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Title: Black Maria
Author: Diana Wynne Jones
Published: HarperCollins Children's Books, 1991
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 504,370
Text Number: 1795
Read Because: fan of the author
Review:
Mig and her family are conscripted to a visit to Aunt Maria's seaside cottage, only to find her ruling the village in an iron grip. Mig's story is recorded in diary entries, which is a gimmick I adore, and moves from a wry, claustrophobic comedy of manners and into something appropriately DWJ-ish: strange, organic, magical. I was prepared to be annoyed by the binary, isolationist treatment of gender, and it's not awfully subtle, but it grows weirder and more complicated alongside the magic. My favorite DWJ? nah; but I have a backlog of her books on my ereader that I keep for a rainy day, an "I have nothing to read day," and selecting one at random had exactly the effect I wanted: it held my attention, wasn't afraid to get funny and strange, but grounded itself in well-sketched characters.
Title: The Little White Horse
Author: Elizabeth Goudge
Published: Penguin Young Readers Group, 2001 (1946)
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 505,565
Text Number: 1801
Read Because: reviewed by Rosamund, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A girl orphaned by her parents' death travels to live with her cousin at a distant estate, and is pulled into an ancient family feud troubling a sweet country village. The beauty and the beast vibes are real - not the monster bridegroom, but the estate: beautiful, gently neglected, haunted by a tragic past, magically populated by embroidered riding habits and delicious sugar biscuits. It's delightfully purple escapist reading, set on the blooming cusp of spring, lush and indulgent and unrepentant. And for want of a monster bridegroom or other dangerous fairytale aspect it's limited by its 1946 publishing date, with restrictive gender and didactic social commentary which is never subverted or complicated. I mind less than I would: blur out the lectures about the sins of female curiosity, and the protagonist's journey, riding her gigantic protector-dog into the dark woods that surround a fairytale estate, still feels beautiful, bold, and, yes, full of a hunger for knowledge.
Title: A History of Fear
Author: Luke Dumas
Narrator: Graham Halstead, Toni Frutin, Gary Tiedemann, Jennifer Aquino, Shiromi Arserio, Gary Furlong
Published: Simon Schuster Audio, 2022
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 370
Total Page Count: 506,250
Text Number: 1803
Read Because: this review, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The personal testimony, edited and supplemented by interviews and evidence, of a murderer who claims his crime was the work of the devil. That gimmick - the personal narrative paired with investigative materials - is great fun, expanding on unreliable narrator tropes by adding a host of additional, contradicting voices. Both halves of the narrative develop their own theories, a divided structure that limits the space for each and, as a result, means neither is especially subtle. Still, I like how this handles ( spoiler ): subtle, again, not so much, but nuanced it is.
Author: Diana Wynne Jones
Published: HarperCollins Children's Books, 1991
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 504,370
Text Number: 1795
Read Because: fan of the author
Review:
We have had Aunt Maria ever since Dad died. If that sounds as if we have had the plague, that is what I mean. Chris says it feels more like that card game, where the one who wins the Queen of Spades loses the game. Black Maria, it is called. Maybe he is right.
Mig and her family are conscripted to a visit to Aunt Maria's seaside cottage, only to find her ruling the village in an iron grip. Mig's story is recorded in diary entries, which is a gimmick I adore, and moves from a wry, claustrophobic comedy of manners and into something appropriately DWJ-ish: strange, organic, magical. I was prepared to be annoyed by the binary, isolationist treatment of gender, and it's not awfully subtle, but it grows weirder and more complicated alongside the magic. My favorite DWJ? nah; but I have a backlog of her books on my ereader that I keep for a rainy day, an "I have nothing to read day," and selecting one at random had exactly the effect I wanted: it held my attention, wasn't afraid to get funny and strange, but grounded itself in well-sketched characters.
Title: The Little White Horse
Author: Elizabeth Goudge
Published: Penguin Young Readers Group, 2001 (1946)
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 505,565
Text Number: 1801
Read Because: reviewed by Rosamund, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A girl orphaned by her parents' death travels to live with her cousin at a distant estate, and is pulled into an ancient family feud troubling a sweet country village. The beauty and the beast vibes are real - not the monster bridegroom, but the estate: beautiful, gently neglected, haunted by a tragic past, magically populated by embroidered riding habits and delicious sugar biscuits. It's delightfully purple escapist reading, set on the blooming cusp of spring, lush and indulgent and unrepentant. And for want of a monster bridegroom or other dangerous fairytale aspect it's limited by its 1946 publishing date, with restrictive gender and didactic social commentary which is never subverted or complicated. I mind less than I would: blur out the lectures about the sins of female curiosity, and the protagonist's journey, riding her gigantic protector-dog into the dark woods that surround a fairytale estate, still feels beautiful, bold, and, yes, full of a hunger for knowledge.
Title: A History of Fear
Author: Luke Dumas
Narrator: Graham Halstead, Toni Frutin, Gary Tiedemann, Jennifer Aquino, Shiromi Arserio, Gary Furlong
Published: Simon Schuster Audio, 2022
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 370
Total Page Count: 506,250
Text Number: 1803
Read Because: this review, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The personal testimony, edited and supplemented by interviews and evidence, of a murderer who claims his crime was the work of the devil. That gimmick - the personal narrative paired with investigative materials - is great fun, expanding on unreliable narrator tropes by adding a host of additional, contradicting voices. Both halves of the narrative develop their own theories, a divided structure that limits the space for each and, as a result, means neither is especially subtle. Still, I like how this handles ( spoiler ): subtle, again, not so much, but nuanced it is.
