Review: The Visitors by Simon Sylvester

The Visitors by Simon Sylvester (Melville House, 368 pages, December 2015)

In case you are as clueless as I was before reading this novel, a "selkie" is a "seal-person," born out of the storytelling and mythmaking traditions of the British Isles. In The Visitors, Sylvester takes us to a remote island off the Scottish coast (Bancree) where several men have mysteriously vanished, and selkies are involved. In fact...well...I won't spoil it for you.

At once a mystery and a story about storytelling, The Visitors is one of those quick, absorbing reads that keeps you up until 2am, even when you know that you have to get up in less than four hours. Flora, the main character, feels trapped on Bancree, waiting for her senior year to end so that she can escape to a more happening place (which would be anywhere, basically, except maybe Antarctica). Her boyfriend has left for college and she sees a long, lonely year stretching out in front of her...until Ailsa Dobie and her father John move in to the abandoned house on Dog Rock, a tiny island off the coast of Bancree. They're kind of strange, and pale, and intense, but soon Flora and Ailsa become friends and confidantes.

Books to Look For (January): Biography

Review: Red Star Tales, edited by Yvonne Howell

Review on the Speculative Fiction in Translation site

Rachel's Random Recommendation #53: The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin

The Arcades Project (1927-40) by Walter Benjamin


"The Arcades Project is Benjamin’s effort to represent and to critique the bourgeois experience of nineteenth-century history, and, in so doing, to liberate the suppressed “true history” that underlay the ideological mask. In the bustling, cluttered arcades, street and interior merge and historical time is broken up into kaleidoscopic distractions and displays of ephemera. Here, at a distance from what is normally meant by “progress,” Benjamin finds the lost time(s) embedded in the spaces of things."- Harvard University Press

Rachel's Random Recommendation #52: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov


When I first read this as a teenager, I was floored and exhilarated by the energy and beauty of Nabokov's prose. This story of a creepy middle-aged man's seduction of a young girl is really about much more than that, and the fact that the seducer is the narrator adds another layer to Nabokov's exploration of morality, desire, and obsession. If you haven't read this yet, read it now.

Review: Hanzai Japan, edited by Haikasoru

 



Review on the Speculative Fiction in Translation site

An Absolutely Serious Analysis of GOODNIGHT MOON

My beef here is not with the author so much as with the illustrator of Goodnight Moon. But don’t worry, Margaret Wise Brown- you’re not off the hook.

I mean, COME ON, Clement Hurd, what are you trying to do, burn my retinas with your orange and green and blue insanity? Why does this room have to be so crazed with color? It’s like a circus vomited on a neon-art convention and the Hazmat team arrived waaay too late.

If my parents had read this book to me when I was little (and thank god they didn’t), I would’ve had nightmares- red balloons, green walls, red carpet…didn’t I read somewhere once that too much red in a room could drive someone bonkers? Makes sense to me.

Book Banning BINGO

You guys, I’m really, REALLY sick of these book-challenge stories.

I mean, I listen to Jeff and Rebecca talk about them on the Book Riot podcast, and I read about them online, and I just absolutely dread the day my kids come home from school and announce that a book they’re supposed to read for English class has been challenged by someone’s mom and so they’re not reading it for class anymore.

In case you didn’t know, I have a particularly ragey place in my heart for book banners, book challengers, and anyone else who points to a book and whines “ohhhhhh think of the children, think of their pure, sweet, blank-slate minds!!!!” In some cases, the challenger hasn’t even read the book in question, or has read only part of it. It’s just that they heard that there are references to LGBTQ issues or there are some f-bombs sprinkled throughout. WHAT WOULD THAT DO TO THE CHILDREN OH FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE.

Random Recommendation Guest Post: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4

This recommendation comes from Ann Marie Gamble. Check out her website here, and follow her on twitter @amgamble.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend

"Adrian Mole's first love, Pandora, has left him; a neighbor, Mr. Lucas, appears to be seducing his mother (and what does that mean for his father?); the BBC refuses to publish his poetry; and his dog swallowed the tree off the Christmas cake. "Why" indeed."