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Jun. 1st, 2015 11:42 amCatch-up backlog booklogging: once upon a time, I was a member of the NYPL, and I had access to an enormous and beautiful collection of Barbara Michaels gothics on e-book.
Then, tragically, the NYPL realized that I no longer lived in New York and kicked me off the system. BPL, I love you also, but your Barbara Michael's collection is PALTRY in comparison. GET ON THIS IMMEDIATELY.
Before I lost my privileges, though, I read Greygallows and Be Buried In the Rain.
Greygallows is a Regency Gothic in the ultimate classical sense: naive young girl marries seemingly charming man, goes away to a big creepy house in the country, spends the next two hundred pages REGRETTING ALL OF HER LIFE DECISIONS. Notable for the ongoing theme of Our Heroine develops a social conscience and the fact that the for-real love interest is a super progressive albeit kind of mansplainy young lawyer whose main function in the story is to explain that, legally speaking, Regency laws are terrible, especially for women. The worst!
Be Buried in the Rain is ... less traditional? Definitely less traditional. Med student Julie gets bribed by her family to come stay with her HIGHLY EMOTIONALLY ABUSIVE grandmother over the summer after said grandmother has a stroke. She can't talk! How emotionally abusive can she be, amirite?
Meanwhile, Julie's jerk archaeologist ex is convinced that there's a secret Colonial-era village buried somewhere on the plantation and keeps turning up with grad students; meanwhile meanwhile Julie's jerk politician cousin, who's the one who talked her into coming in the first place, keeps promising to do things like get her a car so she can go grocery shopping! EVENTUALLY. MAYBE, SOMEDAY.
(Jerk Politician Cousin: You're heading out? Too bad, I was starting to get mildly incestuous feelings about you!
JULIE: .... WTF? WTF.
Jerk Politican Cousin: haha lol j/k, j/k! Anyway, our grandmother married her first cousin, right?
JULIE: AND WHAT A GREAT ROLE MODEL SHE IS.
I think the jerk politican cousin thinks he's the jerk arm of the love triangle, but honestly the archaeologist is the jerk arm, and the politician cousin is not even on the same geometrical plane, as far as Julie is concerned, and GOOD FOR HER.)
Anyway, 3/4 of the book is Julie, like, adopting a dog, and developing a friendship with her grandmother's nurse Shirley, and figuring out ways to GET OUT OF THE FREAKING HOUSE, seriously, where is Matt with that car? doesn't he know she needs to buy groceries? And, of course, trying to cope with her grandmother's still-terrifying influence. There might be a ghost, or possibly an entire load of corpses buried under the house, but this is not really anybody's primary concern (except for the archaeologists) until the big reveals start happening towards the end. I dunno. It's not a great book, and certainly not likely to be my favorite Michaels, but it's an interesting one.
Then, tragically, the NYPL realized that I no longer lived in New York and kicked me off the system. BPL, I love you also, but your Barbara Michael's collection is PALTRY in comparison. GET ON THIS IMMEDIATELY.
Before I lost my privileges, though, I read Greygallows and Be Buried In the Rain.
Greygallows is a Regency Gothic in the ultimate classical sense: naive young girl marries seemingly charming man, goes away to a big creepy house in the country, spends the next two hundred pages REGRETTING ALL OF HER LIFE DECISIONS. Notable for the ongoing theme of Our Heroine develops a social conscience and the fact that the for-real love interest is a super progressive albeit kind of mansplainy young lawyer whose main function in the story is to explain that, legally speaking, Regency laws are terrible, especially for women. The worst!
Be Buried in the Rain is ... less traditional? Definitely less traditional. Med student Julie gets bribed by her family to come stay with her HIGHLY EMOTIONALLY ABUSIVE grandmother over the summer after said grandmother has a stroke. She can't talk! How emotionally abusive can she be, amirite?
Meanwhile, Julie's jerk archaeologist ex is convinced that there's a secret Colonial-era village buried somewhere on the plantation and keeps turning up with grad students; meanwhile meanwhile Julie's jerk politician cousin, who's the one who talked her into coming in the first place, keeps promising to do things like get her a car so she can go grocery shopping! EVENTUALLY. MAYBE, SOMEDAY.
(Jerk Politician Cousin: You're heading out? Too bad, I was starting to get mildly incestuous feelings about you!
JULIE: .... WTF? WTF.
Jerk Politican Cousin: haha lol j/k, j/k! Anyway, our grandmother married her first cousin, right?
JULIE: AND WHAT A GREAT ROLE MODEL SHE IS.
I think the jerk politican cousin thinks he's the jerk arm of the love triangle, but honestly the archaeologist is the jerk arm, and the politician cousin is not even on the same geometrical plane, as far as Julie is concerned, and GOOD FOR HER.)
Anyway, 3/4 of the book is Julie, like, adopting a dog, and developing a friendship with her grandmother's nurse Shirley, and figuring out ways to GET OUT OF THE FREAKING HOUSE, seriously, where is Matt with that car? doesn't he know she needs to buy groceries? And, of course, trying to cope with her grandmother's still-terrifying influence. There might be a ghost, or possibly an entire load of corpses buried under the house, but this is not really anybody's primary concern (except for the archaeologists) until the big reveals start happening towards the end. I dunno. It's not a great book, and certainly not likely to be my favorite Michaels, but it's an interesting one.
