...the Soul of Wit - Short Reviews

Hey! It's time for new short reviews again and the closer we come to the end of the year, the crazier and the better the books get, let me tell you. Look out for the Best Of 2021 next week as there will be some tough choices to make.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

A group of very obnoxious childhood friends who happen to hate each other celebrate the marriage of two of them in an abandoned and haunted Japanese mansion. Legend says its foundations rest on the bones of a sad bride and that it is stuffed with other girls sacrificed to her. Not a good idea at all.

Every bilingual child knows this phenomenon and so did I and my siblings; we mixed the languages of our mother and baba in order to create our very own way of communicating - meshing and melting together syntax, vocabulary, even syllables of two languages into new shapes previously unheard of without consideration of linguistic rules. It's just so much easier to say what you have in mind, the way it comes to your mind.

The problem with that is that the number of people who will understand you is very limited. So most bilingual children are warned and admonished and educated not to do that; are told to keep both languages separate at all cost, because, they say, that way we would learn both languages only half and wrong and not properly (which is bullshit, if you ask me, everything falls into place with time). I hadn't even thought of this in a long time until Cassandra Khaw's Nothing But Blackened Teeth reminded me of it with sentences such as;

"The walls wore a senate of kitsune, pale-furred, the tips of their tails dip-dyed in coal. They waited, uncharacteristically imperious. A delegation of tengu was bringing their prime-minister a gift."

"Painted tengu approached in staccato, ticking across the seams in the shoji, a stop-motion flock, their expressions mocking."

To truly understand and appreciate this wild mixture of Japanese folklore, posh English and the overuse of the word "fuck" is an art in itself that I personally don't master and it heavily reminds me of what we used to do with language. And who knows, maybe it is a stroke of genius to use that as a narrative device.

Apart from that, the story needs some serious toning down, as in parts you totally concentrate on what the hell kind of sentence the author built there rather than following the plot.

I can certainly see that Khaw is no ordinary author and has the potential to greatness. But I also see that that potential unfortunately remains untapped in this novella, as genius as the idea of engaging the more horrific elements of Japanese folklore into a US horror story might be.

This book is ultimately far from perfect and you need to decide for yourself if it is your kind of imperfect linguistically as well as conceptionally. Because it definitely oscillates between awesome and catastrophic.

Immortelle by Catherine McCarthy

Immortelle is a sad and uncanny ghost story about the mother Elinor who, after having lost her daughter under mysterious circumstances, dedicates herself to crafting pretty immortelles - flower arrangements for graves. She's in fact so committed that even the dead are interested in her work, visiting her and watching her create and paint, telling her their stories. When another young girl dies in the same Welsh seaside town, she finds that her visitor has quite a devastating story to tell and it will involve Elinor in ways she wasn't expecting, but was surely hoping for.

An extremely well-written, well-structured and well-paced, captivating but gentle little story. At times I thought the children sounded a little too adult but considering the overall high quality of the writing that's not even worth mentioning. Highly recommended.

Stranded by Bracken MacLeod

"The Thing" the blurb said... "Jacob's Ladder" the blurb said... Terrifying, icebound thriller, the blurb said... Was it right? NO.

After a major storm the crew of the Arctic Promise find themselves stuck in unfamiliar (ice) waters and a thick fog. As if that's not enough, they all fall sick from a mysterious illness, except for deckhand Noah Cabot. The ship also happens to be under Noah's father-in-law Brewster's captainship, who not only hates Noah, but also tries everything in his might to turn his life into hell. And so he does. But when the fog clears the men face different challenges than family disputes. Challenges of a completely different nature...

Stranded was a slog through the Arctic that even a witty twist couldn’t save. Although setup and premise are appealing, ultimately, the book is neither captivating nor interesting. I quickly lost interest in the plot and except for MC, his best friend and his father in law, all the characters felt interchangeable. Not mine unfortunately.

The Broken Girls by Simone St James

I'm very much enjoying books by Simone St James lately and this one didn't disappoint again.

The Broken Girls is divided into two storylines; the first is set in the 50s USA and is about a group of four girls attending a school, Idlewild, which specializes on re-educating the titular girls - girls who have problems, who are trouble or just from the wrong type of background - to become good housewives.

The second, 2014 storyline revolves around Fiona, a journalist with her own share of trauma investigating events that took place in Idlewild.

And then there is Mary Hand; the legendary ghost of a young woman who haunts the school.
St James is not only the only author I know who can seriously rock the dual storyline she's also extremely good at character building too, I always really want to meet the people she writes about. I was also impressed by the good ending, everything tied up real nicely. Nice, cozy ghost story/mystery, perfect for dark winter days to stay inside and read with a cup of tea.

The Auctioneer by Joan Samson

The quite life of small-town farmer John Moore, his wife Mim, and his mother change drastically when an ominous stranger, the auctioneer Perly Dunsmore literally invades their town. Starting by small exchanges, Perly manages to expand his auction business to the extend where he puts babies and children up for auction in no time.

I never ever mean to victim shame, but the people in this small town were so very very dumb that they play a substantial role in their downfall. I don't understand how it could come as far as it could, no matter how charming or irresistible the auctioneer turns out to be. Yet an interesting book to read, if only for the author's great prose.

No Exit by Taylor Adams

College student Darby Thorne is on her way to see her dying mother for a last time when she gets caught in a blizzard in the mountains and ends up at a remote highway rest stop with four strangers. One of these four has a terrible secret that Darby accidentally discovers, and an insanely suspenseful game of cat-and-mouse ensues. Who is the perpetrator? Are they alone? How many of the four are involved? Is everything as it seems at all?

I swear I only wanted to dip my toes into this audiobook, just a little, but ended up not being able to put it away until the end... This is an enthralling, never boring, super twisty, exciting, well written thriller with a good message. What a wild ride this was!

Come With Me by Ronald Malfi

Come With Me is a very well written, very enthralling murder mystery about a man who, after the death of his wife, finds documents of some secret research she had been doing on unsolved killings of young women and decides to finish what she was working on. Each chapter marks a different stage of his research and that method of writing sure keeps you turning the pages. Those are the plusses of this book.

What I didn't like was the fact that the narrative is addressed to "you", as if the main character was constantly talking to his dead wife throughout the book and very often, too often, calls her by her name ("I began the process of learning your secret, Allison, something like three months after your death."; "The town of Chester was no one's destination - except evidently yours, Allison.") and it is a device I just don't enjoy at all and I sure wish it had been narrated in the "traditional" way.

Finally, my expectations may have been a little too high because of the high praise the book gets, because there is a true buzz around this book at the moment. In the end, I thought it was a good book, just not especially good.