...the Soul of Wit

Recently I tried to focus on finishing books I had started reading at some point in the past and didn't finish for one reason or another and it's looking good so far; here are some results of project DNF, as well as newer reads that I had been anticipating. Two of the books I am discussing here are slashers and the other three can definitely pass as (dark) fantasy but also as contemporary literature depending on where your focus is. Enjoy!

You Let Me In by Camilla Bruce

"It's a cruel and horrible story." Penelope shudders. "It must have been terrible living with a truth like that, even if it wasn't true."

I couldn't keep on reading this book on my first try and put it aside because, as ever so often, I was really expecting some very explicitly horror-mystery and was confronted instead with the story of a young girl who very much believes in and lives with fairies. But the fairies Cassie sees aren't those gracefully elegant, little flying bird people we have come to imagine fairies as. Instead they are rather nasty and malevolent beings who live in the woods and greatly deviate from our common aesthetic ideal; changing their looks according to their experiences and the humans they "feed off". Initially, seeing the subject matter and really not being the greatest fan of that kind of folklore, I let this one rest for a while. It is only when I picked it up for the second time that I had the endurance, and in retrospect I'm very glad that I did, to realize that the horror in this book needs to gradually and slowly unfold, leaving a bittersweet, heartbreaking flavor. I had to hang in there for a while to fully grasp all the different levels of ambiguity and all the different levels of dread that make this book so special.

 

How Pale the Winter Has Made Us by Adam Scovell

Isabelle is staying at her partner's place in Strasbourg (but he's away somewhere in Latin America) when the news arrive that her father has hanged himself on a tree in Crystal Palace Park. His suicide marks for her and also for the city of Strasbourg the beginning of a very dark and long winter, which she tries to counter and alleviate by taking strolls in the city, discovering its history and having talks with the inhabitants she encounters. At night she is being tortured by the Erlking.
To tell the truth, the only reason I picked this book up was that I wrongly believed it is a horror novel featuring the Erlkönig. Having lived in that general area of the French-Belgian-German border for about a decade and being thoroughly depressed of that lebensgefühl -especially in winter time-, the last thing I wanted to do was to read a collection of impressions, of historical bits and facts of that geography that depressed me so... I was a little disheartened when I realized that in this book Erlkönig is but a symbol, a metaphor for something else and not what the book is about (well, in a certain sense the book may be about him too, but not only). And it took some time to be able to engage myself in the very slow pace and rhythm of this book, but eventually I was able to actually start following the oppressive mood, but also the serenity and distraction that Isabelle finds in her surroundings and during her walks around a city she is a stranger to, and eventually even a little joy. I will keep an eye on Adam Scovell for more similar works.

 

Disco Deathtrap by Cameron Roubique

In the prologue of Disco Deathtrap Roubique shares the terrible secret about the history of the Rollerville Disco Skating Rink - that it was built on a cemetery. And adds: "The living had taken what was once a place of death and made it a place of their own. On January 1st, 1981, death took it back."

It is exactly this last sentence of the prologue that made me firmly and naively believe there was a supernatural entity at work here - the story of a school outing to Rollerville, where students can and even have to celebrate New Years's Eve all night, that ends in blood and guts and tears. I imagined "death taking back the skating rink" as spooky skeletons or rotten zombies starting to grotesquely skate while slashing or something similarly silly that would take the edge away of what is basically a school shooting (or slashing) not set in a school. I was wrong though, this is a slasher proper and even though the resolution, who the killer is and their reasons of killing a schoolfull of children, is so absurd it could be sur-real, it wasn't enough for me to like Disco Deathtrap without stint.
I have to give the devil his due, though, Roubique worked super meticulously and carefully constructing a name, face and story to each of his characters and gave the story a great buildup full of uninterrupted teenage drama. The book also comes with a soundtrack you can request on your next visit to the skating rink and he apparently designs his covers himself. In this case neither the cover nor the chosen topic is really mine but I have to give Roubique credit for putting so much heart and soul into his projects. So I will give it a second chance and will soon try another one of his books; the much more popular Kill River, which is a slasher set in a water park. I already have a good feeling about this. 

 

Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare

Another slasher - but I can't really be as lenient with this one as the previous, because I seriously was thinking more of Adam Cesare and was truly disappointed by Clown in a Cornfield. It follows the story of Quinn, a high school student who moves into a small town with her dad after the death of her mother, gets in trouble for hanging out with the wrong kids and ends up going to a party, where a clown runs riot, killing people. The setup is formulaic and the ending is really weak. Really.
Why? I mean the book was blurbed by Clive Barker, yes Clive Barker, warning us Cesare can "make us afraid", then why doesn't he? This wasn't scary at all. The characters were either unlikeable or didn't make sense, the story was way too fast-paced and the motivation behind it all really far-fetched and super ageist on the part of the author. Unfortunately, the only positive thing I can say is that the cover is gorgeous, it truly is. 

 

 The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

On an infinitely more positive note, I will finish the shorties with N.K. Jemisin's The City We Became, which is a fantastic book! Jemisin epitomizes the struggle against gentrification and racism in New York City in an almost comic-like superhero story. The impersonations of New York's all five boroughs, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and Staten Island are being recruited one by one in a bid to face an unknown force destroying big cities! I love how Jemisin experiments with language here, with the rhythm and sound of language - some passages can be read as a comic book text while others are reminiscent of a rap and some passages just excel in drama and theatricality. In times of BLM, this book is highly meaningful and necessary and an absolute pleasure to read!