Friday Flashback: Rec. #111: The Good Children

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some early posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand.

What: At the beginning of The Good Children, the McNair family is a mother, a father, two sons, and two daughters. Early on, the father dies in an industrial accident. The distraught mother is determined that nothing will separate her from her children. Soon after, she's killed in an accident at home. The terrified kids bury their mother's body in the backyard and start building the illusion that she's still alive. 

Author Kate Wilhelm expertly describes how the elaborate deception leads to shifting allegiances among the four remaining McNairs, and how the psychological cracks begin to show.

Comparable to: The plot sounds Gothic, but Wilhelm carefully builds suspense with a spare, unsentimental, straightforward style that's more noir-inclined.

Representative quote: "When you've got family, you don't need anything else."

You might not like it if: You are familiar Kate Wilhelm through her Nebula Award-winning, modern sci-fi classic Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, and you're expecting something similar here. There is no sci-fi in The Good Children.

How to get it: Not too difficult to find used or at your library.



[Originally posted 4/24/11.]

Rec. #287: Slings and Arrows, season 3

What: The third and final season of Slings and Arrows winds down its tale of a Shakespearean theater festival (cough, Stratford, cough). This time around, people on and off stage at the New Burbage festival let themselves go a bit, some into drugs, some into threesomes, some into . . . musical theater.

Representative quote: "I must say, I've fallen in love with the musical genre. It's the art form of the common man. If you want to communicate something with the proletariat cover it in sequins and make it sing. It's noisy, vulgar, and utterly meaningless... I love it."

Bonus representative quote: "I saw, at a laboratory in Rotterdam, a chimpanzee, driven to a state of sexual frenzy, simply by listening to a C Major chord over and over again. I saw it with my own eyes."

How to get it: Stream it on Netflix or Amazon.

Connections to previous Wreckage: Watch the whole series --- you'll be glad you did, and each season is only six episodes. Season 1 was Rec. #127 and season 2 was Rec. #191.

List #27: Happy Birthday, Ngaio Marsh*

Ngaio Marsh is unimpressed by you

Who: I know Ngaio Marsh for her well-written mystery novels, which put her directly alongside Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. But! She was also an acclaimed theater director. Lots of modern-dress Shakespeare, that sort of thing. 

You can't see her plays, but you can read her books.

Colour Scheme (Rec. #190)

Death and the Dancing Footman (Rec. #37)

Death of a Peer (FSoM #1)

Night at the Vulcan (Rec. #102)

Tied Up in Tinsel (FSoM #17)

. . . and more than 20 others.

*h/t to Potato, who alerted me to the occasion

Friday Flashback: Rec. #114: The Journalist and the Murderer

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some early posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand.

What: In The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcolm explores the moral complexities of nonfiction writing. She argues that even when you're telling someone else's story, you're always just telling your own, for your own reasons. Controversy!

Comparable to: Like a behind-the-scenes tour of true crime books such as In Cold Blood (and of less prestigious ones, too).

Representative quote: "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible." [first sentence]

You might not like it if: It seems like it's a book you should read, and that pretty much turns you off.

How to get it: Widely available for sale, and your library probably has it. Not Kindle-able (yet). Now also Kindle-able!

Connection to previous Wreckage: Susan Orlean, author of Saturday Night (Rec. #15) and The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup (Rec. #126), was one of the writers who agreed with Malcolm's basic premise, admitting that ethical struggles are a necessary evil in journalism.




[Originally posted 4/28/11.]

Rec. #286: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

What: In Marisha Pessl's debut novel, a high school student named Blue has spent much of her life traipsing around academia with her professor father. It's messed with her head a bit, which might explain her reaction to the death of her film studies teacher. Or it might not.

Comparable to: Topic-wise, Special Topics in Calamity Physics is very similar to Donna Tartt's The Secret History. Tone-wise, though, it's closer to Jaclyn Moriarty's I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes (Rec. #235).

Opening lines: "Dad always said a person must have a magnificent reason for writing out his or her Life Story and expecting anyone to read it."

You might not like it if: You find the countless (and sometimes obscure) references to film and literature daunting, especially considering the 500+-page heft of the book. Take heart, though --- the book also includes several visual aids.

How to get it: Buyable, borrowable, Kindle-able. And possibly coming at some point to a theater near you. (Miramax has the rights.)

Connection to previous Wreckage: I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes was Rec. #235 and it is magnificent.

If this puts you on a kick of "more references, please, I'll track 'em down, I'll track them all down," I'd also suggest The Tournament (Rec. #12), wherein Alfred Hitchcock plays tennis and is referred to as "Fred."

Friday Flashback: Rec. #115: The History Boys

R.I.P. Richard Griffiths.

What: Eight bright young men are trying for places at Oxford or Cambridge. Their headmaster brings in a young test-prep coach to give them an edge. Alan Bennett's story explores the fissure between clever test-taking and education for its own sake. 

The relief here is that the boys are fully aware that it's all just a game, and they do their fair share of manipulating it. They are highly articulate, charming smart-alecks --- occasionally vulnerable, often smug (one in particular is accurately described as "a complacent fuck"), but always believable.

Comparable to: It's really, really, really not Dead Poets Society. Really.

Representative quote: "Do you want us to be thoughtful, sir, or do you want us to be smart?"

You might not like it if: The culture of British boys' schools in the early 1980s --- brought out with Bennett's dry, mocking, expletive-peppered humor --- holds no appeal for you.

How to get it: Rent, buy, borrow. As you do.

Further note of moderate interest: This award-winning play by Alan Bennett ran in London in 2004/2005 before coming to Broadway the following year and being subsequently adapted for film. Most of the movie cast had been with the show since the beginning, and you might now recognize several of the young actors, including Dominic Cooper (An Education), James Corden (Gavin and Stacey), and Russell Tovey (Being Human).

[Originally posted 4/30/11.]

Rec. #285: I Know I Am, But What Are You?

What: This collection of essays by Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee covers a lot of ground. Camping, inadvertently tagging along on a honeymoon, various failed parenting strategies of two sets of parents (plus grandparents), a teenage crush on Jesus followed by a car-jacking spree, working at a penis clinic, and starring in a children's stage production of Sailor Moon.

Comparable to: This is what I wanted Bossypants and Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? to be like. (I liked both of those books, but I really liked this one.) Maybe it's because neither Tina Fey nor Mindy Kaling are Canadian.

Opening lines: "Every once in a while I think about what my life would be like if my parents had stayed together and not separated when I was still a baby. Obviously, it would involve a regular commute to the maximum-security penitentiary to visit whichever of them had committed the murder that signaled the official end to their marriage."

Representative quote: "Our sexual chemistry was similar to a sea cucumber that sits motionless on the cold, dark ocean floor and dreams of dry-humping a nearby scallop."

You might not like it if: You're squeamish.

How to get it: I listened to the audiobook, read by Bee, and I think the book probably works best that way.

Rec. #284: Angel Face

What: Angel Face is director Otto Preminger's 1952 noir classic, starring Jean Simmons and Robert Mitchum. The femme fatale is Diane Tremayne. If she sounds posh and spoiled, it's because she is. Frank Jessup is not above some scheming himself, but he's no match for Diane.

Comparable to: It's tempting to draw comparisons to Preminger's Laura, the director's best-known noir, but Angel Face has more in common with a different Gene Tierney-starring film --- Leave Her to Heaven.

You might not like it if: You expect another Laura. This is less sharply biting and more coldly calculating.

How to get it: Buy it or borrow it.

Connection to previous Wreckage: Although I think Angel Face is delicious, Laura is probably my favorite noir film (that dialogue!). It was Rec. #193.

Friday Flashback: Rec. #98: Freshwater --- A Comedy

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some early posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand.

What: Virginia Woolf is not known for writing comedies or plays, but this is both of those things. Freshwater: A Comedy is a farce about Woolf's great-aunt, Julia Cameron, who was a famous Victorian photographer.

Comparable to: Woolf gets a little Wilde and a little Shavian.

Representative quote: "The donkey is eating thistles on the lawn. There are moments when I despair of modern life altogether."

You might not like it if: You feel like it wasn't written for you. (You're not wrong; Woolf wrote it primarily for her family. Aren't we lucky to get a peek at Stephen-Woolf family life?)

How to get it: There's a great edition out now that features illustrations by Edward Gorey (see cover above).

Connection to previous Wreckage: After you fall in love with Gorey's drawings (as is inevitable), you can read interviews with him in Ascending Peculiarity (Rec. #80). Also, Virginia Woolf makes an appearance in The Tournament (Rec. #12).



[Originally posted 4/7/11.]

Rec. #283: My Mad Fat Diary, series 1

What: Set in the ripe middle of mid-'90s Cool Britannia, My Mad Fat Diary is told from the perspective of the immensely likable Rae Earl, 16 years old. She's just left a psychiatric institute after four months, and her friends --- old and new --- have no idea.

At just six episodes, the show managed to gut-punch me at least seven times, which is pretty impressive. It also turned me into the type of person who yells things at the screen ("Noooooo!!!" "I can't, I can't, I can't" "Shut the %$#@ up, Chloe!" "Gah!" "Yesssssss" "Oh my gods, I'm going to break something over his head" Etc.).

Opening lines: "Un-shitting-believable."

You might not like it if: You don't want to watch something that will make you run the gamut of emotions, from cackling laughter to bawling tears, from the-world-is-a-terrible-place-leave-me-alone to absolute joy-dancing.

How to get it: If you're in the U.S., off to YouTube you go. Although if you happen to have a region-free disc player, the DVD is available now from the U.K.

Connections to previous Wreckage: I already mentioned the show as part of List #26 (Content That Has Actually Caused Me to Throw Something Across a Room).

Rec. #282: Emotionally Weird

What: In honor of Kate Atkinson's new book being released in the States tomorrow (!!!), here's a look back at her third novel. On an island off the coast of Scotland, Effie and her mother, Nora, tell each other stories. Effie's stories are about her life at university. Nora's stories are about the past. Neither one is completely sure how much of any of it is true.

Comparable to: Emotionally Weird is an odd comedic riff that has drawn comparisons to Finnegans Wake, Alice in Wonderland, and The Tempest. Reviewers have pointed to Thomas Pynchon, Abbott and Costello, Jorge Luis Borges, and John Irving as "clear influences." 

I'll also toss in If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, for Atkinson's fake-out narrative beginnings. (See below: Three beginnings, three sets of opening lines.)

Opening lines ("The Hand of Fate--first draft"): "Inspector Jack Gannet drove into Saltsea-on-Sea along the coast road. Today's sun (not that he believed it to be a new one every day) was already climbing merrily in the sky."

Opening lines ("Blood and Bone"): "My mother is a virgin. (Trust me.)"

Opening lines ("Chez Bob"): "A Monday morning and my dreams were interrupted at some unearthly hour by the doorbell ringing with a shrill urgency that implied death, tragedy, or a sudden, unexpected inheritance. It was none of those things (not yet anyway). It was Terri."

You might not like it if: "Ugh," you say. "Not narrative playfulness, please. Ugh."

How to get it: Buyable, borrowable, Kindle-able.

Connections to previous Wreckage: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler was Rec. #261.

In order of initial publication, Kate Atkinson's other novels include Human Croquet (Rec. #137), Case Histories (Rec. #3), One Good Turn (Rec. #69), When Will There Be Good News? (Rec. #192), and Started Early, Took My Dog (Rec. #270).