The Unburied

The Unburied
My final entry in the R.I.P. 2006 Autumn Challenge!

Title: The Unburied

Author: Charles Palliser

Copyright: 1999

Length: 402 pages (link to work on LibraryThing )

Summary: The plot centers around an historian visiting an old friend who has contacted him after a lengthy separation. He visits his colleague at Thurchester with the intent of making good use of his time by researching documents in the cathedral library that will set him on the path to an important discovery relevant to his specialty of early British history, specifically the period surrounding King Alfred (he of the famous burned cakes). During the week he is in Thurchester, there is a murder, a suicide, a corpse unearthed from prior centuries, a crumbling cathedral, a crisis at the choir school and a complex set of revelations to be deciphered and grasped. It is this last aspect of The Unburied that has put off many readers; it is indeed a most complex literary construction. This is not a book that can be skimmed rapidly. As one reviewer put it at LibraryThing, "This isn't a beach read." There are two narratives (the outer frame by a Mr. Barthelm and the lengthier internal story told by Dr. Courtine) and there are several manuscripts and stories (the fragmented historical manuscript, the fairy tale, and the completed manuscript that provides the final explanation of The Thurchester Mystery.) Each narrative unfolds as a segment of another and the result (as many unwary readers found) is a gothic novel that requires extended attention if one is to grasp both the resolution and the author's point.

Eerie/Creepy Quotient: This is a gothic novel, not a ghost story. It is on the creepy side, but it is not perhaps conventionally scary (a 3.75 out of 5 on the eerie/creepy scale). There are tragedies and shadowy encounters, but in the final analysis, this is an elegant historical/psychological mystery. One could read this in a house alone without fear of nightmares, but I must say that it might not be a pleasant experience. One would ultimately grasp the final resolution and be somewhat distressed/sickened. As modern Gothic novels go, this one is very well-done.Genre: Definitely a Gothic novel. Definitely adult reading. This one doesn't belong in your average high school library (not that most of them can afford to buy much in the way of books these days).

Extract: Go here for the extract. Do bear in mind that this is *not* the first chapter of the book as the NYTimes' site suggests. It is actually the first chapter within the Courtine narrative. That's relevant when you actually begin the book, because you may assume (as I did) that the editor's foreword is just that. A foreword (as in prefatory material) and not part of the novel's action.

Also Relevant: There were mixed reviews on this book. The New York Times panned it badly although the book showed up on the New York Times bestsellers list published the week following the review. Various other readers, posting well after its initial publication, had both good and bad reactions to the novel. As near as I can gauge it, the general consensus is praise for the construction of the novel but unhappiness with the final resolution. I think I'd agree. I'm not sorry I read it, but neither am I sure that it would be a suitable selection for a general book group. Say that it has niche appeal, and you've probably captured it.

The book's complexity makes it challenging, but a careful pacing of one's reading allows the author to unfold his message which is essentially that perception influences internal and external assignment of guilt. (That's certainly a valid point, but not perhaps news to a modern audience used to discussions of profiling in criminal investigations. This may be why some readers become impatient with his story-telling style.) Palliser makes his point by allowing his characters to focus on and unfold historical events, tracing criss-crossing versions of those events. I do think The Unburied suffers from a lack of distinction between the voices of those attempting to unravel the various threads of mystery. To my ear, all of the voices sounded just a little too like one another. One could barely keep them straight even while one was struggling to remember who was who among the various names (Gazzard vs. Grimlake; Speldrick vs Sisterson). That was indeed aggravating, which is why (I suppose) the publisher provided a list of the various characters at the end of the text. [One final warning: if you dislike tales involving child abuse, you should *definitely* avoid this one.]

As with all Gothic literature, various forms of uncertainty thread through this book. Such uncertainty reflects the fears that accompany an internal recognition that things don't always happen as planned. Actions have unintended consequences which teaches us to watch and proceed with caution. The message for at least one of the characters in The Unburied is that such caution may preclude us from taking the necessary actions to free ourselves from doubt.

As modern renditions of Gothic novels go, I preferred Grange House to this selection. The convoluted narrative is present in both as is the voice of an earlier age, but Blake seems to have the knack of moving her story along at just that slightly faster pace that satisfies the modern reader's need to move along quickly before a daily obligation arises and eliminates reading time.

By the way, I actually learned a new word from this book - pulpitum. Look it up. St. Peter's Cathedral in Exeter (UK) apparently has a very nice one.

The War of the Worlds

The War of the Worlds
Another entry in the Readers Imbibing Peril (R.I.P.) Autumn Challenge

Title: The War of the Worlds (full text at Project Gutenberg).

Author: H.G. Wells (brief biography)

Copyright: 1898 (ie. this work is in the public domain); The Penguin print edition that I used was copyright 2005 (See work on Library Thing ).

Length: 173 pages, excluding introduction, preface, and footnotes.

Summary: An academic gentleman experiences the invasion of his safe, secure existence by Martians who view the local population as a food source rather than as any equal entity with whom they might negotiate. The academic interacts with a curate and with an artilleryman, each of whom has a unique perspective on how to manage and/or survive the unforeseen circumstances. Ultimately, Man survives but with a changed sense of his position in the universe. This is a good read; it fits within the context of the RIP criteria on the basis of the atmospheric, melancholic series of destructive events. Man as a race does not perform with overmuch nobility in this crisis. Naturally, as Englishmen, the narrator and his brother maintain a certain sense of duty and maintain a certain level of responsibility for those about them. But the internal check on civilized behavior slips as the narrator himself admits when it comes to the question of basic survival or death.

Eerie/Creepy Quotient: Perhaps a 3.5 or even just a 3. Not overly scary in the sense of monsters in the night, but there's a definite sense of suspense and fear present in the narration. Certainly, there's no reason *not* to read this book in a house alone at night. Our modern sensibilities are less apt to believe in the Martian invasion than in the ghost of some previous tenant wringing his hands over his wealth left behind. But the writing is very good and pacing is consistent. There is some sense of character granted to the narrator although the curate and the artilleryman are clearly intended to represent schools of thought or archetypes rather than being fleshed out as recognizable individuals. The fear I suppose that is inherent to this book is the fear that comes with recognition of one's own vulnerability rather than fear of any BEM (bug-eyed-monster). Or for that matter, the fear that arises at the idea of war coming to one's familiar area. Eerie/Creepy aren't appropriate words to apply here; Uneasy might be.

Genre: Speculative Fiction -- Appropriate to 10-13 year olds and older could benefit from some of the discussions that emerge here with regard to human response to crisis.

Extract (from Book 1, Chapter 16):

There were sad, haggard women tramping by, well dressed, with children that cried and stumbled, their dainty clothes smothered in dust, their weary faces smeared with tears. With many of these came men, sometimes helpful, sometimes lowering and savage. Fighting side by side with them pushed some weary street outcast in faded black rags, wide-eyed, loud-voiced, and foul-mouthed. There were sturdy workmen thrusting their way along, wretched, unkempt men, clothed like clerks or shopmen, struggling spasmodically; a wounded soldier my brother noticed, men dressed in the clothes of railway porters, one wretched creature in a nightshirt with a coat thrown over it.

But varied as its composition was, certain things all that host had in common. There were fear and pain on their faces, and fear behind them. A tumult up the road, a quarrel for a place in a waggon, sent the whole host of them quickening their pace; even a man so scared and broken that his knees bent under him was galvanised for a moment into renewed activity. The heat and dust had already been at work upon this multitude. Their skins were dry, their lips black and cracked. They were all thirsty, weary, and footsore. And amid the various cries one heard disputes, reproaches, groans of weariness and fatigue; the voices of most of them were hoarse and weak. Through it all ran a refrain:

“Way! Way! The Martians are coming!”

Also Relevant: This is an interesting read on a number of levels. For one thing, just as there are numerous attempts to dramatize for screen The Island of Dr. Moreau, there have been similar attempts at dramatization of The War of the Worlds. There was the admittedly successful radio show by Orson Welles which created such havoc in 1938. (For more information, go here.) One of the amusing things I encountered when browsing this book initially was the shock of recollection that the story was actually set in England -- in Woking rather than in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Somehow internally, I had classified War of the Worlds as a twentieth century American experience, rather than a nineteenth-century British novel despite my knowledge of Wells and his timeframe. At the same time, even before reading the original novel, I had never thought that any of the movies of War of the Worlds were very good. The movies present The War of the Worlds as a story about Bug-Eyed-Monsters and our vulnerability in the face of greater technological weapons than our own.

I think that Wells was writing here to make a different point about an immediate issue in his time and culture (ie. integration of Darwinist thought into the popular consciousness). He uses the invasion by more advanced creatures as a trigger device for introducing a new idea to his fellow Victorians and as a philosophical suggestion as to how they might go on once the idea had been fully integrated. Rather than being the apex of God's creation, the invasion by the Martians suggests that man is neither at the top of the biological family nor at the bottom. His lack of characterization in portraying the curate and the artilleryman is to suggest that the right response is neither to surrender to despair (as the curate does) nor to indulge one's baser instincts (as he suggests when he accuses the artilleryman of gluttony). There is the middle ground found by the narrator in the end of the story which is neither surrender nor a ratlike survival. Instead Wells offers the recognition that we can only progress from where we are as creatures, being aware that there are forces in nature which take over and we must submit to the limits of our own knowledge of those forces and consequent lack of control. He was examining that idea for strength as one might test a bridge to see if it can hold one's weight.

Wells presents an England in chaos due to the arrival of the Martians. But in the chapter, The Man on Putney Hill, he reasserts the place of a human being. Hubris is dangerous as there are those forces in nature that we cannot and may never control, but cowering in fear is equally unacceptable. Humankind should neither be arrogant nor frightened by their place in nature -- just recognize that such is the situation and act accordingly.

Grange House

Grange House
Another entry in the Readers Imbibing Peril (R.I.P.) Autumn Challenge

Title: Grange House

Author: Sarah Blake (interview/article from December 2004 issue of the The American Online)

Copyright: 2000

Length: 378 pages ( link to the work on LibraryThing )

Genre: Gothic Fiction, Women's Fiction

Summary: Maisie Thomas visits the island with her loving parents every summer. At seventeen, she is just beginning to sense the constraints placed on her in 1896 in a world where men and women have specific roles. This is a coming-of-age story, full of ambiguities and misunderstandings. Essentially, the question is will Maisie make the same mistakes as those who have gone before?

Eerie/Creepy Quotion: To borrow the phrase of M.R. James, this story is able to provide a delicious sense of unease in the reader, but it is not primarily either a ghost or horror story. It is in fact a true gothic novel (reminiscent in some ways of Jane Eyre without any of the same plot points) and so very compelling and well-written that one has to award it a 4 out of 5 on the eerie scale. I was most pleased to see that it could stand up to a second reading.

Extract:

There was a drop of wind suddenly, as though the world rushed away before turning to deliver one last mighty smack -- and just as the doctor and Nell Grange appeared in sight of the house, the first great towering flame shot straight up through the roof and into the sky. Nell screamed and threw herself down from the cart, running up the lawn. But another flame burst from the third-story windows, and the woman was pushed back from the house by the wave of heat. "Susannah!" Nell shouted, "Susannah!" The roar of the wind and fire was her only answer. [pg. 73]

Also Relevant: There are multiple triangles in this story -- tension between lovers, families, women. There are multiple narratives in this story -- letters, diaries, oral reminiscences -- presenting multiple points of view, each pov needing to be fitted into the life puzzle that Maisie Thomas is trying to work out. Of course, no one is quite as they seem. Families are ripped to pieces yet remain painfully chained. Is there madness in the household? Is there murder? The pace of the storytelling is slow; the reader, however, would be well-advised not to speed ahead. The novel is carefully constructed, deliberately furtive, and the author's meaning is uncovered little by little in each lengthy chapter. The point of the novel is Maisie's own navigation in discovering who she really is and what she wants of life. Just as in real life, that process unfolds in fits and spurts of action with time for reflection in between. It's superb writing.

Gothic Tales

Gothic Tales
An Entry for the R.I.P. (Readers Imbibing Peril) Reading Challenge

Title: Gothic Tales

Author: Elizabeth Gaskell (link to bio at Wikipedia)

Copyright: The nine short stories and novellas in this collection were published over the course of ten years, 1851 - 1861. The stories themselves are in public domain and available on the Web (see The Gaskell Web and Project Gutenberg); for the purposes of R.I.P., I used the Penguin edition of Gothic Tales (ISBN:0-140-43741-X -- link to Library Thing for this work).

Length: The Penguin edition (including Introduction and Notes by Laura Kranzler) is 367 pages.

Genre: Short stories, novellas

Summary: This collection ranges in scope between light and humorous works of the fantastic to somber, deeply Gothic tales of hauntings and misery. At the light end of the spectrum are tales such as Disappearances and Curious, if True while the darker end of the spectrum includes The Poor Clare and The Doom of the Gryffiths. As might be expected from a nineteenth-century novelist, the pacing is a bit slow in some of the stories but as her craft matured, Gaskell used both language and pacing to build excellent moods of suspense in these stories. Other stories appearing in this collection include: The Old Nurse's Story, Lois the Witch, The Squire's Story, The Crooked Branch and The Grey Woman.

Eerie/Creepy Quotient: The author of Cranford and North and South gets a 2.5 or a 3.0 (out of a total of 5.0) on the Eerie/Creepy Quotient. If you've read any of Elizabeth Gaskell's novels, you might agree with me that she seems far too reliable an observer of her time period to indulge in melodrama and melancholy to the extent required in a terrifying ghost story. Her stories are still compelling (I found Doom of the Griffiths to be particularly readable) but not particularly spooky. One could read this collection in a house alone at midnight and not be fearful of going up the dark stairs to bed.

Extract: (From The Doom of the Griffiths )

It was the time of day when a change in the aspect of the weather so frequently takes place, and the little pool was no longer the reflection of a blue and sunny sky; it sent back the dark and slaty clouds above; and, every now and then, a rough gust shook the painted autumn leaves from their branches, and all other music was lost in the sound of the wild winds piping down from the moorlands, which lay up and beyond the clefts in the mountain-side. Presently the rain came on and beat down in torrents.

But Owen heeded it not. He sat on the dank ground, his face buried in his hands, and his whole strength, physical and mental, employed in quelling the rush of blood which rose and boiled and gurgled in his brain, as if it would madden him.

The phantom of his dead child rose ever before him, and seemed to cry aloud for vengeance. And, when the poor young man thought upon the victim whom he required in his wild longing for revenge, he shuddered, for it was his father!

Also Relevant: Phantom children, spectres, death, revenge and anguish are all present in these stories. The extract above is exemplary of the Gothic tone of most of the stories. As mentioned above, two of the stories have humorous overtones. I could easily see use of Curious if True in a classroom unit on fairy tales and the fantastic. Specifically, the style in that story reminded me very much of the tone of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell even as I tried to pick out notable fictional characters like Puss in Boots and Cinderella. Just as a caveat, it really did help to have the footnotes to explain many of the French-language phrases and references in that particular story. Disappearances comes close to mocking its own small set of anecdotal incidents as it evinces relief at the inception of London's detective force. In retrospect, I would suggest that is is Gaskell's gift at expressing describing the end results of human cruelty and the vagaries of circumstance that makes all of the stories in this collection memorable. At the same time, it is not plot that is key in this collection -- it is the melancholy tone that she uses in telling of human behavior that makes the collection less melodramatic than sad.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

The Island of Dr. Moreau

An Entry for the Readers Imbibing Peril (R.I.P.) Reading Challenge

Title: The Island of Dr. Moreau (Project Gutenberg link)

Author: H.G. Wells (biography of H.G. Wells in Wikipedia)

Copyright: Originally published in 1896 (ie. this work is in the public domain); I read the text using the Bantam Classic Reissue Edition 2005 (link to LibraryThing entry for this work)

Length: 140 pages

Genre: Speculative Fiction

Summary: An Englishman by the name of Edward Prendick is shipwrecked and subsequently rescued by a passing freighter at the behest of another Englishman, Montgomery. At that point in the voyage where Montgomery is leaving the freighter with crates of wild animals to return home, Prendick is also thrown off the ship by the drunkard captain of the vessel. Thus thrown again upon the mercy of Montgomery and his companion, Dr. Moreau, Prendick comes ashore with them on a remote island inhabited by creatures that Prendick cannot quite identify. Reckless behavior draws him and the two other human inhabitants into horrific confrontations with these creatures, culminating in disaster.

Eerie/Creepy Quotient: The nineteenth century pacing, language and sentence structure may have boosted the score on this title. After I'd finished reading it, elements of the story appeared in my nightmare later when I slept. I give it a 5 out of 5 on the Eerie/Creepy scale -- not appropriate reading for small children or those prone to bad dreams. I found it to be very effective story-telling.

Extract (Chapter 9, occurring in the first third of the book):

...Then I thought that the man I had just seen had been clothed in bluish cloth, had not been naked as a savage would have been; and I tried to persuade myself from that fact that he was after all probably a peaceful character, that the dull ferocity of his countenance belied him.

Yet I was greatly disturbed at the apparition. I walked to the left along the slope, turning my head about and peering this way and that among the straight stems of the trees. Why should a man go on all-fours and drink with his lips? Presently I heard an animal wailing again, and taking it to be the puma, I turned about and walked in a direction diametrically opposite to the sound. This led me down to the stream, across which I stepped and pushed my way up through the undergrowth beyond...

...The vague dread that had been in my mind since I had seen the inhuman face of the man at the stream grew distincter as I stood there. I began to realise the hardihood of my expedition among these unknown people. The thicket about me became altered to my imagination. Every shadow became something more than a shadow,--became an ambush; every rustle became a threat. Invisible things seemed watching me. I resolved to go back to the enclosure on the beach. I suddenly turned away and thrust myself violently, possibly even frantically, through the bushes, anxious to get a clear space about me again...

Also Relevant:

I couldn't help but think of Frankenstein as I read this book. It wasn't due to the theme of science-gone-awry found in both, however. The trigger was the fondness movie makers have for the two titles. Search IMDB for either Frankenstein or Island of Dr. Moreau and there are multiple versions. But they generally focus on the science-gone-awry element and the action sequences; the films are scripted and produced for an audience of science fiction and horror fans. Consequently you get a rather shallow treatment of the book's thrust.

For me, science-gone-awry was the least important element of Moreau. In fact, the book left me in a bit of a blue funk. Wells seemed to me to be struggling to present his fears and hesitations about the likelihood of man's developmental progress, even in the face of increased scientific understanding. I am quite sure that he wasn't warning us against the wickedness of vivisection but of the tendency to forget that we humans are animals as well and may well have instincts that we will never be able to entirely shed. The Island of Dr. Moreau is a study of the tension that exists between our biological nature and the mental constructs that we've gradually adopted over the course of time. We give ourselves great pats on the back for those constructs as indicative of man's development and superiority. But Wells pauses to ask, "How advanced are we?. Won't there always be some part of our animal nature that holds us back from being truly civilized? Won't there always be a danger that we under provocation break out of our civilized indoctrinated behaviors?". Wells is something of a pessimist.

I'm wonder how successful the use of this title in a classroom might be. I can see using the text as a point of departure for discussions of ethics, religious thought and/or philosophy. It also has the virtue of being a very short book. But I suspect that the science in the text is so very dated and the pacing of the storytelling so much slower than today's youth are accustomed to, that the use of the work may decline despite the validity of Wells' point.