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!

Game Of Consequences

I know I said no more brain draining dark books...but I just finished this book and I need to work through how I feel about it, and this is usually the best way to do it.  The book is called Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates and I got it 'cause Hubbin had heard about it and told me about it and it sounded interesting.  After finishing it I'm still not sure how I feel about it, so I apologize ahead of time for the potential lack of coherency that may ensue.  But first, as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

The book is written in two ways, a first person, diary style coupled with a traditional third person narrative telling the story.  The diary portions are set in the present, with the narrative telling us the past history...It makes sense I promise.  The bare bones of the story is that 6 people with varying degrees of friendship get together to play a complicated game of consequences overseen by a shadowy organization known as the Game Society.  We meet Chad, a shy American who is at Pitt University in Oxford on a scholarship. He befriends the outgoing Jolyon who seems to attract every person he meets.  Mark is the sleepy scientist, Jack is the jokester.  Emilia is the principled conservative who tries to fix everything.  Cassandra, known as Dee is the free spirit with a hint of macabre.  The six of them interact in different ways with each other, the dynamics causing most of the humaness of the story.  The game, which is the focal point of the story is never fully explained, but is a mix of cards, dice, chance and skill.  It is the consequences of losing this game that are of interest to us.  The premise is depending on how bad you lose you have to draw any number of tasks of varying degrees of difficulty and the loser must perform all of them with the intent of essentially embarrassing the performer of the task. The tasks are all thought up by the members of the group and are specific to each player of the game.  As the game progresses the tasks get harder and harder.  The point is to get people to quit the game and the winner gets a prize of 10,000 pounds, funded by the mysterious Game Society.  Each member must also put in 1,000 pounds of their own money as a deposit with each player getting it back as long as they quit before they are given a task.  If a player earns a task and refuses to perform it they forfeit the deposit.  The game is played, tasks are performed, simple and silly and first with worse and worse tasks being assigned.  As the friendships start to deteriorate and the impacts of the players life start to get worse and worse more people start to drop out.  We end up with Chad and Jolyon as the final two players.  The characters seemed to have switched personalities with Chad becoming braver and more outgoing, and Jolyon starting to succumb to his mental

disorder.  Jolyon wants to quit, but is informed by the Game Society that whoever loses will then have to continue to play another game of their choosing.  Neither player wants to have to deal with the horrors of another twisted game and decide to have the final round 13 years in the future.  The diary portions of the book deal with the present.  Here we see a hermit Jolyon who has resorted to the use of mnemonic devices just to survive.  For example he sets out 6 glasses of water above 3 plates in his hallway so that when he is blocked by them, he remembers to eat and drink water.  He has many of these types of devices, some making more sense then others.  The other thing he is doing is trying to "train" for the final round of the game.  He is assisted in this by the reappearance of Dee, who gives Jolyon some tidbits about the surviving former players of the game (Mark died in an unfortunate accident that involved Jolyon and is part of the reason for Jolyon's mental lapse).  As the reader we get the sense that some of Jolyon's mnemonic's are not exactly the way they should be, taking his well ordered life and making it a mess.  Chad shows up, looking pretty good and the game is played. Chad informs Jolyon that he has actually been in town for a while, and that he and Dee (who he is now married to) have been messing with Jolyon's stuff, adding one more layer to his madness.  Jolyon loses very badly, getting several consequences that he must perform.  Chad however only ends up with one consequence, on that he must do before Jolyon does his.  Jolyon tells Chad to go visit his parents as his consequence, something he vowed to never do.  This is the one thing Chad will not do and he disappears leaving Jolyon as the winner.

Obviously there is a lot more to this story then I can get in a simple synopsis, but at the end I feel like this is the gist of it.  I mentioned before I have mixed feelings about this book and I am trying to figure out why.  In some ways I really liked it.  After I got into it, it turned into a very page turning book.  I wanted to find out what the game was, who the Game Society was, what were everybody's deep dark secrets, all things that the book kept eluding to.  Unfortunately most of this stuff was never really given to us in the book.  The book was mostly about bits and pieces and stuff strung together to make a semblance of a story.  I am not being very coherent here, but I did warn you :-)  Um hmm.  So the appeal of this book is that some of the ideas and execution are very original and the writing kept me interested.  On the other hand, there was not actually a lot of story in this book.  There were lots of little moments, a TON of interactions between the various group members...but not a lot of forward motion on the story.   In fact by the time I was done with the book, I wasn't really clear on what the actual story was at all.  I wanted to know more about the actual game itself, which was supposed to be the center piece of the book.  There were a couple examples of consequences, mostly the ones that had an impact on the group, but I felt that we never got the full flavor of the game.  As far as the characters went they were ok.  I liked Dee the best as she seemed to have the most depth to her, but in general the characters felt like stock representations of a college group.  Which would have been fine if the interactions between the characters had been a bit more original.  I liked Jolyon's mnemonic system, it's something I have never seen before, but again I felt it would have had more of an impact if we had known the history of it.  Chad should have been a cooler character, but again his transformation from shy awkward dude, to super confident game player was never really believable.  Over all I liked the idea of the book and what it could have been better then the actual execution.  This book was written by a first time author, and I will be interested in reading any other books he writes to see if his writing can live up to his fantastic idea's with a little more experience.  I give it 6 out of 10 death poems.  Happy Reading Everybody!

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?