Let Me In - A Review [Guest Post}

(Here is an awesome guest post from the fantastic Emma @ Mabismab - please hop on over to her blog and show her some love!)

Wow, here I am again! I'm so lucky to have such a great friend who will let me share my amateur views on film on her blog – Thanks Mrs B! (Emma is being far too modest!)

This time, I'm here to talk about vampire films. More specifically, I'm here to discuss the two versions of Let The Right One In; the Swedish film of the same name, and the American “Let Me In”.

It is only very recently (this weekend, in fact) that I have ventured to watch the American adaptation. I watched the Swedish film in the cinema as soon as it was released, and loved every second. This was closely followed by reading the (very brilliant) book by John Ajvide Lindqvist. When it came to Let Me In being released, I felt that the Americans had made this film too soon. It was barely a year since the Swedish release, and my enjoyment of it wasn't ready to be eclipsed either positively or negatively by the English speaking version. The reviews had also been a little unconvincing, so, I sat back and watched other things. God help me I actually watched Jennifer’s Body on the quest for vampire visual consumption... 

Of course, the lure of a vampire film inspired by a novel I knew to be great couldn't be kept at bay for long, and so it was with anticipation that I settled down to watch Let Me In on a suitably bleak Bristolian day. 

Well, I have to say that I'm glad that I waited this long. The film is very almost a scene for scene copy of the Swedish film, and the performances of the two children are creepily alike in both versions. If I had watched it at its release I think I would have resented it for that, being so soon, but now I find it was nice to have a non-departure from such a stunning original attempt. 

Chloe Moretz is currently “actress du jour” for the up-and-coming star hunters among us, and in this film it is very easy to see why. Both she and her counterpart Kodi Smit-McPhee are brilliantly meek and fragile in their exchanges. They convey that childlike awkwardness with great style and I will admit my only disappointment with these two characters is that the American writers chose to call Moretz’ character Abby instead of Eli and Smit-Mcphee's character Owen instead of Oskar. Never mind eh, they have a habit of unnecessary name changes... (ahemGoldenCompassSorcerorsStoneetcetcahem)

I also found the snowy setting just as believable in the American estate as in Sweden. The cinemato

graphy, although it lacked an artistry that was evident in the Swedish version, was nonetheless interesting and engaging, if a little “standard”.

I actually think that in one respect, the American version surpassed the Swedish: The phone call Owen makes to his father is deeply moving, and brings something more to the character than the “bullied school misfit” that would have been all too familiar for a teen-targeted film at the moment.

Of course, there were mixed reviews for this film for a reason, and I can only put them down to the completely unneeded CGI. Watching Abby clamber up a tree as if she had just escaped The Ring was jarring, to say the least, in a film so otherwise unassuming and modest. It wasn't even a scene that was integral, it was just there because it could be; because it was Hollywood. The same can also be said of Abby’s “transformation” - also unneeded and also bringing something of a gimmicky, tacky edge to an otherwise poetic concept.

One of my favourite moments from the Swedish film was the pool scene. If you have seen it, you might agree that it was one of the most beautiful, graphically violent things to be watched in 2008. Something of a contradiction, but true. Unfortunately Hollywood got all Hollywood about it, and the scene's subtlety was destroyed -very much a shame as I had looked forward to a new representation of it all film long. Deep down, though, I knew it would be as it was. I shouldn't be so surprised!

At the end of the day, I don’t know whether or not I would encourage anyone to watch Let Me In, but I wouldn't dissuade from it. Similarly to much of the “new” things in the film, I felt the entire thing was just a bit unnecessary. If you want Let The Right One In without subtitles, watch this. If you want to see why Chloe Moretz might be worth putting Oscar bets on when she’s a bit older, watch this. Otherwise, if you’re choosing between the Swedish version and the American one, I honestly don't think it matters...

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The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

“My greatest enemies are Women and the Sea. These things I hate. Women because they are weak and stupid and live in the shadow of men and are nothing compared to them, and the Sea because it has always frustrated me, destroying what I have built, washing away what I have left, wiping clean the marks I have made.” Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory

This book is just so gross. By gross, I mean recurring graphic descriptions of animal torture and deaths of children. Avoid this book if you have a weak disposition, do not have a thing for gore or if you love fluffy bunnies, because I kid you not, some of the stuff in this book is just awful.

Frank, who's sixteen, lives with his father, some old brilliant ex-university professor. His brother Eric is in a psychiatric hospital and we begin the book hearing of Eric's escape. The story is written in first person and to be honest not much really happens. We know that Frank's's father has an office that he always keeps locked. Also, Frank receives crazed phone calls from Eric every day or two, frequently becoming hysterical and overly sensitive. All the while there are a good too many scenes of animals being killed and tortured, we have to listen to endless, monotonous internal dialogue by the incredibly boring Frank, which all culminates to what you think will be an epic struggle and battle but instead a huge freaky secret is exposed.


The Audiobook
The book is narrated by Peter Kenny. He is a master of many voices and to be honest listening to him reading in Eric's voice is eerie - he encapsulates the fury, hysteria and lunacy in Eric's voice, I'm not exaggerating, you can practically hear the spit shooting from his mouth as he rages! It's scary! Unfortunately though, the voice he chose for Frank was just so boring, coupled with Frank being quite boring it was like pulling teeth listening sometimes. 


The Story
I'm sure you can tell just from my rating that I wasn't a big fan of this story. There were parts in the tale that were interesting. For instance, Frank is evidently crazy himself. He divulges the three murders he planned and perpetrated as a child with a quiet detachment, and consistently shares with the reader his obsessive compulsive behaviours and his inability to control his habits.

Frank's OCDish behaviour manifests in his creating a sort of religion. Everything he does has, in his eyes, greater meaning. The animals he tortures and kills are always done in a ritual manner, he believes himself to be able to see in to the future with these killings. We hear references of his alter, the animals being called sacrifices, and his premonitions... there is even one point where he thinks that he can reach his brother telepathically and is pretty sure he did. 

I found the story repetitive and so frustrating. It was just a constant reminder of how nuts Frank is and how much he loves torturing things. Frank does not grow. He is stagnant, and bizarre, and I'm sure Banks thought that it would all be worth it in the end with the twist, but it wasn't. I walked away flabbergasted and annoyed.

The story's twist, which I shall not give away can easily pass even the most focussed reader, but the clues are there, all along, so let me know if you catch them. I unfortunately already knew the twist at the end and I am sure that it removed some of the intrigue from the book that others would experience. All in all though, I'm not a fan of excessive gore, or animal torture or child murders, so it was a difficult read for me, and the only reason I finished reading it was because I'd started. I also like to read writers that are clever about being pretentious... I don't like it shoved in my face.

It's a coming-of-age type of story set on a tiny Island in Scotland. It has pacing that is very, very typical of the Gothic. No goblins, ghosts or ghouls though I'm afraid! You may like it, I won't be unreasonable, I mean on GoodReads The Wasp Factory has done very well indeed and so it really just depends on your tastes. For me - no, I didn't enjoy it at all, it was like pulling teeth.

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The Shining - Stephen King

“...he looked to her like an absurd twentieth-century Hamlet, an indecisive figure so mesmerized by onrushing tragedy that he was helpless to divert its course or alter it in any way.” Stephen King, The Shining

Holy moly. I think I almost had a bookish heart-attack reading this book. 'Fo realz yo' I actually had to turn it off a few times and start listening to something completely different so I could ACTUALLY sleep (y'know, because some people actually have to go to work!).
I'm not sure whether The Shining just had a pulse and expressed my own deep rooted and illogical fears, or whether it was the coming together of the movie with the book that was freaking me out. Either way, I really was biting my nails for a week. It took me so long to listen to this, and the real reason, the honest reason was some nights I was just feeling a little too vulnerable (haha, I sound like a lunatic) and needed something light hearted. 

It was absolutely impossible not to think of this face every time
Jack Torrence was mentioned

So the book goes like this. The Torrance family, on the verge of being down and out, take up temporary residence in the Overlook Hotel. Jack, the patriarch, is the Overlook's newest caretaker. He is in charge of looking after the building and its grounds during the winter months when snow pretty much cuts it off from the world. Danny Torrance, a child with psychic abilities is not feeling too thrilled, and in fact is being haunted by terrifying dreams about the Overlook, and what may be waiting for them. Jack loves the Overlook, desperately, but the Overlook is a personality in itself, and it is greedy and wants Danny, and it will do anything to get him.

The Audiobook
Campbell Scott is the narrator for this book, and what a narrator he is! In fact, as a narrator I'd easily give him 5*, he is EERIE, fantastic, believable and I kid you not sometimes he was able give me goosebumps. In fact, it was weird, there were even times when I would swear he sounded a little like Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance. The presentation is excellent. I downloaded it from Audible and of course, as usual it was delivered promptly to my phone and I  enjoyed it. 

The Story
So, this story is really scary! Not because it is a bare all horror story but because it is almost Hitchcockian in its style, in that less is more, and it had me at my wit's end! Honestly, the parts I found so horrifying really were the parts that just did not reveal too much. Stephen King is just so good at doing it. [The part that had me turn off the audiobook because I was so freaked out was the moment Jack closes the door to 217 and King describes the hurried footsteps of somebody coming after him and then rattling the doorknob... oh my goodness, I almost died.]

The story unfolds at a leisurely pace. King does not rush his narrative at all and gives the reader plenty of time to be slowly terrified. I think the best part of the novel is that growing sensation of dread, the same way that Danny is teased by his dreams we, the readers, are constantly teased by King. When you think something awful is going to happen, sometimes you're right and want to cry a little, sometimes you're wrong and you curse King for freaking you out.

What I found interesting about the novel, in comparison to the movie is Wendy. Wendy, played by the wonderful Shelley Duvall is a semi-weak, floundering and unassuming character, whilst King's Wendy has a lot more oomph to her, and speaks her mind... a lot! Although I also greatly enjoyed Duvall's (Kubrick's) version of Wendy, I was surprised by King's version... and much preferred her. There are also lots of different themes and scenes that are added and taken away by Kubrick in the movie, and I know die-hard King fans spit on the movie but y'know what? I think it's an awesome re-imagining of the book. The movie and the book itself are so embedded in our culture now that we should all pay homage to its epicness. Forgive me Stephen King for only just getting around to reading it.

So if I thought the book was so epic why, oh why did I only give it 4 stars? Well, it's actually because when I completed the book (the movie ending is completely different to the book ending) I didn't feel wholly satisfied. I wanted something else to happen. It's not that I like tidy little endings all the time, I don't expect that, but this novel seemed to need it. Anywho, I loved it - and I hope you will too. Please don't message me with complaints about nightmares though... you take full responsibility for any reading you do... (even if I recommended the books, haha!)

Mini-Soapbox Moment
People kind of roll their eyes when you talk about Stephen King - it's as if you consider Mills & Boon novels to be high-literature. I think what is forgotten about Stephen King is that he is an artist, just a study of his language alone would blow your mind. If we forget the excellence of King's command of our humble language, then he can easily become a joke, and I think that's so sad, he's completely taken for granted because the majority of people (I've met anyway) barely consider the language when they read and focus on the story alone (which of course is important! But language is too!!). Rant over. So my point is, is that give Stephen King a chance and just look at the language and I promise you, I double promise and Brownie promise that you'll see King in a different light! 

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Horror Stories we Used to Tell Each Other as Kids

Laura Kasischke wrote an excellent piece for Huff Post the other day entitled Playground Tales: Fifteen Horror Stories My Classmates Told Me. She is the author of If a Stranger Approaches, a collection of short stories chronicling the way in which playground tales can change. In the Huff Post article she writes a list about the horrifying tales that she'd heard as a child. So I loved this idea and promptly contacted my friends and family for their own memories!

1. My best friend told me a story about her older cousins. One of her cousins brought home a wee-gee board. They started to talk to what they believed to be a spirit. Sat around the wee-gee board they asked for proof that they were really talking to a spirit and so the spirit answered that they should go check 'the mirror' (there was a mirror at the top of the stairs, a huge one) they walked around the house checking all the mirrors and when they reached the bottom of the stairs the mirror slipped off the wall and smashed down the stairs. 
2. The Three Fingered Doll: One day the father of a family buys his little girls an old antique doll. The doll's left hand has only three fingers. Each night a family member dies from scratches all over their faces... three scratches. Eventually they figure out that it is the doll killing them all, but it's pretty much too late.
3. Bloody Mary: I was told that a particular bathroom in our school was haunted by the ghost of Queen 'Bloody' Mary. If we went to the bathroom, closed our eyes and stared in to the mirror and say 'Bloody Mary' three times... she would come and slit our throat. Needless to say we never managed to say her name a third time.
4. Our friend told us that his big brother said that one day he was home alone and his parents left the hoover (vacuum) out. He swears that when he went to turn off the hoover he found that it was not plugged in... 
5. We had a super skinny neighbour. My best friend at the time, Rebecca, told me that her mum had told her that she had seen our neighbour eating mice out of bins.
6. Our friend mentioned today that he was told a story when he was a child that he's never forgotten. He was told that a man who lived in a village 'back home' wanted to build an outhouse. He chopped down a tree, and built the outhouse where it had been. One night he went to use the toilet and never came back. The family searched and searched for him. They went to the outhouse and found him there, dead, with his hands and feet turned backwards; killed by a spirit who had lived in the tree.
7. One day my best friend's brother was looking out of the window during a lightning storm. All of a sudden lightning struck the window, hitting her brother, and that is why he wears glasses (yes, she actually did convince me of this story at the ripe old age of 10).
8. A friend of mine was absolutely convinced that her house was haunted by three witches. One witch had just a pair of legs, one witch was a torso, and the third witch was a floating head, and she said that they would stand in her fire place. 
9. When I was a tween the band Incubus was starting to get noticed. One of their songs references 'spontaneous combustion'... there were plenty of stories of family members of teachers and ex-pupils spontaneously-combusting all over the place.
10. I had been told... many, many times, that when I pour boiling water down a sink I should pray, because if I hurt a spirit who is sitting there he may attack me.

I'm intrigued... what stories did you hear from your friends as children? Please leave your comments below, I can't wait to read them!

Props to Huff Post for being awesome and inspiring this post

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Warm Bodies - A Review

This movie was on my Upcoming Movies that Have Tickled my Fancy post. I had written... and I quote 

"I'm terrified that this movie is going to be some sort of crazy Twilight type of thing - but I'm hoping it will definitely be on par with Zombieland (which I enjoyed immensely). The premise is simple. The world is now full of, and run by zombies, there are few people who are actually alive. Strangely, a zombie and a real-life girl, fall in love and put in to motion a series of events that may just save humanity!"

and I was right... painfully so. It really is some strange rendition of Twilight. I find it quite bizarre that we're watching so many movies these days, that when we get down to it, are about necrophilia. 

So anyway, Warm Bodies. It's Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet gone wrong. R (he can't remember his real name) is a zombie who seems to be a little different. He has an internal monologue that is witty and hopeless but he is unable to express himself verbally and even finds it hard to do it physically. He's living in a world of zombies, but there are pockets of survivors around who are delicious and sometimes come out of hiding for food, medicine etc etc. Julie (the daughter of the president/leader of a group of survivors) ventures out with a group to find medicine. Unfortunately her boyfriend is eaten by R, and R falls in love with Julie through the memories he acquires from eating her boyfriend's brain. Love starts to change him and eventually it begins to touch the other zombies too. Suddenly a revolution has started that will change the future of the earth.

I found this movie a little uneven, and sometimes even a mess. There were some parts that were funny, and I did giggle, but ultimately it was slow, the CGI was... bleurgh, and unfortunately it really did border on boring a few times. The audience in the theatre seemed to really enjoy it. They laughed at all the right places (of course as we were coming out I realised that we were in a theatre with a bunch of teens).

Unfortunately the zombies just did not do it for me. In the movie there are zombies and there are  'bonies'. Bonies are what zombies turn in to when they give up... they kind of just rip their faces off and just become a bunch of skeletons who walk around eating everyone. It was all a little... confused. Y'see, at the beginning of the film we are told that zombies are slow, and take a long time to get anywhere, but then, if there is brain about they're suddenly sprinting and are super-beings. The bonies, they're fast too. Well, I don't know, the concept of the zombie had rules that they didn't follow and so as an audience member I didn't find them credible.

Although I had my reservations going to see the movie (originally we had been going to go watch Django Unchained again), it was interesting to see how this film kind of pandered to the necrophiliac swoonings of present YA books and culture. It seemed to be a movie created to cash-in on this buzz but at the same time try to be clever and Indie-ish. Unfortunately it failed. A sell-out is always going to be a sell-out no matter how you dress it up.

Nicholas Hoult seems to do as best as he can playing a corpse with little to no dialogue (although we do have the internal monologue playing over key scenes), but there are times that even he forgot what it was he was doing (maybe he was bored too). It's my opinion that Teresa Palmer is the star of the show, and that she really showed a brilliant range of emotion and carried the dialogue well. It's not her fault that the story didn't really make much sense. 

The soundtrack was actually one of its most redeeming features and that is something worth listening to again I think, for all of you guys who are inclined that way.

So my conclusion? Well, the best way to describe how I feel is disappointment. This really could have been awesome, but it wasn't. They even had a Shakespearean balcony scene which was an awesome nod in the right direction but otherwise it just didn't deliver. The action scenes sucked, and there just was not enough gore for a zombie movie. Strangely, although it was a love story - it was kind of uncomfortable and was far from believable  It is being commended as being something new - but really, truly, I did not find anything new in it at all. Sad, but true.

You may completely hate my review, maybe I'm being a little harsh? I don't know - but let me know what you think! Did you dislike it too? Did you LOVE it? If you did, I wanna hear why!

The trailer is below for those of you who are scratching your head wondering what movie I'm talking about!

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We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver

“It's always the mother's fault, ain't it?" she said softly, collecting her coat. "That boy turn out bad cause his mama a drunk, or she a junkie. She let him run wild, she don't teach him right from wrong. She never home when he back from school. Nobody ever say his daddy a drunk, or his daddy not home after school. And nobody ever say they some kids just damned mean. ...”  Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

This book was intense. 
Very intense indeed.

It tells the tale of the very successful Eva Khatchadourian. The book is written in first person through an epistolary structure. One of my favourite types of first person narrative.
Eva Khatchadourian is writing letters to her estranged husband, recounting certain moments throughout their lives together that told her that Kevin (their first child) was not right. The blurb sets the scene nicely, and you read the book knowing that Kevin was the perpetrator of a school shooting. She is writing two years after the fact, and throughout her letters she speaks with scary honesty about her feelings towards pregnancy, motherhood, her dislike of her own child and her inability to believe that being maternal is innate. 

The Audiobook
We Need to Talk About Kevin is performed by Lorelei King. She's a very well paced, very professional sounding lady, and does an excellent job of exuding a coolness that we would expect from Eva Khatchadourian. Even her male voices and the voice of a young Kevin are very good and believable. I bought this audiobook from Audible and it is only six and a half hours long (thereabouts) and so I found myself listening to this every chance I got; in a taxi, whilst cooking, during work breaks. The production is excellent and of high quality. 

The Story
So the story. This excellent piece of contemporary literature - that I hope, and expect, that in one hundred years time university literature students will be reading for a feminist literature seminar. 
I really thought this was brilliantly written. Some pieces of prose were just... so... mind blowing. So beautiful in their simplicity that sometimes I would rewind the book so I could listen to it again. 

This book is written like a psychological thriller, as well as truly exploring the pressure upon women to be excellent at everything... the pressure of being successful, educated, rich, but also be expected to work, have children, and raise perfect children. Eva is a modern woman's nightmare. She is the embodiment of the anxieties and pressures on western women living now. The fear that after having fulfilled all other expectations in life, a woman must then fulfil what her biology expects of her, she must procreate - and be happy about it, and must have a natural maternal instinct otherwise she is odd, a failure. The arguments, and points to discuss are mind blowing, and I think Shriver takes this all in her stride. There is no rush to the narrative. 

Eva, throughout her narrative, discusses her relationship in depth with Kevin; but at the same time, I read this feeling that I could not trust her whole-heartedly. I then listened to an interview by Shriver who perfectly reflected my feelings towards Eva. Shriver says 

'She’s not a liar, except in the sense that we’re all liars. We all choose to remember some events more often than others, because they play to our version of the world, and of ourselves, whereas the memories that challenge who we are to ourselves have a funny tendency to seep away. So naturally Eva remembers all the scenes in which her son did (or seemed to do) something nasty...' 

and I found that this was the most important thing to remember throughout the novel... that, truly, I wasn't sure if Kevin was born with a sociopathic personality disorder - or whether he was reacting to his mother's dislike of him and desperate for attention. Does she carry the blame solely for Kevin's oddness as a child, or was he born to commit those murders. It's the recurring argument of Nature Vs Nurture.

The interesting part in the book is that Kevin's father, Franklin, absolutely adores his son, and cannot see in Kevin what Eva does... and Kevin resents it. The morning before he commits the murders Kevin has an outburst towards his father that gives the impression that his father never really saw him for who he was - and that he hated him for that. It's very interesting.

Suffice to say, in my opinion, Kevin wins at the end. That is the saddest part about the novel. He wins, and yet, Eva seems to mend a little because Kevin has won. 

I won't give away the ending, but read it - let me know what you think. Did Kevin win in the end? Or did Eva rise above it all?

A review of the movie will be on its way very soon.

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Tucker & Dale Vs Evil - A Review

Oh me, oh my! This is another film from our most recent movie nights; and what a movie night it was! I've had this on my to-watch pile for quite a while but I could never seem to get around to it, but finally, I did - and this is what I thought...

This. Was. So. Refreshing.

I really enjoyed it. It features the classic horror line up... college kids, off to West Virginia to go camping in hillbilly territory, to have a good time. Oddly, two guys (Tucker and Dale... who are hillbillies) have bought a cabin in the woods as a holiday home, and are also travelling up to the forest to relax. Unfortunately, there is miscommunication when one of the college girls falls off a rock in to a pond, and Tucker and Dale rescue her; but the college kids believe them to be kidnapping their friend. What ensues is a comedy of errors where both parties believe the other to be stalking, threatening and killing the other. 

It is awesome.

I really enjoyed this. It was in the same vein as Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, although it is a Canadian/American film. It made fun of the horror genre without being as blasé as the Scary Movie franchise - and not so obscure that you don't really get it. It was nice to watch something from the other perspective... instead of crazy hillbillies hunting college kids, it was pretty much the other way round. According to Tucker and Dale, the college kids just surrounded their cabin and started killing themselves (it is very funny!). The great thing is, is that the film has also tried to inject a mystery in the plot that Dale (the not so smart one) unravels with the college girl he was thought to have kidnapped.

I believe we see crazy hillbillies in Wrong Turn, CSI and even in Criminal Minds. It seems to be a recurring theme that pops up in American films and so seems to be a part of the public consciousness. The film won four awards in a variety of categories. 

It stars the pirate guy from Dodgeball... if you remember him at all? He was also in Knocked Up - he was the boss I think! 

Anywho, I recommend this film for those getting together with their friends. For those who believe that hillbillies are just plain misunderstood, and of course for those who like to see college kids die in horrific ways. It's all very awesome.

The trailer is below - enjoy!

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Macbeth: A Novel - A. J. Hartley and David Hewson

“And still you'll hesitate to tell him, won't you? Why? Because you're a woman? Is your destiny such a small thing then? To keep your legs open and your mouth shut?” Macbeth: A Novel - A.J Hartley and David Hewson

Well good morning! I guess you may have thought that I'd forgotten all about you, but I hadn't. I actually just got back from holiday. And lucky for me, I took a few books and audiobooks to pass some of my spare time. 

So, Macbeth: A Novel has been on my to-read pile for a very long time. And I did it, I finally got around to reading it. 
This is pretty much the same story as Shakespeare's Macbeth, and it pays homage to his genius, whilst also using historical facts and records to cushion out the story. The writers (one of which is a professor of Shakespeare) unashamedly twist and change things - using their own creativity to make the story eerie and uncomfortable; and uncomfortable it most certainly is. 

It follows the same story - pretty much. Macbeth is a warrior, fighting for Duncan, the King. He and Skener Macbeth (Lady Macbeth has a name!) then decide that Macbeth is pretty much deserving of his crown, and so when King Duncan is invited to his castle for a feast... they both murder him, this in turn destroys both their relationship and their consciences. Macbeth falls to to paranoia, becoming dependent on predictions made by three witches... one an old crone, another a giant woman, and the third, a woman in a young girl's body.

This all culminates to the same ends as they do in Shakespeare's Macbeth, except we have detailed prose rather than actors doing all the work!

The Audiobook

Alan Cumming is the narrator of this novel and a fine one he is. He manages to differentiate between all the different characters flawlessly, and his female voices aren't too odd either - which is a nice change when it comes to male narrators. I think the nicest touch was that they actually had a Scot narrate the story, giving a touch of believability that is needed in the narration of a story such as this one. 

The production was nicely done as well, and we even get to hear the voices of the authors both at the beginning and at the end of the story giving details in to the creative process that went in to writing Macbeth: A Novel.

The Story
The prose is full of Scotland. That may sound silly but it's true. Sprawling, vicious and beautiful landscapes that directly impose themselves upon the characters. There is also a lot of pathetic fallacy, personification and an abundance of gothic conventions that just make this story - quite simply - beautifully written.

Hartley and Hewson do a pretty brilliant job of characterising Skener and Macbeth in such a way that as a reader you do really like them, and empathise the silly mistakes they make. Macbeth's paranoia becomes uncomfortable, not because we think him mad, but because his madness is a result from his fall from grace. Hartley and Hewson seduce us in the first few scenes, Macbeth and Skener having lovely characters and morals - and then we see the temptation, the action, the fall, and the decline. It is the love that Macbeth and Skener have for one another that when it self-destructs it is pitiful. 

There is all sorts in this book. There's murder, misogyny, feminism, sex, violence, paedophilia, rape, infanticide, crime, conspiracy, war, regicide, magic, mystery and romance - and all are developed and explored in a way that can really make the reader uncomfortable - but also, at times, was able to give respite to audiences.

The narrative is intense, as are the characters, and so for me, I really had to take short breaks as I could feel myself becoming a little overwhelmed. 

There were times that I could feel myself rolling my eyes and saying to myself 'this is a book for men' - haha, sexist... I know. I just found that a lot of the fight scenes were just needlessly long, and more for an audience who enjoyed the movie 300, rather than Shakespeare enthusiasts. 

So... as a Shakespeare enthusiast am I enraged at the bastardisation of his Scottish play? No, not at all in fact. I think this is an excellent resource for those who just cannot connect with the English of the play but want to be able to enjoy the story. It's also great for those who do not go to theatre, and enjoy prose instead. 

So why do I only give it three stars? Well, it's just because it felt... so... long, and at times I felt like I was reading it because I had to, not because I wanted to. And maybe, in a more sexist vein, I found it... very... masculine, and I couldn't connect with the female characters. But, I will say this, I will happily read any future novelisations of Shakespeare's plays. I'd love to read what they do with them.

But anywho - that's just me. If you liked it, or are planning on listening to it any time soon - then please, hit me a line and tell me off if I just didn't get it! 

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The Turtle Boy - Kealan Patrick Burke

'Even as they cast one last glance over their shoulders at the low, hulking building - the antithesis of summers glow - the school had seemed smug and patient knowing the children's leashes were not as long as they thought.' Kealan Patrick Burke

Oh my goodness me, what an awesome story!

Timmy Quinn is enjoying his summer holidays. He and his best friend Pete decide to go down to the local pond to have an adventure. Unfortunately for them, they stumble upon an eerie looking child... a boy who looks a bit like a turtle. He is dipping his feet in the pond, apparently feeding the turtles. This visit to the pond leads to life changing events for Timmy.

This is a straight up ghost story, and a creepy one at that. Congratulations to Mr. Burke, he managed to shake me right up! Burke's writing is just so precise, and to be honest is exactly what I want out of a ghost story. I really enjoyed the prose, Burke is an excellent writer with a brilliant command of language. There were a couple of times during the 'turtle judgement' scene where I felt that Burke slightly lost his way, but he managed to keep up the pace of the narrative and keep it nice and creepy!

When I first started reading it, I really thought I was going to read a coming-of-age story (bildungsroman) in the same vein as 'The Body' by Stephen King, and I guess that in a way, I did, it just wasn't a conventional coming-of-age tale.

In the true style of short stories many details of main characters are missing, and all that is left are the bare skeletons of the story.  The tale is polished, awesome, scary and quite imaginative if I do say so myself. The fact that it was free on Kindle just made it so much better, especially as my last few experiences with free Kindle books have not particularly been good ones.

This novelette is the first of a number of short stories featuring Timmy Quinn (and I believe that there is also a full length novel too), and I am more than happy to get hold of them as soon as possible.

Emma reviewed this tale a long while back, so I recommend you pop over to MabisMab for her take on this ghost story.

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Deadlocked - A. R. Wise

So I quite randomly came across this little (58 pages!) story, and decided to download it on to my Kindle app.

As you know, I'm not really a horror reader any more (but I had been a compulsive horror reader as a teenager), but I thought... hay, it's zombies right? I can do this! So, I sat down over a couple of hours and read this apocalyptic book.

It is written in first person from the perspective of Dave, and catches him at work when the zombie apocalypse starts. The rest of the novelette follows Dave as he tries to negotiate through the hysterical city to get back and save his wife and two girls.

It's a simple enough premise, and pretty much the same premise we see in most zombie movies and books. The zombie genre usually has little or nothing to do with zombies in themselves (although the Warm Bodies movie which is being released in Feb 2013 seems to be breaking that convention) but more to do with the survivors who try to continue living in a lifeless world.

So what did I think. Well, if I'm honest I found the first person narrative unbelievable. It was not the pace of the narrative that did it, I would expect the pace to be quick for such a short story, but I found the depth of character lacking and so I could not empathise with Dave. In fact, I found that I preferred Laura and her motivations and character rather that Dave, and she barely featured in the story.

Deadlocked is the first of a series and so I think I will go back to see just what Wise has up his sleeve and whether his character development and depth improve as the writing gets longer. I have a distinct feeling that the rest of his novelettes (it seemed too short to be considered a novella, but I may be wrong as I don't have a word count) will see him start to hone his craft.

I think it was a brave first attempt at delivering the theme to an audience and so the author should be commended; but the writing, in my opinion, tried, desperately, to claw at emotion and it just could not deliver on that front. There were times that I did feel the fear of the characters, but those came few and far between and when I read a story... I want to feel too. 

Interestingly enough, the end of the novelette features an 'Authors Note'. In this note the author tells us what he aspired to create, and why he did certain things. All I will say on this point is that it took away the mystique from the book and its ending. I have always been of the opinion that it is not for the author to tell us what he or she meant to do, but for the reader to decipher what the author did for them; if the author has to tell us what he or she had intended, it insinuates that he or she did not accomplish what they set out to do (as they're having to explain to us afterwards). 

So overall, I'm glad that I had given this book a read, and it does make me curious as to how the rest of the books will pan out, and I will get around to reading the others eventually. 

I'm currently reading World War Z - so it seems that I'm on a zombie kick right now, haha!

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Let The Right One In - A Review

I was fortunate enough to watch this last night. A couple of awesome friends came over, we ordered a pizza and settled down for this Scandinavian treat from 2008.
I didn't really know what to expect. I knew the general premise of the film but generally went in quite blind... and I loved it.
It was great.

The story pretty much goes like this. 
Oskar, a bullied, friendless boy, meets and becomes friends with the new girl next door, Eli. A mysterious, dark haired girl who doesn't get cold in the snow and vomits if she tries to eat sweets. The audience finds out before Oskar that Eli is a vampire and has been twelve years old for a long time. They fall in love, a sweet, childlike romance that gives each other what they're lacking.

So, all in all, it's what Twilight should have been, haha! It's how a romance may go between a vampire (a real vampire mind you, a vampire that can only go out at night, cannot enter a house without being invited, can climb things with scary speed, is always cold, cannot reproduce like humans do... and most certainly do not sparkle) and a human. Although I'm a big fan of Anne Rice's vampires, what I appreciated most about this film was the return to the mythological vampire that we grew up with. 

The film is slow but I enjoyed that there was no rush to divulge all the secrets at once. The camera work is beautiful and truly, I would watch it again just so I could watch the work again. Snow covered Sweden looks fragile and beautiful, and the story telling is as cold as the weather filmed. And though it is cold, it is the frigidity of the story telling that makes the film so stark and difficult to watch.

The boy who plays Oskar is pretty freaky though, if I'm honest. In fact, I found him more scary than Eli. Oskar is not a happy child, and the bullying has made him withdrawn and cold. He spends a few scenes in the movie pretending to face his bullies with a dagger. Lets just say, I watched this film imagining that Oskar was going to become A) a serial killer B) one of those high-school shooting people. Oskar finally gets the strength from Eli to finally stand up to the bullies who have been harassing him, this leads to a penultimate scene (the pool scene) that is beautiful and haunting at the same time.

Let The Right One In is a movie for those who don't mind reading subtitles, who like purposefully slow storylines, romance, those who love awesome camera-work, haunting landscapes and a REAL vampire. 

Once I watch the American version Let me In [2010] I'll let you all know what I think.

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My Love-Affair with Stephen King

I am not really a dedicated fan of the horror genre any more (although I was pestered by many an English teacher for never branching out of my little box of horror as a teenager), and it is particularly rare to see me reading things from that genre. I have a penchant for Gothic fiction - especially good ol' 19thC Gothic - but that's for another post! 

But you know, no matter how hard I try to fight it, I do love to read horror... but only if it is written by Stephen King. 

What I appreciate most about his writing is that King exhibits a freakishly absurd understanding of the human condition, and with perfect command, deciphers and reveals both the psychologies and motives of his characters. To put it in the most cheesy way possible - King is master of his pen, the pen is not master over him.

I'll give you a perfect example. King is the only author, ever, in my reading history who has ever physically compelled me to close a book and stop reading because I was so freaked out. That may sounds nuts, but I remember a particular moment in Salem's Lot [1975] that took place in a prison cell that had my hair standing on end! I closed the book and took a twenty minute break before I went back to it. I was overwhelmed, not just by the creepiness, but also by the very fact that no book had actually made me look away before. Under the Dome [2009] (though I would consider that more of a sci-fi novel rather than a horror) also had moments that chilled my bones, and characters so repulsive and uncomfortable that I would pause the audiobook to give myself a break.

King is quite simply a prolific writer, and can churn out a book or two a year. Needless to say, some of those books are just not as good as others, but his good books are just so, so good - I can ignore the bad ones. 

One of the greatest things about King are his unashamedly philosophical undertones that are present within his writings. King is a political-animal and this shows both in and out of his writing. Carrie [1974], Misery [1987], Under the Dome, Firestarter [1980] and his Dark Tower series [1982-2012] (please forgive my adding the Dark Tower books as they're sci-fi, but there are some truly horrifying scenes within it) all carry philosophical or recurring political themes.

From where I've been standing, and it is probably because I am biased and not a great consumer of horror as I once was, but the horror genre has pretty much stagnated. I've not seen any great morphing, either within literature or even on the big screen. Horror has had paranormal-romance grow out of it and leave the nest, it's had gore which is now a genre all on its own, but horror, horror is sat waiting for somebody to notice it. 

Stephen King, who is arguably one of the most well known horror writers of our day is not really considered high-literature. His books are not being clutched in the hands of housewives at books clubs, or had Oprah Winfrey jumping on her couch about them, but I believe a lot more credit should be thrown King's way. After all, some of the best and most horrific characters within our collective memories were his own gruesome creations (Annie Wilkes, It (Pennywise), Carrie, Big Jim Rennie, Jack Torrance and of course Cujo).

Books Mentioned

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Under the Dome - Stephen King

'We're a blue planet in a corner of the galaxy, and for all the satellites and probes and Hubble pictures, we haven't seen evidence of anyone else. There's nothing like ours. We have to conclude we're on our own, and we have to deal with it. We're under the dome. All of us.' Stephen King

I am quite simply a Stephen King fan. I sing it loud and proud, so it was only a natural progression that I would reach for Under the Dome [2009]. 

The book has a simple premise. A small town in Maine is quite suddenly disconnected from the rest of America by a dome. Quite simple really. This obviously has horrifying consequences as the government begins to realise that the barrier is completely impenetrable to all of their attempts to destroy it. What ensues is an uncomfortable read of how the townspeople of Chester's Mill suddenly turn on each other, and what happens when people stop fearing the law (think of Lord of the Flies by William Golding).
King does an amazing job of commanding his MASSIVE cast of characters. And basically speeds through the plot. The characters can be scary, only because of just how real they are. They can be difficult to read, as deep down, we know that people can truly be as described. This, of course, is what makes King great - he has such an insight in to the human mind, our capabilities and our spirits that his novels (even his not so awesome ones) always have believable, uncomfortable characters. What is scary though, is how we read the townsfolk basically destroy themselves and others because they stop feeling accountable. 

The villain of the piece is 'Big Jim' Rennie - the Second Selectman and downright control-freak. He does anything to keep his power, and even uses some Hitler-esque techniques such as employing his own police-army, organising arson and vandalism too, oh, and stealing gas canisters from hospitals (the last one isn't so Hitlerish). I have yet to find a character in any novel I have read that I loathe as much as him.

We are also introduced to Dale Barbara i.e. 'Barbie', who plays the typical 'goodie' an ex-serviceman who spent time in Iraq. He is in constant opposition to 'Big Jim' Rennie which creates such a jarring atmosphere that I found I could only applaud King. I wish I could write characters with as much believability.  

There is a recurring theme of hypocrisy throughout the novel, and quite rightly so. We see corrupt mothers, corrupt pastors, corrupt town officials and corrupt policemen, and as readers we become so drowned by this corruption it can create a sense of bleakness and a despair at the human condition.... well, that's how I felt anyway!
King also makes it a point to discuss the ecological effects of living inside the dome. With cars, explosions, pollution, fires and what-not, we read as the dome becomes darker and darker with pollution - and also, how it starts to become warmer, being magnified by the sun's rays. 

Throughout the read I was bragging to my friends 'King is back... King is back!' and I believed it. Until the end.
[Spoiler alert] 
Yes. Until the end. Until the only explanation King could muster for the dome was a silly ol'cop-out in the form of extra-terrestrial children, deciding to perform a little experiment by placing a dome over the town and watching how it self destructs. King reiterates this idea by likening it to children burning ants with a magnifying glass. This, I just could not reconcile with the rest of the book. I was quite honestly disappointed, and what should have been the climax of the book was a complete let down. It just could not stand up to the build-up. 

The sci-fi aspects of the novel really ruined it for me, but that is only because I pretty much stay away from straight sci-fi books. Although it is barely touched upon it made enough of an appearance that it overshadowed the rest of the narrative. 

My advice (to those of you like me) is this.... read it, please do, it is awesome... just don't read it to the end! If you love sci-fi of course, you'll (hopefully) love the ending and close the humongous book with satisfaction!

I love you King. I do. But I just don't do aliens... (unless it is Dreamcatcher... it seems I can only do aliens if it is Dreamcatcher).

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