Women With Issues And The Unstable Men Who Are Involved With Them

Hi Folks, sorry about the spotty posting, so to make it up to you let's get to a rambling shall we?  Today we ramble about one of the books I read while on my epic Texas vacation.  The book is The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.  I read it for several reasons.  One, the movie is coming out so I had to read it before I go see it.  Two, the synopsis sounded awesome and I was in the mood for a good mystery.  Three, several people I know had read it and liked it.  How do I feel about the book about now that I have read it?  Read on and find out.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

 The book is divided into three voices, Rachel, Megan and Anna.  These three women all have a direct connection to an area around a particular train stop.  Rachel rides the train to London everyday and everyday she passes an are where she can see her old house, complete with her ex-husband, his new wife and their baby daughter.  She also can see the upper porch of another house with a couple that she gives a made up life to.  In her mind, this couple is perfect, they love each other and they have great jobs and deep conversations, essentially everything Rachel wants for her life.  So pretty much Rachel spends her days on this train, passing her old life and fantasizing about others while indulging her alcoholism while pretending to go to work so that the friend she is staying with won't know how messed up her life is.  We learn that Rachel was married to a guy named Tom and that the two of them had been trying to have a baby and when they failed Rachel started to turn to alcohol to alleviate the pain.  Tom meanwhile started an affair with Anna.  After the discovery of the affair, Tom and Rachel divorced and he married Anna and had a baby with her.  Rachel, especially when drinking can't leave it alone and constantly calls and visits her old house and husband.  One day while on the train and watching her fantasy couples house, she is shocked and appalled to see Megan kissing a guy who is not her husband.  This moment shatters her little fantasy world.  We switch perspectives and learn about Megan and Scott, the couple that Rachel likes to watch.  Megan is a bit of a messed up soul, she loves her husband, but can't help but feel trapped on occasion.  Scott is controlling and is constantly checking up on Megan...which while totally creepy and unacceptable turns out to be a thing 'cause she can't help but cheat when she feels trapped and controlled.   Megan goes to a therapist named Kamal whom helps her start to unravel why she is the way she is.  After failing to seduce him, she turns to him as a friend and reveals how after her beloved brother dies she ran away and hooked up with a guy name Mack.  The two of them live a poor, drug and alcohol fueled life until Megan gets pregnant.  She has the baby at their home and does her best.  One night the electricity is turned off and being alone Megan takes the baby and takes a hot bath to try and warm up.  She falls asleep and when she wakes up the baby is dead.  They bury the baby and Mack leaves Megan alone.  Megan eventually tries to get it together and marries Scott.  Back with Rachel, she has a particularly bad day and goes on a drinking binge and ends up waking up covered in blood with a head wound not remembering anything more then snatches of the night before.  She is also horrified to discover that Megan is missing.  Rachel goes a bit crazy and contacts the police about the guy she saw on the roof with Megan earlier.  She also goes to Scott with the information.  Her and Scott start a bit of a weird and twisted sort of kind of but not really a relationship.  Meanwhile we get a glimpse of Anna and how her relationship with Tom started.  We find that after the affair and the subsequent marriage and baby, Anna is now feeling a little stuck.  She is also increasingly worried about the frequency of calls and visits from the usually intoxicated Rachel, especially to her husband.  She begs Tom to convince Rachel to quit, he promises to, but the harassment continues.  Rachel spends more time around Scott and his house, which puts her near her old house, which continues to freak Anna out.  Rachel continues to try and recover her memories of the night she was black out drunk and starts to uncover some disturbing things about her previous relationship with Tom.  After an episode with Scott where he gets violent and locks her in the room after learning she lied about her relationship to Mlegan, Rachel tries to get sober.  After a whole lot of seriously messed up stuff all things are finally revealed.  Rachel realizes that the night of her black out she saw Megan get in a car with her ex-husband Tom.  It comes out that Megan was pregnant before she died and that the baby was not Scott's.  After putting it all together Rachel goes to Anna to share that she thinks Megan and Tom were having an affair and that she thinks Tom killed Megan.  Anna has already pretty much come to the same conclusion after finding some things in her husbands gym bag.  Tom comes home and we find that he had actually been abusing Rachel any time she was drunk when they were still married and then twisted it until Rachel blamed herself.  There is an intense struggle and Tom ends up dead.  The whole sordid story comes out and everybody is left to try their best to pick up the pieces.

World Building - The world in which this story takes place is pretty small.  The vast majority is in the small suburban area around the Witney train stop outside of modern times London.  The smallness of the world contributes to the claustrophobic interweirdness of the story (totally a word a swear it is).  It is very detailed for all it's smallness and I felt like I could probably walk this little neighborhood in my sleep and the train was it's own perfect world.  It's a great example of how you don't need to be sweeping and epic to create a complete world.

Story - Ok here is where my opinion is going to start to diverge from other peoples.  I thought the story was kind of trite.  There was nothing really new or exciting, it was another one of those hey a bunch of messed up people making poor decisions do messed up things to other messed up people which results in all kinds of messed up ness...maybe that should have been the title of this post.  I was kind of disappointed I wanted it to be so much more atmospheric and a lot less tawdry and voyeuristic.  That being said it was a complete story that was woven together to make sense, which is better then a lot of these stories do so that was good.

Characters - Again here is a category where I am torn.  The characters where well written, but I hated almost all of them...not to the level of Gone Girl, but seriously.  These are people who are the root of their own problems, they are selfish and self centered.  They make horrible decisions and refuse to grow up and take responsibility for themselves.  They are fairly realistic characters...which may be why some people enjoy reading about them.  I know a lot of people like this in real life and even more that get shoved down our throats through various forms of media.  I just usually read to try and escape so reading about shitty characters who get into their own messes then bitch and whine about them just don't appeal to me.

Editing - For the most part the editing was pretty good.  The story was readable and everything ended up making sense in the end.  My only real complaint would be the dragging out of certain secrets a bit to try and make the story more of a thriller then it really was.  There were several secrets that got revealed through out the book, but no major twist so to me the term thriller is used loosely hear, but over all it was solid editing.

Relationships - The book for me was mostly about relationships.  Relationships between husbands and wives, men and women, women and women, people and alcohol, characters and memories.  Everything about this book was fueled by relationships, both real and perceived. Unfortunately most of the relationships in this book are at best unhealthy and at worst harmful.  The story was a picture of how people get trapped in bad head states and ensuing bad decisions that come from it.  There was very little in this book that hinted that these characters were even capable of attempting to have good relationships and that was just really really sad.

Mystery - The central mystery for the whole book is what happened to Megan.  I figured out who killed her as soon as I read about her sleeping with the "mysterious family man".  This was disappointing as I felt it was telegraphed pretty early in the book.  I wanted that mystery to be more...mysterious or at least not so blatant and trite...I think I may be spoiled.

Genre - I love a good mystery and thriller, but I am coming to the understanding that I should probably not read whatever genre this book is in.  It's very specific one...it's like chic lit plus mystery, plus really messed up characters.  Almost all the books I have read in this weird category just pretty much make me mad at the authors.  The funny thing most of them are fairly well written...I just hate the depressing out look on humanity that this style of books tend to have.

Overall Impression - So yeah...this wasn't really my style.  It was an ok story, but I just really really hate reading books that make me hate humanity as a whole.  I realize people are messed up in real life, I understand unlikable characters in books to further the story and add depth, but I don't want to finish a book and feel worse then when I started.  I give this book 5 out of 10 cans of gin and tonic and realize that I need to just not read these books so yeah...Happy Reading Everybody!

Aussie Flapper Detective Of Unusual Prowess

I have had the book Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood on my list for a while.  It is the first in the Phryne Fisher Series and sounded like a good time.  I actually started reading it because I found a series based on the books while my MIL was in town (she loves a good mystery).  After watching the show I was a little leery as it was a bit trite, but the book (as it usually is) was much much better.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Phryne Fisher is a thoroughly modern 1920's girl.  This modernness is helped greatly by her very newly acquired wealth, that her family has gained thanks to the Great War causing enough people between her father and a title to perish to finally gain it for the family and move to London.  Phryne does not however forget her poor roots in Australia and does everything in her power to use her money to her own ends.  In this vein she decides to try her hand at detective work when a family friend asks her to check on their daughter Lydia.  They are concerned because on her last visit she appeared very sick and are worried her husband is trying to poison her.  Phryne heads to Melbourne and secures herself the best room, in the best hotel, a stunning wardrobe, and the services of Dot, a somewhat naive girl, who none the less keeps Phryne in some sort of order.  Phryne uses her money and status to get invited to numerous parties and learns that cocaine seems to be the drug of choice among the elite.  Phryne meets with several people who have had lives of loved one ruined by the stuff, and she agrees to help them find the legendary King of Snow, who has a very tight grip on the drug trade in Melbourne.  Phryne meets Lydia who appears to be an overly clingy, nervous, socialite who requires attention at all time.  Oddly enough in between her clinging and whining Lydia appears to have a very shrewd business mind.  Lydia also confides in Phryne that she has been feeling sick after eating chocolates her husband buys her and suspects poisoning.  Phryne's friend, the female and awesome Dr. MacMillian assists her in patching up her friends and analyzing the various substances Phryne sends her way.  Eventually after much shock and mayhem Phryne, along with her cabbie friends Bert and Cec find the store front of the cocaine ring.  Phryne follows that product and discovers her sexy Russian dancer/lover has been caught and held.  Phryne gets caught as well and we discover that the King of Snow is none other then the clingy Lydia.  She had been setting up her husband to die in an apparent botched murder of herself, and to take over the business.  Phryne's friends come to her rescue, but discover there is not much left to do.  The case is solved, the bad guys are put away and Phryne treats EVERYBODY to an elegant luncheon to wrap things up.  She decides that she likes detecting and declares her intention to keep at it for the foreseeable future.

When I first started that book, I was a little put off at the sheer amount of costume changes that main character performed.  It felt like for the first two chapters that this was going to be a book about a fashion junky who just happened to at some point solve a mystery.  However once I got through the first couple chapters it started picking up in a really good way.  There were many things I liked and a couple of things that bugged me, lets start with the buggy stuff and get that out of the way.  The biggest issue for me was that the lead character Phryne was a super character, meaning she had little to no trouble getting anything and everything she needed to solve the case.  She had all the money, and no concern for cost.  It was established quit quickly (hey cool two q words in a row...sorry weird side obsession there :-) ) that Phryne had all the skills and training any human could possibly want.  She trained with martial arts masters, can fly planes, learned to drive on the race course, and all kinds of other skills that most people would not have readily available.  She was also of course beautiful, daring, charming an capable of making friends to supplement the very few skills she herself did not mysteriously possess.  This makes for a bit of an eye rolling disbelief when once again, she reveals some secret skill she possesses.  It made solving the crime too easy, because any barrier that was presented was so easily overcome.  This and the preoccupation of describing every stitch (including the underwear) of clothing Phryne wore, and everything she ate, got very tedious

sometimes.  All of that being said, Phryne was not a boring character, she was written with an irreverence and disregard off all social niceties that made her a crazy force.  I think in real life she would drive me absolutely crazy, but on paper she is a lot of fun.  The case itself was pretty cool, with two or three other side plot/mysteries and the 1928 Australian setting was unique and refreshing.  The side characters were especially well done, being varied and fairly realistic.  Each character had a fully formed personality and Dot especially added some great flavor to the book.  This is not a children's book in any way shape or form.  There is unapologetic sex, drinking, gambling and entertainment, there is blatant talk about desires and wants, and as an adult it was nice to read a book that did not dwell on these aspect in a sordid way, but made it clear that the main character was very self possessed and did not judge herself, or care if others judged her on antiquated ideals of purity and demureness.  Phryne was not stupid either, while she enjoyed sex, and alcohol, it was always tempered by her own intelligence, and her awareness that she not be used, or get herself into bad situations just because it was fun.  Overall the book was good enough that I could get past some of the more eye rolling moments and enjoy the ride as a whole.  I recommend it to anybody who enjoys a good mystery, a fun period piece, and a strong modern heroine.  I give it 7 out of 10 diadem garters and will be picking up the next book shortly.  A quick word if you ever watch the TV show based on these books, it is very very very different.  It keeps a bit of the flavor, but the show itself was a bit trite and predictable and is not a good indication of the fullness of the book.
How do you feel about characters who are super special?  Do you like liberated characters...or is too much liberation a bad example?  How convoluted is this rambling?

And Everybody Dies

I love a good scary story.  I love the chill that goes up your spine, the jumpiness when a door creaks, the urge to turn on a light after you have read a particularly spooky story.  This year I have been searching for a good collection of scary stories and one of the books I read in the never ending quest for a good scary story was Uncle Montegue's Tales of Terror by Chris Priestley.  It is a book of short stories, tied together by the over all story of Uncle Montegue and the stories he tells his nephew.  Here are some of my favorites in the collection.

Climb Not - A boy finds a strange tree on his new estate, and against all warning climbs it.  He is chased by an unknown presence and is ultimately killed.  This is the kind of story that I find scary, one where force is never seen, leaving me to imagine the worst.

The Un-Door - This story features the classic twist of the con-woman becoming the victim when a face seance team discovers that ghosts are real.  Our fake assistant/thief becomes trapped in a doll-house when a supposed fake seance becomes very real.

Offerings - Every parents worst nightmare comes true in this story of a sweet little boy who befriends a deamon.  When a preacher and his family move to a new town, their little boy turns from an innocent lad into a demon influenced killer.

The Gilt Frame- A story about a girl who finds her wishes are coming true in the most horrible of fashions.  This realization becomes even more horrific when she realizes that it is she, and not the girl in the mirror who is bringing this awful events about.

The Path - A boy who is becoming a man decides to leave his small village.  As he is walking up the hidden path, he realizes he is being followed.  He tries to out run this apparition, only to realize it is a bloody, injured, ruin of himself...which turns out to be a terrible foreshadowing of his own fate.

I read a couple of these stories to my Hubbin as we drove through the back roads in the middle of the night and the atmosphere was fantastic.  I found these tales to be moderately spooky, but at the same time a bit predictable.  I found it a bit crazy that in every story somebody died a horrible death...or became a monstrous killer...or both.  Over all the atmosphere, illustrations, and the writers tendency to kill people made this a decent Halloween read.  I give it 7 out of 10 demon bench ends.

What makes a story scary for you?  How do you feel about everybody always dying?  How dangerous is it to scare the person driving you around?

What Is Wrong With These People

Hola, how are all of you?  Sorry about the lack of post yesterday, but Hubbin (awesome and amazing person that he is) surprised me with awesome concert tickets and needless to say waking up was not priority after a wild night like that :-)  To make it up to you I will now present you with a rambling so chock full of rants that you will forget all about yesterday...I'm not sure how the two are correlated, but hey whatever :-)  The book is Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and it hit all my angry buttons.  This is supposed to be a thriller/mystery so if you have not read it yet and plan to please keep in mind as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

The book is written in three parts and alternates between the two main characters (Amy and Nick) perspectives.
Part 1 - Amy and Nick are a New York couple, living in a New York brownstone, with New York jobs, living the New York life.  Amy is vibrant, detailed oriented and sharp.  Nick is laid back, charming, and good looking...or so they try and convince you. Amy and Nick move to Missouri to take care of Nick's ailing mother after they both lose their New York jobs, much to the distress of Amy, who never the less try's to put a happy face on it.  Nick goes to work at the bar he and his sister bought with the rest of Amy's trust fund, coming home to find his wife missing on the day of their fifth anniversary.  This first part of the book show us how Nick and Amy met and got married.  It then progresses from Nick perspective to the investigation into his wife's disappearance and we here from Amy in a series of diary entry's dated from before her disappearance.  Several things do not add up and Amy's diary seems to contradict some of the things Nick claims or even seems to know.  We also find out that Nick is a bit of a dick and has been having an affair with a student from the local college.  Nothing feels quite right and as Nick follows the clues Amy left for their traditional scavenger hunt more and more weirdness happens.  As the investigation progresses it seems that Nick becomes the prime suspect as many of the clues start pointing to him, even though he denies several of them (it makes sense in the book I promise) it all comes down to him.  Eventually Nick realizes that all of the places in the hunt are places that him and his mistress got it on.  This realization makes him realize that Amy is trying to frame him for her murder...
Part 2 - This is the part of the book that reveals the twist...Amy is alive!  Amy, sick of living in Missouri and heart broken over the discovery of Nicks mistress decides to fake her death and frame him as punishment.  She had planned this for over a year and has a stash of cash and a plan.  She takes off to the mountains and rents a cash only cabin and watches the case against Nick unfold.  When things don't happen fast enough, she call annonymous tip lines to make sure her fake diary, full of incriminating information, and tidbits that make look like a monster instead of just the self absorbed douchebag he actually is, is discovered.  She gets her money stolen and is forced to call an old friend, Desi,  who is fairly obsessed with her to help her out.  He ends up keeping her a virtual prisoner under the pretense of helping her, which makes her angry.  Meanwhile Nick has become the only suspect in the investigation thanks to Amy's mechanations and is now desperate to clear his name.  As he digs into her past, he discovers that Amy has a truly vindictive streak and will do anything to exact revenge on people she feels slighted her.  This includes lying, plotting, and even hurting herself to get other people's lives ruined.  It does not even have to be anything big, even a tiny perceived slight is enough to set her off.  Nick realizes that Amy is probably still alive and goes on TV to plead forgiveness in a bid to get her to come home and clear his name.
Part 3 - Amy, who has been following the case closely is moved my the idea she can still be the center of Nick's universe and drugs and kills Desi and mutilates herself to make it look like he kidnapped and abused her.  She arrives home, trying to make everything OK with Nick (who is still a doucebag) and spins an epic story to the police to keep herself out of trouble.  Nick is understandably disgusted by Amy, but when he tries to get the truth out of her, or in desperation to leave her, she announces her pregnancy (accomplished using frozen sperm from an earlier fertilization treatment earlier in their marriage) and tells him she has been setting it up that if he leaves, or tells anybody what really happened she will never let him near his child.  The book ends with everybody miserable, trapped and unhappy.

Whew that was a long one, and does not even begin to describe the sheer unlikability of almost every character in the book.  I have read a lot of reviews on this book (after I had read it for myself) and I keep hearing conflicting opinions, so please keep in mind as I vent my own personal fury over this book, that it is just that, personal.  There are several issues I had with this book, but oddly enough the writing was not one of them.  For the most part it was written fairly well, the plot was laid out in a well thought out manner, and for the most part it even retained a fair bit of plausibility.  Several reviews have also stated that they felt that the point of this book was to show our tendency to try people by the media and how a person can be found guilty on no other strength then a few over zealous reporters who think they know exactly what happened.  I agree with this interpretation up to a point, but feel there is a lot of other crap in it too.  My first complaint is the lack of sympathetic characters.  I get the anti-hero, flawed character concept, but this book seems to have taken it to an unenjoyable extreme.  By the end of the book the only person you can even remotely root for is the horrible, selfish, cheating, self pitying, unable to take any personal responsibility, conflict averse, needy, smarmy Nick who if their was a moral and ethics jail would be it's primary inmate.  He is married to what turns out to be the manipulative, self-absorbed, vindictive, psychopathic lying, murderous, soulless, vapid, vain Amy.  These are just the two main characters in this sordid tale.  All of the supporting characters are also shown to be some combination of inappropriate, crazy, attention hungry, obsessive, slutty, stupid and a plethora of other undesirable behaviors.  This makes for a very uncomfortable, unenjoyable read.  There are a few minor characters that the writer attempts to inject some sort of redeemable value into, like one of the two main detectives Ms. Boney who actually believes Nick about crazy Amy, but overall their was a void of characters to give a damn about.  One of the other things that really bugged my in this book was the horrid portrayal of various women.  Again Ms. Boney may have been a single exception in this, but for the most part all of the women were displayed as the sterotype of all the "bad" things about women.  Amy was obviously the worst, woman who cried rape and violence with a disturbing regularity, undermining the millions of women who are subjected to this horror everyday, but are brushed off as hysterical lying
females because of women like Amy.  Nicks young mistress was portrayed as a slutty whore who did not care that she was potentially ruining a marriage, she was also shown as overly clingy and more concerned about herself then a potential murder victim.  Other women were shown as attention hungry, liars, weak,
incapable and shallow.  The men did not fair much better, being shown as misogynistic, violent, sex addicts who while justified in their woman hate, were completely useless creatures in their own right.  This may have been the point of the book, to show people at their absolute worst and what the results of this can be, and that is valid.  I however do not need to read books about the everyday depravity of people...I can turn on the news for that.  I don't minds bad things happening, especially in a thriller.  I don't mind unlikable people, especially if they turn out to not be the bad guy (yay Snape!), but there needs to be some light somewhere in the story, some hope, some goodness, if for no other reason to contrast the bad.  I have read some dark and heavy books and really enjoyed them.  I have read some fantastic thrillers and mysteries that highlight the darkness of humans in a really great way, but they always had some factor that I cannot put into words, but that this book was missing.  Obviously I did not like this book, which frustrated me 'cause the author seems to have some real talent, I just really did not like the content. There is a movie based on this book coming out and I want to see it because I cannot imagine they left everything as is 'cause it would make for a very tough movie to get people to buy and watch for a second time.  I cannot in good conscious recommend this book to anybody, but you all decide for yourself.  I give this book 5 out of 10 faked deaths and that is only because the writing was to good to not give it some credit.
Do you notice ramblings on books I don't like tend to be really long? How did you feel about this book?  Does a book need to have hope, or is it ok to sometimes make a point using hopelessness?  How much do I love my wonderful Hubbin right now?