Bookish Thoughts

I have to say that Slammerkin  was a bit of a disappointment. It wasn't bad, and by the end I even mostly enjoyed it. But after Room  and Frog Music , I was expecting a more compelling story, and it was just lacking. I suppose that's the risk of reading an author's works backwards. It didn't help that parts of the book were reminiscent of Alias Grace , another book that a lot of people liked that never quite grabbed me. Maybe it's the genre - murderous maids in the 1700s might just not be my thing. At least this one leaned into the guilt of the maid in question, rather than playing a coy game about whether or not she committed the crime she was accused of. Slammerkin  started slow and bleak. Everything that could go wrong for Mary does. Growing up poor, she longs for a better life, and she has the brains to achieve it if she only lived in a different time and place. Instead her desire for a pretty red ribbon ends in the peddlar raping her. When her mom discovers...

I've been meaning to read more of Emma Donaghue's work ever since I devoured Room a few years ago. I liked that novel so much that I picked up Frog Music with no idea of what it was about. I almost never do that, but it worked out great. Frog Music was a fantastic piece of historical fiction that's far enough outside my wheelhouse that I may not have picked it up otherwise. The story takes place over August and September 1876 in San Francisco. There's a heat wave and a small pox epidemic and amid all this a young woman named Jenny Bonnet is murdered. Her friend, Blanche, is with her when it happens are finds herself trying to find the perpetrator before he comes after her. Her quest is spliced with flashbacks, detailing how she met Jenny and the events that led to her death. It turns out that this is an actual unsolved mystery, and nearly all of the characters in the book were real people. There's a great afterward that gets into some of Donaghue...

Emma Donoghue's Room isn't the kind of book I normally gravitate towards. But after hearing Kevin's mom rave about it, and then finding it for a mere $1 at a used book sale, I decided to take a chance. And I'm really glad I did. This book is intense and disturbing and almost impossible to put down. It's a pretty quick read, partly because the language is very simple and straightforward and partly because it's such a page-turner. The story is narrated by five-year-old Jack, who has lived his entire life in an 11 x 11 square foot room. The room is set up like a studio apartment, with a bed, toilet and bathtub, and a small kitchenette. Jack's only exposure to the outside world is through the television. But as far as he's concerned everything outside of Room is a fantasy. Room is his entire world. Jack's mindset has been aided by his mother, a twenty-six year old woman who was abducted seven years earlier. She does her best to shield ...