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Oct. 20th, 2019 09:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThe Haunting of Maddy Clare is a book with a lot of elements I really enjoyed, slapped together in a way that doesn't really create a concrete whole. I still more or less enjoyed reading it because I like all the ingredients, but I wouldn't necessarily vote for it to win on Master Chef, you know?
(ETA: ...I wrote this booklog and this sentence and then immediately afterwards found out that the book won several RITA awards. Uh, that was not an intentional reference! But I'm still a little surprised!)
The ingredient list:
- veterans with PTSD who met during WWI and are driven to investigate the paranormal by the empty lack of ghosts on the battlefield
- a drab, struggling stenographer heroine who gets hired out to assist the ghost hunters by her temp agency
- the angry ghost of a servant girl out for revenge, much to the dismay of the elderly lady who employed her, who was fond of her and is very sad that she's dead but also wishes she'd stop throwing undead temper tantrums in the barn
- a romance between two people haunted metaphorically by their past traumas and literally by this actual completely unrelated ghost
Setting ghost stories amid the Lost Generation is a very evocative idea for obvious reasons, and telling ghost stories about the scars left by the patriarchy and the abuses of the class system is a good idea for obvious reasons, and having your characters fall in love while they investigate a ghost is a fun idea for tropey reasons, but it felt a bit like Simone St. James got to that point and didn't do much of the rest of the work to connect any of the dots together. Everyone in the book is haunted by one thing or another, but none of those things actually resonate with each other -- and that might be OK if it felt like that was the point, you can tell an interesting story about the individuality and loneliness of trauma, but the book doesn't quite get there either.
(Also I did have to stop and laugh when our heroine Sarah Piper, who's been crushing on Ghost Hunter A -- a charming rich eccentric -- accidentally walks in on Ghost Hunter B -- his broody scarred technician -- in the bathroom with his shirt off and is immediately like "OH WAIT NO HE'S THE ONE." It's okay, Sarah, it doesn't have to be an immediate true unspoken connection, it can just be thirst.)
Anyway if someone knows of a book that uses similar ingredients to make a more coherent dish, please let me know, I would love to read some more good 1920s ghost stories.
(ETA: ...I wrote this booklog and this sentence and then immediately afterwards found out that the book won several RITA awards. Uh, that was not an intentional reference! But I'm still a little surprised!)
The ingredient list:
- veterans with PTSD who met during WWI and are driven to investigate the paranormal by the empty lack of ghosts on the battlefield
- a drab, struggling stenographer heroine who gets hired out to assist the ghost hunters by her temp agency
- the angry ghost of a servant girl out for revenge, much to the dismay of the elderly lady who employed her, who was fond of her and is very sad that she's dead but also wishes she'd stop throwing undead temper tantrums in the barn
- a romance between two people haunted metaphorically by their past traumas and literally by this actual completely unrelated ghost
Setting ghost stories amid the Lost Generation is a very evocative idea for obvious reasons, and telling ghost stories about the scars left by the patriarchy and the abuses of the class system is a good idea for obvious reasons, and having your characters fall in love while they investigate a ghost is a fun idea for tropey reasons, but it felt a bit like Simone St. James got to that point and didn't do much of the rest of the work to connect any of the dots together. Everyone in the book is haunted by one thing or another, but none of those things actually resonate with each other -- and that might be OK if it felt like that was the point, you can tell an interesting story about the individuality and loneliness of trauma, but the book doesn't quite get there either.
(Also I did have to stop and laugh when our heroine Sarah Piper, who's been crushing on Ghost Hunter A -- a charming rich eccentric -- accidentally walks in on Ghost Hunter B -- his broody scarred technician -- in the bathroom with his shirt off and is immediately like "OH WAIT NO HE'S THE ONE." It's okay, Sarah, it doesn't have to be an immediate true unspoken connection, it can just be thirst.)
Anyway if someone knows of a book that uses similar ingredients to make a more coherent dish, please let me know, I would love to read some more good 1920s ghost stories.
