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Jul. 19th, 2019 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsIt's been a long time since I last read of Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock, so maybe this comparison wouldn't hold up if I reread it, but I spent a lot of Audrey Erskine Lindop's I Start Counting feeling like I was reading a sort of funhouse mirror version of Fire and Hemlock - variation on the theme of So You're A Clever And Imaginative Teen Girl And Then Things Got Weird, except instead of being a fantasy novel about fairies and family and obligation, I Start Counting is a thriller ... about a serial killer .......
OK yes I know, BUT, hear me out, both books are thematically concerned with:
- nostalgia and memory and weird haunted houses in postwar suburban Britain
- codependent, thorny friendships between girls on the cusp of adolescence
- the intense way teenage girls sometimes feel about adult men who were kind to them as children and how it makes EVERYONE VERY UNCOMFORTABLE
... and I, too, am uncomfortable! but I also find it kind of fascinating how Audrey Erskine Lindop comes back to this theme again and again, and always walks this very careful line; the teen girls are always like "I am a woman in love! my feelings are real and valid!" and the adults on whom they are crushing are always like "HARD YIKES," and then a secondary character will be like "well ok but, you know, they have boobs now, you might be into them?" and the adult will be like "I CARE FOR THEM DEEPLY AS THE CHILD THAT THEY ARE, LET US NOT INTERACT UNTIL THEY HAVE OUTGROWN THIS UNFORTUNATE IRRATIONAL PHASE" and then the girl is like "okay, but, consider: that will never happen," and then plot happens and the narrative resolutely refuses to collapse the emotional tension. I'm always afraid, in reading, that her books will go full Tom/Polly or Daine/Numair or Gigi or [insert five million other examples that romanticize this kind of relationship here], and they never do! Unlike many of the beloved authors of our youth, Audrey Erskine Lindop knows it's weird and uncomfortable! and in this book in particular she's just setting up camp in that weird and uncomfortable place.
Anyway the actual plot of I Start Counting is that fourteen-year-old protagonist Wynne has been noticing that her much-older adopted stepbrother George, who has always been her favorite person in ways that got weirder as she got older, is acting strange and avoidant. While visiting their old house -- which for her symbolizes the Time Before Adolescence Hit And Things Got Weird but for George symbolizes The Time His Fiancee Died In A Tragic Hit-And-Run -- she stumbles across some clues that might indicate that he is actually the serial killer who's been on the loose!
Wynne subsequently decides that the only possible course of action is to investigate the serial killings herself, while burying all possible evidence that might implicate George. This all goes ... not as terribly as it could, honestly ... but people do die ... so that's not great ...... anyway being a teen girl is really difficult, is the thing. You just have so many feelings!
For the curious: it turns out George is not a serial killer, he just has a wildly self-destructive girlfriend and the bloody clothes etc. came from attempts to stop her suicide attempts. The girlfriend sadly does not make it to the end of the book; neither does Wynne's best friend, who was sort of awful but only because she too was coping badly with the relentless onslaught of adolescence.
Wynne herself narrowly escapes being serial-killed and instead gets several months in juvie for destroying evidence. She'll probably recover! Her relationship with George may not! Tough to come back from "I accidentally got my best friend killed because I thought you were a serial killer." Growing up is rough.
OK yes I know, BUT, hear me out, both books are thematically concerned with:
- nostalgia and memory and weird haunted houses in postwar suburban Britain
- codependent, thorny friendships between girls on the cusp of adolescence
- the intense way teenage girls sometimes feel about adult men who were kind to them as children and how it makes EVERYONE VERY UNCOMFORTABLE
... and I, too, am uncomfortable! but I also find it kind of fascinating how Audrey Erskine Lindop comes back to this theme again and again, and always walks this very careful line; the teen girls are always like "I am a woman in love! my feelings are real and valid!" and the adults on whom they are crushing are always like "HARD YIKES," and then a secondary character will be like "well ok but, you know, they have boobs now, you might be into them?" and the adult will be like "I CARE FOR THEM DEEPLY AS THE CHILD THAT THEY ARE, LET US NOT INTERACT UNTIL THEY HAVE OUTGROWN THIS UNFORTUNATE IRRATIONAL PHASE" and then the girl is like "okay, but, consider: that will never happen," and then plot happens and the narrative resolutely refuses to collapse the emotional tension. I'm always afraid, in reading, that her books will go full Tom/Polly or Daine/Numair or Gigi or [insert five million other examples that romanticize this kind of relationship here], and they never do! Unlike many of the beloved authors of our youth, Audrey Erskine Lindop knows it's weird and uncomfortable! and in this book in particular she's just setting up camp in that weird and uncomfortable place.
Anyway the actual plot of I Start Counting is that fourteen-year-old protagonist Wynne has been noticing that her much-older adopted stepbrother George, who has always been her favorite person in ways that got weirder as she got older, is acting strange and avoidant. While visiting their old house -- which for her symbolizes the Time Before Adolescence Hit And Things Got Weird but for George symbolizes The Time His Fiancee Died In A Tragic Hit-And-Run -- she stumbles across some clues that might indicate that he is actually the serial killer who's been on the loose!
Wynne subsequently decides that the only possible course of action is to investigate the serial killings herself, while burying all possible evidence that might implicate George. This all goes ... not as terribly as it could, honestly ... but people do die ... so that's not great ...... anyway being a teen girl is really difficult, is the thing. You just have so many feelings!
For the curious: it turns out George is not a serial killer, he just has a wildly self-destructive girlfriend and the bloody clothes etc. came from attempts to stop her suicide attempts. The girlfriend sadly does not make it to the end of the book; neither does Wynne's best friend, who was sort of awful but only because she too was coping badly with the relentless onslaught of adolescence.
Wynne herself narrowly escapes being serial-killed and instead gets several months in juvie for destroying evidence. She'll probably recover! Her relationship with George may not! Tough to come back from "I accidentally got my best friend killed because I thought you were a serial killer." Growing up is rough.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-19 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-20 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-20 02:33 am (UTC)With Jenny Agutter! I've never seen it.
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Date: 2019-07-19 11:44 pm (UTC)George did also think his half-brother might be the killer, so he doesn't have much room to throw stones.
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Date: 2019-07-20 02:09 am (UTC)I would honestly take your copy if you want to get rid of it, even though I've already read it and it's far from my favorite Lindop; at this point I feel sort of an urge to develop as much of a complete collection as possible. What was the other thing you were going to give me, by the way? This is relevant because I will be in NYC next Wednesday/Thursday/Friday!
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Date: 2019-07-24 05:03 pm (UTC)I haven't read The Smile of the Stranger yet, but of the rest, the stand-out is definitely The Embroidered Sunset, with Voices in an Empty House a bit behind. Fortune Hunters and Herondale are fairly typical Gothics -- a little more cockamamie than usual, maybe, but not the full-on Aiken experience.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-24 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-20 03:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-20 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-04 08:43 am (UTC)I meant to mention.
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Date: 2019-08-05 01:02 pm (UTC)I do feel like there was definitely a time when this was an accepted romantic trope that we have now collectively and thankfully more or less pivoted away from, which honestly makes me slightly the more impressed that Lindop makes it so uncomfortable ...
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 04:08 pm (UTC)I feel like the Technically Legal Reveal is a lot of the same species as the ending of Twelfth Night, where "Dude! You are a totally different person than I'd thought (and we may or may not have actually met before marrying), but we love each other and we're going to be so happy!" is a plausible romantic ending as opposed to an excuse for four or five people to stand around processing until the curtain falls, but it depends on very different assumptions about what actually makes a relationship work than I think most audiences run on nowadays, like boundaries.
which honestly makes me slightly the more impressed that Lindop makes it so uncomfortable ...
Agreed, actually. She was writing through a couple of prime decades for the alternative.
I was really upset by it as a younger reader, but as an adult I find it fascinating that the character who declared his intention to "wait" for twelve-year-old Emily in Emily of New Moon (1923) turns out over the course of the trilogy to be kind of a dumpster fire as a potential partner or even friend.