"At Abdul Ali's Grave"

"At Abdul Ali's Grave"
by E.F. Benson


Synopsis:
A couple of friends staying in Egypt decide to test the accuracy of one of their young servant's "visions", which leads them to a moonlit graveyard...


My Reaction:
This is the first short story in this horror "megapack".  I think I've read one of his short stories before, but can't at the moment recall which it was...  I hope they get better, because this one left something to be desired.  Not awful, but not really great, either.  Not particularly creepy, despite the subject matter. 

I am interested to learn that Benson had connections to Egypt and was even involved in an excavation and the mapping of a temple.  First-hand experience, so he should know what he's talking about, as far as settings and atmosphere go.  Though I'm not uncommonly interested in ancient Egypt or its artifacts, myself, I am interested in the fact that others were so interested in it.  (g)  I love the periods in history during which the world was fascinated by Egypt and archaeology. 


Tidbits (with possible SPOILERS):
--  "At sunset the ride into the desert thick with the scent of warm barren sand, which smells like nothing else in the world, for it smells of nothing at all."

-- "Abdul, it is to be feared, was not a man of stereotyped respectability; though full of years and riches, he enjoyed not great reputation for honour.  He drank wine whenever he could get it, he ate food during the days of Ramadan, scornful of the fact, when his appetite desired it, he was supposed to have the evil eye, and in his last moments he was attended to by the notorious Achmet, who is well known here to be practised in Black Magic..."

--  "Machmout's method of unloosing the forces of White Magic is simple, being the ink-mirror known by name to many..."  Well, not known by name to me.  I found it funny that, because ink was in such short supply, Machmout had to make do with a circle of black "American cloth".  That term keeps cropping up!  It's supposed to be a "sturdy enameled cloth", so I guess it might have a certain sheen to it. 

--  Khamseen -- a hot, dry, sandy wind coming from the south.

--  "He was entirely naked, and his brown skin glistened with the dews of exertion in the moonlight."  Maybe he thought he'd keep his cloths clean, that way, but yuck... And "dews of exertion"!  Maybe I should start calling it that, too...  "Whew!  All that weed-pulling has really worked up some dews of exertion!  Better have a shower..."

--  The image of a sweaty naked man performing some sort of supernatural mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a shrouded dead body... Gross.

--  Afrit -- also "Ifrit"-- "infernal Jinn". 

--  The description of the Black Magic creature's fangs reminded me of a vampire.   It never made an appearance in the story, though...

Heavy Weather

Heavy Weather
by P.G. Wodehouse


(Edited Version of One Publisher's) Blurb:

Lord Tilbury's blood pressure is rocketing skywards. The Hon. Galahad Threepwood's decision not to publish his scandalous reminiscences will lose him a small fortune. But he's one of the bulldog breed who don't readily admit defeat.

Monty Bodkin, abruptly given the boot by Lord Tilbury, has taken up his secretarial duties at Blandings Castle, home of Lord Emsworth and his adored pig, Empress of Blandings. There, it seems the publication - or otherwise - of the memoirs is becoming a "cause celebre".

Three camps are forming: those who want the book published, those who want it suppressed and those who have been sent to steal it.  The fate of the Empress and two romances hang in the balance!

My Reaction:
(This was a "shared read" with Donald-- as, indeed, is usually the case when I'm reading P.G. Wodehouse.  He's definitely one of "our" authors.)

It was very good!  Plenty of laughs!  No boring golf or cricket (that I can recall).  At this point, I think I like the Blandings crew just as much-- or very nearly as much-- as the characters that people the world of Jeeves & Wooster. 

This book picks up right after (and I do mean right after) the end of Summer Lightning.  It's been months since we read that one, but I think we remembered enough that we didn't miss anything.  Loved it.

I have nothing more to say.  Just, if you haven't given P.G. Wodehouse a try before, he's worth your time.  Especially if you like snappy dialogue.  Particularly if you are in the mood to leave all your troubles behind and spend a few hours in the rosy-tinted past.  Sit back and relax!  Nothing really bad can happen in this happy, golden world, and if you possess a funny bone (some don't!), it will be tickled-- repeatedly. 

The Devil in the White City

The Devil in the White City
by Erik Larson


Publisher's Blurb:

Erik Larson—author of #1 bestseller IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS—intertwines the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.

My Reaction:
I tend not to read much nonfiction (excluding the news, how-to books, and the like).  I'm afraid I view nonfiction with the suspicion that it will be boring-- or dense-- or depressing-- or possibly all three.  While I certainly didn't find (much) of this book to be an edge-of-my-seat page-turner, it has proven that nonfiction needn't be dull.

Now, at times, I did feel a bit bogged down in detail.  The detail was interesting-- but (on some topics, at least) there was so much of it!  ("Another tangent?")  Also, it sometimes felt as though the author was tantalizing his reader with the merest tidbits of the crime side of the book in between huge helpings of the tamer fair fare. (*pun-induced smirk*)  I realize that unless he meandered pointlessly, there was only so much of that story to tell, so he had to ration it-- (plus, he was trying to stick to a consistent timeline between the "progress" of the fair and the serial killer)-- but I will confess to an exasperated sigh or two.

Ultimately, though the book was entertaining-- and educational, too! (g)-- I was ready for it to be over, by the end.  I'll try to work a little non-fiction into my reading, but I don't expect it will ever take the place of fiction for me. 


Random Specifics (with SPOILERs):
-- "'The eyes are very big and wide open,' a physician named John L. Capen later observed.  'They are blue.  Great murderers, like great men in other walks of activity, have blue eyes.'"  Hah!  I wonder what color eyes Dr. Capen himself might have had...(Let me guess...)

--  With a name like "Herman Webster Mudgett", no wonder he preferred to go by an alias.  (I'm sorry, but "Mudgett"?  ...I have now incurred the wrath of Mudgetts everywhere.  Oh well.)

--  Rudyard Kipling on Chicago:  "Having seen it, I desire never to see it again.  It is inhabited by savages."

-- Tangent:  My hometown (or, well, the city nearest to the rural community where I grew up) in southernmost Alabama was founded in 1905 by the Southern Plantation Corporation of Chicago.

--  "Minneapolis was small, somnolent, and full of Swedish and Norwegian farmers as charming as cornstalks."  What?  Farmers can't be charming?  Clearly the author has never read the Little House books.

--  And then this:  "In Minneapolis there had been only silence and the inevitable clumsy petitions of potato-fingered men looking for someone, anyone, to share the agony of their days."  Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!  "Agony of their days"?  Good grief!  Getting a little overwrought there, aren't you, Larson?  And "potato-fingered"!  Poor Minnesotan farmers! 

--  "At first alienists described this condition as 'moral insanity' and those who exhibited the disorder as 'moral imbeciles.'  They later adopted the term 'psychopath,' used in the lay press as early as 1885 in William Stead's Pall Mall Gazette, which described it as a 'new malady' and stated, 'Beside his own person and his own interests, nothing is sacred to the psychopath.'"

-- Regarding the above:  I've heard/read some claims that serial killers are a relatively modern phenomenon, but... surely that can't be true.  I don't think human nature has changed-- and neither do I believe that it's anything new that some human beings lack a conscience (or somehow choose to ignore what little they have).  Possibly there could be fluctuations in their prevalence throughout history, but it seems more likely that they simply escaped notice or were not recorded.

--  "Why anyone would even want a soundproof vault was a question that apparently did not occur to him."  Yes, so many of Holmes' particular "activities" would (I hope) be nearly impossible, today.  ...At least, I think people would be more suspicious, these days... and certainly our law enforcement is better at keeping track of criminals and criminal behavior.  (Which is good... But at the same time, it's sad that such suspicion and efficiency is necessary...)

-- "Beyond the fairgrounds' new fence, turmoil and grief engulfed Chicago.  Union leaders threatened to organize unions worldwide to oppose the fair.  The Inland Architect, a prominent Chicago journal, reported: 'That un-American institution, the trades union, has developed its un-American principle of curtailing or abolishing the personal freedom of the individual in a new direction, that of seeking, as far as possible, to cripple the World's Fair.'"  Are we "supposed" to sympathize with the union leaders, here?  Because... while I don't want to see people working in unsafe conditions for unreasonably poor pay, I have to agree that unions often do "curtail or abolish the personal freedom of the individual"-- and their leaders can be just as corrupt and callous as the worst of the demonized Boss-Men.  But whatever.  Go on blindly worshiping the Union, guys...

--  "...Dr. Cigrand, the dentist, who saw so little joy from day to day as he reduced grown men of proven courage to tears."  Good grief...  Was dentistry really so much worse back then?

--  The side story of the failed attempt to pipe water from Waukesha into the fairgrounds?  Very interesting!  "Hygeia secured rights to lay its pipe from its springhouse in Waukesha through the village itself but failed to anticipate the intensity of the opposition from citizens who feared the pipeline would disfigure their landscape and drain their famous springs."  So Hygeia planned to send a special train with supplies to Waukesha and dig the pipeline at night, hoping to escape notice until it was too late for anyone to do anything about it.  Word got out, though, and as the train pulled into the station, "someone rang the village firebell, and soon a large force of men armed with clubs, pistols, and shotguns converged on the train.  Two fire engines arrived hissing steam, their crews ready to blast the pipelayers with water.  One village leader told McElroy that if he went ahead with his plan, he would not leave town alive.  Soon another thousand or so townspeople joined the small army at the station.  One group of men dragged a cannon from the town hall and trained it on Hygeia's bottling plant.  After a brief standoff, McElroy and the pipelayers went back to Chicago."  (In the end, they bought a spring in a town twelve miles away from Waukesha and piped water from that, instead.)

-- While looking up the Waukesha incident online just now, I found this story from 2010.  Apparently, Waukesha's been having water problems of their own, in recent years. There is radium in the well water on which they depend (or depended-- no idea if the issue's been resolved in the past few years...).  Building a treatment plant would be very expensive, so one of the most promising options seemed to be... to pipe in water from Lake Michigan. 

--  The Pledge of Allegiance was composed in honor of the dedication of the fair.

--  The first Ferris wheel debuted at the fair.  It was designed in response to a plea for some American engineering marvel that could top France's Eiffel Tower. 

--  That little tune that everyone associates with belly-dancers and snake-charmers-- and that schoolchildren use when singing, "There's a place in France..."-- was composed on the spur of the moment to accompany a belly-dance demonstration/preview of the type of entertainment the fair had to offer.

--  "McCallister in a column in the New York World advised 'it is not quantity but quality that the society people here want.  Hospitality which includes the whole human race is not desirable.'"  Sounds like such a delightful person.

--  "Hull House had become a bastion of progressive thought inhabited by strong-willed young women, 'interspersed,' as one visitor put it, 'with earnest-faced, self-subordinating and mild-mannered men who slide from room to room unapologetically."

--  "They saw the first moving pictures on Edison's Kinestoscope, and they watched, stunned, as lightning chattered from Nikola Tesla's body.  They saw even more ungodly things-- the first zipper; the first-ever all-electric kitchen, which included an automatic dishwasher; and a box purporting to contain everything a cook would need to make pancakes, under the brand name Aunt Jemima's.  They sampled a new, oddly flavored gum called Juicy Fruit, and caramel-coated popcorn called Cracker Jack.  A new cereal, Shredded Wheat, seemed unlikely to succeed-- 'shredded doormat,' some called it-- but a new beer did well, winning the exposition's top beer award.  Forever afterward, its brewer called it Pabst Blue Ribbon.  Visitors also encountered the latest and arguably most important organizational invention of the century, the vertical file, created by Melvil Dewey, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System."

-- "Prune makers sent along a full-scale knight on horseback sculpted out of prunes."  Ah, to have been alive then and there to see it!  A full-scale knight-- on horseback!-- sculpted out of prunes!  How glorious it must have been!  (Why a knight?  Not sure what the subject matter should have been, though, so maybe a better question is-- why not?!)

--  "Buffalo Bill promptly declared Waif's Day at the Wild West and offered any kid in Chicago a free train ticket, free admission to the show, and free access to the whole Wild West encampment, plus all the candy and ice cream the children could eat.  Fifteen thousand showed up."

--  "...the earliest visitors to Jackson Park saw immediately that the fair's greatest power lay in the strange gravity of the buildings themselves.  ...  Some visitors found themselves so moved by the Court of Honor that immediately upon entering they began to weep."  It's difficult to imagine...  What would it take to move a modern person to tears, with architecture alone?

--  "Leaves hung in the stillness like hands of the newly dead."  Um, what?  Setting a mood, I guess, but it seemed to come out of nowhere.

--  (Warning:  This section is gruesome...)  The authorities had people identify the remains of loved ones by teeth alone, in some cases.  Of course I've heard of bodies being identified by dental records-- and people being asked to look at the face of a corpse to confirm an identity--  but this is the first time I've come across the expectation that a person would remember someone else's teeth well enough to give a positive ID.  I honestly don't know if I'd be able to recognize even my closest family by their teeth alone-- but maybe it's easier than I think, because Mrs. Pitezel "recognized Alice's teeth immediately".  (Maybe teeth were more easily recognizable in the past, before modern dentistry and orthodontics...)

--  "'We do know that Holmes advertised his "hotel" as a suitable lodging for visitors to the world's fair; that no fewer than fifty persons, reported to the police as missing, were traced to the Castle; and that there their trail ended.'"

--  "Early in the twentieth century the fair became a source of heated debate among architects.  Critics claimed the fair extinguished the Chicago School of architecture, an indigenous vernacular, and replaced it with a renewed devotion to obsolete classical styles."  Oh, boo hoo.  (Yeah, not the biggest fan of "modern" architecture, in general.  I think a lot of it's UGLY.  Frank Lloyd Wright?  Overrated.)

--  Burnham's obsession with not being "accepted" at Yale and Harvard leaves me completely unmoved.  "His past failure to gain admission to both universities-- the denial of his 'right beginning'-- had haunted him throughout his life.  Even years after receiving the awards, as he lobbied Harvard to grant provisional admission to his son Daniel, whose own performance on the entry exams was far from stellar, Burnham wrote, 'He needs to know that he is a winner, and, as soon as he does, he will show his real quality, as I have been able to do.  It is the keenest regret of my life that someone did not follow me up at Cambridge... and let the authorities know what I could do.'"  Oh, barf.  (Sorry, but... yuck.)  Burnham, your son needed to know within himself that he was "a winner".  (Though the term triggers a gag reflex for me... There are better ways of phrasing it.)  No acceptance from any school-- however self-important-- is going to make up for that lack. 

-- "The execution intensified Darrow's already deep hatred of the death penalty. 'I am sorry for all fathers and all mothers,' he said, years later, during his defense of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, accused of killing a Chicago boy for the thrill of it. 'The mother who looks into the blue eyes of her little babe cannot help musing over the end of the child, whether it will be crowned with the greatest promises which her mind can image or whether he may meet death upon the scaffold.'"   Hm.  And what about the mother who learns that her child has met his end tragically and prematurely-- needlessly-- at the hands of a pitiless murderer?  Go ahead and sniffle over a convicted murderer's "death upon the scaffold".  My tears are reserved for their victims. 

...and on that dark note... I'm off to decide what to read next.

Starlight

Starlight
by Stella Gibbons

Blurb:

Gladys and Annie Barnes are impoverished sisters who have seen better times. They live in a modest cottage in the backstreets of Highgate with Mr Fisher, a mild but eccentric old man living secretively in the attic above them. Their quiet lives are thrown into confusion when a new landlord takes over, a dreaded and unscrupulous 'rackman'. He installs his wife in part of the cottages in the hope that there she will recover from an unspecified malady. With a mounting sense of fear, Gladys and Annie become convinced she is possessed by an evil spirit...

My Reaction:
This is a very strange book, difficult to describe or categorize-- humor rubbing shoulders with horror.  Except for a few passages, it was not a page-turner for me, but though it took me a while to work my way through it, I found it intriguing.  I wouldn't recommend this book to just anyone, as I think it would bore most-- also, I think I am unlikely to want to reread it (in the near future? ever?)-- but I'm glad I've read it once.  This is an interesting story about an unusual collection of characters.  The characters are the stars of the show.


Random Specifics (with SPOILERS):
-- Though I've never read the author's most famous work (Cold Comfort Farm), I've seen a film adaptation, and based on that, it's safe to say that this is a less biting work.  There is humor, but it is not stringent-- and we have multifaceted, realistic characters instead of caricatures. 

--  "rackman"... It must have been contemporary slang, something like a "racket" man, I guess.  Obviously a rackman was a shady character involved in possibly criminal (and definitely unsavory) dealings.

--  I found it difficult to picture precisely the layout of Rose Cottage/Lily Cottage.  I've got something in my mind's eye, but I'm not sure how accurate it is.  I guess it was just a three-story house in which rooms (or attics) are available for rent, with a common entry-room (the kitchen? I couldn't ever really place the kitchen...) and staircase. 

--  I'm not sure where the title came from.  It (and the Vintage Classics cover) attracted me, but neither seem to have much to do with the book. (g)  There did seem to be many scenes set at night, though...

--  "By mutual though silent consent, they said no more about the threat [of being turned out on the streets]; awful, to them, as that of any looming hydrogen holocaust."  When is this set?  I know it's well after WWII.  I think it works out to about the same time that it was published (which was 1967). 

--  At one point, there is a reference to a time "before the 1914 war", which led me to wonder if the British don't/didn't call them "World War I" and "World War II"-- and at what point Americans commonly gave them those names.  Obviously before WWII, they wouldn't have called it "WWI".  (I think "the Great War" was the usual name for it.)  ...Anyway, nothing to do with the story-- just something I wondered about...

--  "At Belsize House, she had always been called Barnes.  Housemaid.  Not tall enough for a parlourmaid."  Ha!  I knew that height was important for some male servants (footmen? butlers?), but this is the first I've heard of height being a factor for maids.  Such a strange system!

--  "...the exhausting business of commercialized Christmas only three weeks away..."  So tell me-- have people always lamented the "commercialization" of Christmas?  One begins to wonder...

--  "For she had, as usual, and certainly with more reason than she would have had twenty years ago, been anticipating murder."  ...Yes, well, this was the 1960s, so is it even more reasonable to anticipate murder, today?  Depends on where you live, what you do, and when you do it, of course...

--  "Mrs. Corbett, as was usual with Mrs. Corbett, had noticed nothing."

--  "'You always tempt us.  I put on six ounces last week.  Oh well-- perhaps just this once.'  'Six ounces!  You'll have to "watch out", as they say.'  'I don't know why you all bother about it, fussing over ounces.  Harry likes me well-covered.'  Three of the old women said nothing.  The one they called Madge was the last of them whose husband was alive, and she was full of triumph because of the simple fact.  Every incident, every detail concerned with her hair-dressing, her clothes, her make-up, was referred to it."

-- "bestend-of-neck"-- Apparently, it's a cut of meat.

--  "Gladys minced up the remains of the previous day's bestend-of-neck (New Zealand) in the clumsy forty-year-old mincer, and, with the addition of two potatoes, well salted and mashed with half a gill of milk left from their breakfast, produced a shepherd's pie that was just not quite enough for two.  But the Bovril had provided a passable foundation, and, with six staleish brussels sprouts added, there was in fact a lunch.  Gladys could cook.  She loved her food, and she had a most un-English talent for making something tasty out of scraps that most women would have thrown away.  It is not too much to say that she and Annie would have died years ago from some illness invited by malnutrition if they had not been carefully fed.  'Quite nice, these sprouts,' commented Annie, sitting up in bed with her lunch spread out on the old papier mâché tray with its spray of Japanese flowers. 'When did you get 'em, Glad?' 'Saturday-- or was it Monday?  I got a half.  Pull the leaves off.  Make 'em small, I hate those great lumps of sprouts.  These're all right inside, even if they are old.  Like me,' and Gladys went off into a great cackle, in which Annie more primly joined."

--  Regarding the snippet above:  Ah, the cheerfully impoverished!  But seriously, there's something so bittersweet and... cozy, really, about so many poor-but-getting-by characters.  I enjoy reading about them, and I'm not sure how I should feel about that!  Should I be ashamed to take pleasure in these things, when I'm living the well-fed life of the modern middle class?  I remember having the same feeling of coziness as a child, reading about the dirt-poor Ingalls family (so excited to get a penny for Christmas!  or a peppermint stick!  or a little cake made from white flour and sugar!)... or the poverty-stricken town that grudgingly shared the ingredients to make Stone Soup... or the poor old man and woman in Socks for Supper.  It must not be an unusual sensation.  Why do we like these stories?  It would be different if they were really suffering or starving.  It's the fact that they are making do, living very carefully, but "getting by"... the simplicity of the characters' wants.  You can't help but admire the frugality and resolve to be more consciously grateful for what you have-- more careful to make the best use of it.  ...And maybe it stirs a charitable impulse, too...

--  Gladys and Annie buy their gas (for heat) and electricity through a pay-as-you-go system, it seems.  They drop coins into boxes to start it up again-- like a pay phone.  So very strange!  I wonder how common that was, at the time.

--  "There was no sound or movement in the room beyond those slight ones made by the burning of electricity, which give a false impression of life."  Yes-- and even more so now, with the humming of computers and larger appliances.  You don't notice it until the power's out; everything's so much quieter!

--  "...photographs of eupeptic beauties in furs..."   Eupeptic!  What a word!  "Of, relating to, or having good digestion"-- or "cheerful".  (g) You decide.

--  "'I shouldn't wonder if it wasn't that tinned pudding, say what you like it's not natural.'"  Then there are fish-sticks!  I was so surprised to see fish-sticks mentioned!  The modern age...  I get the impression that Gibbons shares Gladys' opinion of all these "prepared" foods.

--  Then there are the references to plastic.  There are quite a few of them, and generally, they feel like a negative commentary on the times.  Plastic decorations for the home... Plastic balls for the Christmas tree... Plastic shoes.  It feels cheap.  Signs of a world that is changing-- and not for the better.

--  "...the cheap wood of the furniture, shaped into debased contemporary curves, had its usual chemical sheen."

--  "Her mind was busy with the story she had been reading; a suspense-story about multiple murder and hidden love in the Deep South of America."  How amusing!  She's reading about this exotic Deep South of America, and here I am in the Deep South, reading about the equally exotic (fictional) goings-on in England.

--  "Her face was beginning to fill out; a pear-shaped German face with white large cheeks and a narrow brow and small eyes blue as flax."  Hm... Never heard of German faces being pear-shaped.

--  The possession element of the story is very odd.  Not at all what you'd expect from a book that is firmly planted in a modern, everyday world.  It's not really horror, but there are definitely a few creepy moments.  They mostly come in the form of strange phrases mixed into Mrs. Pearson's dialogue.  There's the "I will put my feet on the pavement" line... Then there's the bit about how she wants "just to enjoy my house... my house that I can touch and taste and smell..." 

--  "'...if I hadn't such a mistrust of the psychiatric brotherhood I'd try and pass the whole thing on to one of them.'  'I'm inclined to agree with you-- but don't you give them credit for anything?' asked Gerald.  'Arrogance,' said Mr Geddes tartly. 'Plenty of credit for that.  They're the new Sanhedrin.  You show me a wardful of happy, or even resigned and contented people allegedly cured by psychiatrists and-- I'll give credit where it's due.  To Almighty God.'"  . . .  "'It's lack of time that's the trouble,' Mr Geddes went on. 'Each patient really needs the entire interest of one person concentrated entirely on him or herself.  It just can't be done.  It's cruel to pretend it can.  They find themselves clinically pigeon-holed when they need to be loved ... a perfect demonstration of "I asked for bread, and ye gave me a stone".'"

--  (Bedridden) Mrs. Pearson points to some cakes she's offering to a guest, then asks to be excused for pointing.  I don't understand why pointing at an object-- particularly in one's own home-- would be considered bad manners.  I understand (in theory) why it might be bad manners to point at a person-- especially out on the street.  It might look as though you're talking about the person--  saying who knows what about him/her-- and it could embarrass the person, but this example seems a bit extreme.  I don't see the harm in pointing at a plate of cakes.  ~shrug~  (But then again, I'm not Miss Manners.)

--  The kindness and sympathy everyone seems to feel toward Erika surprised me a little, and I wondered how realistic it was.  (Of course, at the time, I thought the book might be set in the 50s, whereas now I think it was set in the mid-to-late 1960s.)  I know she's a poor orphan who was born well after the war and in no way to blame for it, but still... She's German, and it wasn't that long after the war, and... Well, I wouldn't have expected outright displays of hatred, but neither did I expect such easy, unquestioning acceptance.  I wonder how soon this type of reaction was the norm...

--  There are four dogs (pugs? I can't recall) named (oh so creatively) A., Bee, Cee, and Dee. 

--  Peggy annoys me.  Perpetually bored.  Above regular people.  Self-absorbed.  Uninterested in anyone else.  ...Then later on we get her back-story, and yet, still, I don't like her.  Are we supposed to sympathize with her?  I can't!  She's a wanna-be home-wrecker!  The man she's cavorting with (Fred) is even worse, since he's the one with a wife (and children?) to think of, but there's enough disgust to go around.

--  All that said... Though I dislike Peggy and Arnold, individually, I can't help but like them together, and I wouldn't have minded reading more about them.

--  "She was twenty-two.  Not, thought Arnold, a great age."  Ha!  I've heard people say that the teens aren't a great age-- not years you want to repeat-- but pity for the early twenties is less common.  Interesting, coming from an older author... Gives me hope for the years to come.  ;o)

--  "...his heart shook against his rib-cage as if it were an animal bounding from side to side and trying to get out; he had never been so aware of it, and he felt, too, what power it had, how he relied upon it, how it sent the blood that kept him alive running along his veins."  It's an odd sensation, the realization of your ultimate vulnerability.  If one little bit of the clockwork comes to a halt, you die.  In the meantime, what magic keeps it going?  Nothin' like mortality!

--  Poor Mr. Fisher.  Such a sad yet dignified character.  I'm not sure I "understand" his murder.  It's so random.  Just in the wrong place at the wrong time?  (Well, kind of.  It was a risk he consciously took, because he thought he might be able to save another man's life-- make a difference.)  Such senseless violence... It happens, but... well, it is so senseless that it's baffling.  Why?  Not even greed for a motive-- just violence for its own sake. 

--  Mr. Fisher's anti-war letters struck me as a bit odd... Perfect for Gerald to find them-- right up his alley-- but personally... I don't know.  Maybe it was more poignant when the book was written, with the ever-present fear of the atom bomb.  Or maybe it's just me... In any case, life's not that simple.  As long as there are evil people in the world (and I don't see any improvement in human nature), someone has to be prepared to defend against them.  That sometimes escalates into war.  Innocent people die, and there is much needless loss.  But what is the alternative?  To surrender to those who are willing to kill or otherwise use force to get their way?  Cowering under the tyrant's watch for generations?  Is that kind of life any better than war, really?  No, I'd rather fight.

--  "(The occupants, already late for a television programme specializing in scenes of violence, preferred to indulge their taste without risk of involvement, and ignored the girl lying in the road and the man stooping over her.)"  Not a very high opinion of TV or those who watch it...

--  "Mrs Lysaght was sitting in her drawing-room, a week later.  It was ten minutes past eleven, and she was sipping her coffee and reflecting that Gretl did not make it as well as a Continental girl should.  Gretl was sitting in the kitchen, sipping hers and reflecting with complacence that it tasted just like that served in the London coffee bars."

--  While Gerald waits for Mr. Geddes to come help him with the possessed Mrs. Pearson, he tries to fix his mind on holy things, but... "He began to experience nothing but a detached curiosity.  His moral sense told him that it was evil; yet he could feel nothing else, and the cold, crawling out from somewhere beyond the warmth of the summer evening, slowly burned into his flesh inside his clothes and began to seep inwards, in the form of this passionless curiosity, threatening his spirit."  ...I recognize that feeling, or something like it.

--  I was surprised when Mrs. Pearson died (even though we're obviously meant to understand that her soul has been saved)-- and even more shocked when her husband made good on his earlier promises and proceeded to "follow" her.  ...I'm still shocked by that turn of events. 

--  The strangest aspect of the book, in my opinion, would have to be the curiously cold parent/child relationships between the Pearsons and Peggy.  I guess Mrs. Pearson's been battling this "illness" for practically all of Peggy's life, and Mr. Pearson has been obsessed with his wife... and as a result, Peggy was mostly self-reliant from a young age.  I understand that not all families are very close, but this one is so distant!  Mr. Pearson doesn't even consider his daughter before killing himself-- and Peggy doesn't bother to tell her mother that she's married and going out of the country for goodness-knows-how-long!  Weird...  Her strange relationship with her parents might explain some of Peggy's problems and "personality quirks".  Maybe her future with Arnold will be happier...

--  After the strange, sad story of the Pearsons, at least the ending is cozy.  Gladys and Annie get their happy ending-- a nice place to live in the country-- a real home with family, where they'll be cherished for their remaining years.  The picture of them slowly driving home through a friendly village in a pretty, twilit countryside... So soft and warm and lovely.  Who could ask for anything better?

Out of the Silent Planet

Out of the Silent Planet
by C. S. Lewis


Publisher's Blurb:

The first novel in C.S. Lewis's classic sci-fi trilogy which tells the adventure of Dr Ransom who is kidnapped and transported to Mars In the first novel of C.S. Lewis's classic science fiction trilogy, Dr Ransom, a Cambridge academic, is abducted and taken on a spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra, which he knows as Mars. His captors are plotting to plunder the planet's treasures and plan to offer Ransom as a sacrifice to the creatures who live there. Ransom discovers he has come from the 'silent planet' - Earth - whose tragic story is known throughout the universe...

My Reaction: 
For me, this was merely "alright".  I'm not hugely excited about the sci-fi genre to begin with, admittedly.  The allegorical component was interesting-- by far the most interesting aspect of the novel-- but in the end, it wasn't enough to really captivate me.  I mostly just wanted to finish the book so I could feel free to move on to something else.  It wasn't bad, but it wasn't very good, either.  Not enough happened!  Some readers may be sustained by allegory alone, but evidently I am not among them.

This is the first in a trilogy, but I have no immediate plans to read the second and third volumes.  Maybe someday, but certainly not right now. 

(This was a "shared read" with Donald, so I have no more specific comments.)