Society Place: A Ghost Story

Society Place: A Ghost Story

by Andrew David Barker

(Edited) Blurb:

Set during the blazing English summer of 1976, recently widowed Heather Lowes moves into the house where she was supposed to live with her husband.

But now she is alone.

Or at least, she thinks she is...

My Reaction:

Warning: There will be spoilers in this mini review!  

I saw this title recommended somewhere and thought I'd give it a try, since it was available to read for free.  I enjoyed the early part of the book, but further along in the story, I began to lose interest.  I just skimmed the last section to see if it ended as expected. (It did.)

I could nitpick, but the biggest problem by far was the characters' lack of gumption, which was tiring and frankly unbelievable.  If you want me to accept that all these people were living on a haunted street and wouldn't have found some way of leaving, you need to explain that more fully.  I guess we're supposed to assume that they couldn't afford to move or that things weren't that bad until starting in the summer of 1976, but none of that is explained to my satisfaction.  Why did it take so many decades for someone to do the obvious and burn the place down?  Rafferty's own mother suggested as much.  Nearly everyone in this book is cursed (or something).  Most of them seem to just accept that they're cursed—and it's very frustrating to read!  I can't stand books or movies where the characters just give up.  I suppose Poppy doesn't give up, but... Eh, it's too little too late, as far as I'm concerned!

I don't know. Maybe I'm expecting too much, but I stand by my position that the story and motivations (or lack thereof) needed more fleshing out—not to mention a more diligent proofreader to catch the typos.  

Of All Things!

Of All Things!

by Robert Benchley

(Cobbled Together) Blurb:

This is a collection of humorous essays by Robert Benchley, an American humorist who worked as a columnist and film actor. Best known for his many years writing essays and articles for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, and his acclaimed short films, Benchley's style of humor brought him respect and success during his life, from New York City and his peers at the Algonquin Round Table to contemporaries in the burgeoning film industry.

My Reaction:

I don't believe I had ever heard of Robert Benchley before reading this, though I've since learned more about him (such as that he's the grandfather of the author of Jaws) and watched one of his short films (How to Sleep, which is available for free on YouTube).  I think I saw his name on a list of authors to read if you like P.G. Wodehouse, so Donald and I gave this freebie a try between other books. 

It's been months since we finished it, but I think my impression was that it was amusing in spots, but that it felt more dated and less funny than Cuppy's How to Be a Hermit.  Cuppy's book is the more recent of the two—published in 1929, while these essays by Benchley were published in 1921—but the choice of subject matter make the more recent one feel fresher and more relevant (to me) than a mere eight years' difference should make.  

For example, one of these essays relates the process of college football fans gathering to listen to the progress of a game being played at a distant stadium.  But because this was before radio broadcasts of sporting events, the events of the game were communicated via telegraph, with an announcer relaying the play-by-play.  There's a great deal of confusion and mistakes, and the whole thing feels bizarre and far-removed from the modern experience.  (Some of the essays are less severely dated than this, but this one stands out in my memory more than most of the others.)

Anyway, it's been too long since reading it for me to make many more comments.  I'd consider reading more of the author's work. 

The September House

The September House

by Carissa Orlando

Blurb:

A woman is determined to stay in her dream home even after it becomes a haunted nightmare in this compulsively readable, twisty, and layered debut novel.

When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street—for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price—they couldn’t believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and all of them are terrified of something that lurks in the basement. Most people would flee.

Margaret is not most people.

Margaret is staying. It’s her house. But after four years Hal can’t take it anymore, and he leaves abruptly. Now, he’s not returning calls, and their daughter Katherine—who knows nothing about the hauntings—arrives, intent on looking for her missing father. To make things worse, September has just begun, and with every attempt Margaret and Katherine make at finding Hal, the hauntings grow more harrowing, because there are some secrets the house needs to keep.

My Reaction:

I chose to read this knowing only that it was recommended by someone, somewhere, to people who want to read books about haunted houses.  (Or at least that's all I remembered by the time I got around to reading it!)  Right off the bat, I was intrigued. It obviously wasn't your typical horror novel.  In fact, I'd describe this as "cozy horror", because it felt like a mash-up of rather gory horror and cozy mystery.  It wasn't what I expected, based on the cover, but it was interesting.  

Unfortunately, I found the book fell a bit flat for me.  I don't regret reading it, but it wasn't completely satisfying.  I'll discuss why below, because there will be spoilers.  Final verdict: Not my ideal ghost story style, but if you're up for something different, it's definitely that!  

SPOILERS

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Okay.  Reasons I didn't fully enjoy this book:

Katherine is extremely bratty and annoying.  Couldn't stand her, to be honest. 

The cursing really annoyed me.  There was so much of it, and I found it so unnecessary.  

The gore isn't for me.  I dislike gory stuff, though I found that when the gore really ratcheted up, it was more boring than anything else.  Gore in movies and TV shows bothers me more because of all the sounds and, well, the visuals, but when I'm reading and it's just one gory thing after another, I find my mind shuts off and I skip over it.  I don't get anything from it, so why read it?  I'm not the best, these days, at visualizing things from books, anyway—more of a dialogue person, I guess—but when it's something I don't even want to imagine, why bother?  But yeah, that's another strike against the book for me. Not a fan of gore.  Give me eeriness, psychological horror, and a creepy atmosphere instead, please. 

The domestic abuse angle... I don't know, I guess it was there for a reason, but I felt it didn't pay off as much as expected.  

It was completely predictable that Hal would be discovered in the basement. 

The grand finale, final battle, or whatever you want to call it was oddly anticlimactic.  That was the part where I just started skimming—because, okay, I get it, the ghosts are all banding together and tearing Master Vale apart, and it's really disgusting and brutal and... yawn.  Once it's clear where this is all heading, I don't need the play-by-play.  Let's just get to the next part of the story.  So I found it boring, but worse, it just didn't make a lot of sense to me.  If all it took to vanquish Master Vale was for the other ghosts to band together, I don't understand why it took them so long to do it.  It doesn't make sense to me that it was so easy—or if it was so easy, why no-one else had done it already.  Yeah, Margaret was defending her daughter, like she (finally) defended her from Hal.  ...Okay?  I don't know what else to say, but it was not a satisfying ending, and I feel the book didn't give satisfying explanations for the ghosts' stories, either.  Not sure what I wanted, but not this. 

The positives?  
I really liked the housekeeper ghost.  The idea of a ghost who makes you supper and offers friendly chit-chat was oddly appealing to me.

Mars Reborn (Moon People #2)

Mars Reborn (Moon People #2)

by Dale M. Courtney

Blurb:

This Book is based on Earth into a new era of light speed travel thanks to the Powleens from a world called Sybon. And the adventure of 1st Science Officer Commander David Braymer’s journey on board his new ship called the Aurora, ”The Goddess of the Dawn”, Commander Braymer does a successful genesis and Colonization of Mars and resurrects Martians and animals that were frozen 100,000 years with mental powers. With also the war between worlds for control of the Galaxy with Earth and Powleens against the Arcons and the Thracians.

My Reaction:

Donald and I read this together to fill in a gap between books for the 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back podcast.  We read the first one along with the podcast, back in 2022, so when we noticed that the rest of the trilogy was available on Kindle Unlimited, we decided to give it a try.  

This would be another great candidate for the podcast, though I don't know if they'll want to return to the series. Lots of fodder here.  It certainly didn't fail to entertain us, and I wouldn't mind reading the last book in the series, one of these days.  It does take some extra effort to read, what with the lack of quotation marks in a very dialogue-heavy book!  I think the comedy value is worth the trouble, though.

The Sundial

The Sundial

by Shirley Jackson

Blurb:

Before there was Hill House, there was the Halloran mansion of Jackson’s stunningly creepy fourth novel, The Sundial. Aunt Fanny has always been somewhat peculiar. When the Halloran clan gathers at the family home for a funeral, no one is surprised when she wanders off into the secret garden. But then Aunt Fanny returns to report an astonishing vision of an apocalypse from which only the Hallorans and their hangers-on will be spared, and the family finds itself engulfed in growing madness, fear, and violence as they prepare for a terrible new world. For Aunt Fanny's long-dead father has given her the precise date of the final cataclysm!

My Reaction:

Hm.  I think there's a reason this is one of Jackson's "forgotten" novels.  

I started reading this one on the Kindle, but after a while, it was obvious that I was having trouble making progress with it, so I switched to audio format.  That helped me finish it, but didn't really make me like it all that much more.  

When you start reading a "lesser-known" novel by a famous author, it can be difficult to come to it with a completely open mind.  After all, it's a pretty safe bet that it's not going to be a huge crowd-pleaser, else it wouldn't be lesser-known.  Sometimes you may be pleasantly surprised, but in this case, maybe not.  There are some amusing and creepy moments, but I had a feeling early on that the end would be disappointing, and I can't say that I was wrong.  I just feel like shrugging, unfortunately.  

I'm not sure if I'll ever bother with the remaining of the "lesser-knowns" that I've yet to read.  Revisiting one of the stronger novels might be a better bet, if the mood strikes me.