinton and Brian Wilson, and in collaboration with Arlene Hirschkowitz, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) is a vivid, gripping, sometimes terrifying, and ultimately affirming tour through Sly’s life and career. Like Sly, it’s honest and playful, sharp and blunt, emotional and analytical, always moving and never standing still.

Review:

Sly Stone has had a storied life, through being one of the best artists in the world to losing it all to being the influence of many new artists making music today. Now in his eightieth year, Sly has released his memoir that follows him from his early years as a DJ to his later years of watching television and staying clean. To tell the story about Sly Stone is to tell the story about genius that is dampened by drug use. 

His music is incredible. His songs are in the soundtrack to the zeitgeist of the 60s and 70s, and even if you do not know the lyrics, you can recognize the melodies. From songs covered by Madonna, the Jackson 5, Joan Osborne, and Fishbone to songs samples by Arrested Development, The Beastie Boys, and Kanye West, it is hard to even consider the scope of the influence that Sly and the Family Stone had on the culture.  

I started listening to Sly and the Family Stone because I listened to countless hours of Red Hot Chili Peppers. I was in high school when their album Bloodsugarsexmajik came out. I listened to it countless times, sometimes three or four times a day. I decided to get another of their albums, and without any research, so I bought Freaky Styley. Produced by George Clinton, a very close friend of Sly Stone, their version of “If You Want Me to Stay” made me seek out the original, which led me to much of Sly and the Family Stone’s catalog. 

I knew little about Sly outside of his music. This memoir Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) shines a light on the genius of Sly Stone, along with the message that he was trying express, and the drugs that muddied it all. When he started Sly and The Family Stone, he made hit after hit, not only for his band but writing songs for others. The more successful he became, the more drugs were readably available. His drugs of choice were cocaine and PCP (angel dust), and doing these separately makes a person unpredictable. Doing them together makes a person unbearable. It is shocking that his story did not end much earlier in tragic death. Many of those around him doing the same things did, like Jimi Hendrix (whom he knew well) and Janis Joplin (whom he did not know well). Unlike most of the artists that he worked with or wanted to work with, he is still alive. He has been sober for four years now, and to think someone was smoking crack and PCP for decades and is finally recovering is worth celebrating. This memoir does not feel like a victory lap for his sobriety as much as the beginning of a new, bright appreciation of someone who had disappeared from the limelight a long time ago. 

The memoir moves fast, goes through some very good times and very tumultuous times, but there is no time when he gets caught up on the good or the bad. It is like he needs to move as quickly as possible through his story because that is how he lived his life. Some of the writing is clever like lyrics or song titles. It shows that his brain will always work in a certain, lyrical, clever way, and even in his later years, this sharpness has not changed. Hopefully this memoir will help Sly Stone come back into the spotlight, at least enough for his to get the recognition that he deserves. 

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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