Review: The Fall, by Bethany Griffin

Release date: October 7, 2014
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Format: Hardcover, 400 pages

Goodreads description
Madeline Usher is doomed.

She has spent her life fighting fate, and she thought she was succeeding. Until she woke up in a coffin.

Ushers die young. Ushers are cursed. Ushers can never leave their house, a house that haunts and is haunted, a house that almost seems to have a mind of its own. Madeline’s life—revealed through short bursts of memory—has hinged around her desperate plan to escape, to save herself and her brother. Her only chance lies in destroying the house.

In the end, can Madeline keep her own sanity and bring the house down? The Fall is a literary psychological thriller, reimagining Edgar Allan Poe’s classic The Fall of the House of Usher. 

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The following review is based on an eARC provided to me by the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for my honest opinion.


Review
I loved Bethany Griffin’s Poe-inspired duology Masque of the Red Death and Dance of the Red Death, so I was very excited to read The Fall, a standalone re-imagining of The Fall of the House of Usher. I ended up loving this book, but it took me a couple of chapters to get used to the structure.

The story is narrated by Madeline Usher between ages 9 to 18 and alternates between chapters during these nine years inbetween. As a reader, you see how different she is between these two points in her life and slowly begin to fill in the gaps as the story moves along and you piece together what happened. At times, these jumps between the two points in the narrative threw me because I left fifteen-year-old Madeline at a cliffhanger to then spend two chapters with nine-year-old Madeline, but on the whole it was a genius move on Griffin’s part and made it hard to put the book down.

Madeline is cursed, as is her mother and indeed most of her family line hundreds of years back. Her family never leaves the land the house is built on and they drift through it like ghosts, all lost in their own world. From early on, Madeline has felt the house like a presence. She knew what the house wanted or didn’t want. She explored it. She wanted to please it. But she was also afraid of and imprisoned by it.

The presence of the House in this book is total and eerie. It permeates and haunts everything, everyone, every relationship between the characters. And it drives a wedge between Madeline and Roderick, her twin brother. He can’t hear the house. He, unlike Madeline, is afraid of everything. And he’s the one who gets to leave and go to school in the outside world, while Madeline has never even been to the nearest town.

After the death of their parents, Madeline is all alone in the house with the doctors the family had hired years ago to tend to their many ailments and maybe find a cure to the curse. Nobody takes care of her. Roderick’s visits are few and far-between. Madeline has no one. So when a young doctor comes to the house as an apprentice and shows her attention even though his motives are questionable, what will she do?

I was horrified by the way Madeline had to live. Isolated, mostly uneducated (letters begin to move around the page before her eyes), left to her own devices. Especially after her parents’ deaths, I found her situation precarious and vulnerable. But as the tale develops, she begins to show incredible strength and initiative. She refuses to back down and succumb to the curse that has haunted the rest of her family.

There were many situations in this book that made me very uncomfortable, often not with what was said and shown but with gaps and silences, with space between scenes. The unspoken is at least as if not more important than what is actually on the page, something I already admired in Griffin’s earlier novels. The Fall was all about voices, about hauntings, about layer upon layer of secrets. Its unusual pacing develops a momentum that kept me completely wrapped up in the dark hallways of the Usher mansion.

While knowing the original Usher short story by Poe enhanced my reading experience of The Fall, it is no problem to read Bethany Griffin’s novel without any previous knowledge of the original story. Personally though, I loved how she picked up on and twisted several elements both from the content of the story as well as its narration. The tarn, the coffin, the fissure running through the house, Roderick’s friend, the overload of sensation experience by the cursed – it was all there, but had been given a new meaning. The Madeline in the short story is a mute figure, while Griffin’s Madeline finds her voice, her strength, her will to escape and live no matter what.

The Fall is an eerie read perfect for the season. Its atmosphere of doubt and dread builds up and shifts slowly until I, too, felt caught in the endless corridors of the house. As is typical of the Gothic tradition, the reader can never be sure whether what is happening is natural or supernatural, illness or curse, real or just the fantasies of an unreliable narrator. Even though I knew the Poe story, I could never tell which way the plot would turn.

With a complex cast of characters and a narrative that spans almost a decade, The Fall is a story of madness, hope, and twisted desires that will continue to haunt readers even long after they have reached the last page and closed the book.

Review: The Bookstore, by Deborah Meyler

Release date: August 20th, 2013
Publisher: Galley Books
Format: Paperback, 352 pages

Goodreads description:
A witty, sharply observed debut novel about a young woman who finds unexpected salvation while working in a quirky used bookstore in Manhattan.
 Impressionable and idealistic, Esme Garland is a young British woman who finds herself studying art history in New York. She loves her apartment and is passionate about the city and her boyfriend; her future couldn’t look brighter. Until she finds out that she’s pregnant.

Esme’s boyfriend, Mitchell van Leuven, is old-money rich, handsome, successful, and irretrievably damaged. When he dumps Esme—just before she tries to tell him about the baby—she resolves to manage alone. She will keep the child and her scholarship, while finding a part-time job to make ends meet. But that is easier said than done, especially on a student visa.

The Owl is a shabby, second-hand bookstore on the Upper West Side, an all-day, all-night haven for a colorful crew of characters: handsome and taciturn guitar player Luke; Chester, who hyperventilates at the mention of Lolita; George, the owner, who lives on protein shakes and idealism; and a motley company of the timeless, the tactless, and the homeless. The Owl becomes a nexus of good in a difficult world for Esme—but will it be enough to sustain her? Even when Mitchell, repentant and charming, comes back on the scene?

A rousing celebration of books, of the shops where they are sold, and of the people who work, read, and live in them, The Bookstore is also a story about emotional discovery, the complex choices we all face, and the accidental inspirations that make a life worth the reading.


The following review is based on a review copy I got from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.


Review
The Bookstore is a contemporary novel about a 23-year-old English girl in New York working on her PhD in Art History who finds herself pregnant and is trying to make it all work out despite keeping the baby. I’ll be honest – I usually don’t like reading about pregnant characters. It just freaks me out and I often find myself annoyed when characters suddenly gets pregnant halfway through the book. However, I was interested in this book because I love reading about bookstores and it promised to have a cast of quirky characters.

I did have problems with the novel, but the pregnancy actually wasn’t one of them. My main issue was that Esme and Mitchell just never worked for me as a couple, not even one of those that are often fighting. I felt no connection at all between them, so Esme’s need for him and staying in love with him and running after him even when he treated her like crap just never made sense to me. He was playing games with her, making her debase herself or guilt-tripping her into things, and very often she didn’t even notice, or at least not until it was too late. I wished she would have stood up for herself more. I wished she wouldn’t have thought that to love a person is to submit to them. I also thought that sometimes, she was really naïve and (sorry) a little stupid for someone of her age and education. On the other hand, she was a very compassionate, thoroughly good kind of person. Still, she sometimes had doormat qualities and that made it hard for me to really empathize with her and her decisions.

Mitchell was just despicable. He made Esme feel low on purpose. He was obviously more experienced than her – ten years older, accomplished, from old money, house in the Hamptons. It was obvious his family wouldn’t approve of Esme. Almost a cliché, actually, though there were some scenes with his father and Esme where the character gained more depth. I still don’t know what Mitchell’s deal really was with her. He kept popping up and disappearing and I basically wished he’d just stay gone.

Now, to something more positive that I really enjoyed: the cast of supporting characters around Esme! I loved her friend Stella – she was really supportive and always ready to pick her up, tell her the plain truth, and encourage her. Also, the people working at the bookstore or otherwise connected to it were very unique and wonderful characters. Especially George and Luke! The store was described in all its homey details and I wish there were places like that near where I live. It was really nice, to see a bunch of virtual strangers grow together around Esme and helping her support herself when Mitchell takes off.

I’m not sure what to make of the pace of the novel. Sometimes the switch between scenes was a little abrupt. Something was said, and I wished I could see the aftermath instead of it being the end of a chapter. I also think that some scenes could have been dropped to make the story feel more dynamic. Sometimes I wondered what it was all working towards, but then again I think this is one of the books where the journey is definitely more important than the destination. Most of the time I was happy to just follow along and see what would happen.

The novel also has ambitions to be Literary, but I’m not sure how well that worked out. There were a few nice references and nods to W.H. Auden's Musée des Beaux Arts, T.S. Eliot’s Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock (one of my favorite poems) and, I think, also to the ending of Joyce’s The Dead, but it didn’t really work for me in combination with the rest of the style and subject matter. Sometimes a character would make some profound statement, but it would stand out like a monologue, or seem a little pretentious, or it just didn’t strike me as something new that had never been said or noticed before. This is just me though, and it might be different for someone else.

Despite all that, I did enjoy The Bookstore, it just wasn’t quite as great as I had hoped. The cast of characters was diverse and engaging and it captured a New York atmosphere that made it easy to imagine myself walking through the city at Esme’s side. In spite of some of her decisions, I guess she is a likeable character and many other readers should be able to relate to her even at points when I couldn’t. I also liked the stance the book took in relation to her pregnancy and her decision to keep the baby and the consequences following from that. I’d recommend The Bookstore to those looking for a nice late-summer/early-autumn type of read that takes you on an emotional journey and leaves you on a positive note.

Have you read The Bookstore? What did you think of it? Did I just miss that spark of amazing? Or, if you haven't read it, does it sound like the type of book that interests you?

Review: The White Forest, by Adam McOmber

Publishing date: September 11, 2012

Publisher: Touchstone

Format: Hardcover, 320 pages

Description from Goodreads:

In the bestselling tradition of The Night Circus and Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger, Adam McOmber’s hauntingly original debut novel follows a young woman in Victorian England whose peculiar abilities help her infiltrate a mysterious secret society.

Young Jane Silverlake lives with her father at a crumbling family estate on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Jane has a secret—an unexplainable gift that allows her to see the souls of manmade objects—and this talent isolates her from the outside world. Her greatest joy is wandering the wild heath with her neighbors, Madeline and Nathan. But as the friends come of age, their idyll is shattered by the feelings both girls develop for Nathan, and by Nathan’s interest in a cult led by Ariston Day, a charismatic mystic popular with London's elite. Day encourages his followers to explore dream manipulation, with the goal of discovering a new virtual reality, a place he calls the Empyrean.    
 

A year later, Nathan has vanished, and the famed Inspector Vidocq arrives in London to untangle the events that led up to Nathan’s disappearance. As a sinister truth emerges, Jane realizes she must discover the origins of her talent and use it to find Nathan herself, before it’s too late.

Adam McOmber, whose short story collection This New and Poisonous Air earned glowing praise for its evocative prose, here reveals a gift for fantastical twists and dark turns that literary fans will relish.

The following review is based on an advance copy the publisher provided for me via NetGalley and states my honest impression of the book.

Review (no spoilers):

The White Forest is unlike any book I have read before, and I’d be hard pressed to categorize it. Part mystery or detective novel, part coming-of-age story, part fantasy, the novel is written in the literary tone and using many of the conventions of the Victorian epoch where it is set.

The reader meets Jane Silverlake, the first person narrator, several weeks after the disappearance of her close friend Nathan Ashe. The story of his disappearance and the subsequent investigation and search for him is told alternately in the present and in flashbacks to the time when Jane, her best and only friend Maddy, and Nathan first met years ago as well as to the weeks shortly before his disappearance. As the tale unravels, I was constantly torn between empathy for Jane (for example when we learn how she is treated by some of the staff as well as her general isolation) and the feeling that there was something sinister about her, that she was hiding something from both the reader and herself.

Jane’s ability to feel the souls of man-made objects emerged shortly after her mother’s death. They assault her mind with flashes of images or sounds, sometimes to the point where being inside her own home becomes unbearable and she seeks refuge in the nature of Hampstead Heath. While her friend Maddy feels uneasy about her ability and calls it a disease, Nathan is fascinated and often asks her to hold his hand so she can transfer the experience to him. He also wants her to experiment with her talent and develop it. As the story progresses and the young people grow up, it becomes clear that their friendly triangle transforms into an unhealthy power-dynamic of half-hidden rivalry, envy, and betrayal.

Before his disappearance, Nathan had fallen in with a man called Ariston Day who leads a cult or secret society in Southwark and lures in the sons of wealthy aristocrats with promises of leading them to a place called the Empyrean, a sort of earthly paradise where life will be like before the Fall. Day is an elusive and mysterious character who experiments with both magic and science and has no scruples when it comes to achieving his goals. Because of Nathan’s indiscreetness, Day has heard of Jane’s talents and wants to use them for his own ends. The mixture of fear and allure that draws in his followers can definitely be felt by the reader as well.

Adam McOmbers prose is gorgeous. There are so many hidden undertones and layers to his writing, sometimes with and sometimes without the knowledge of the characters who utter his words. The Victorian world he recreated is realistic and magical all at once and incorporates many of the typical and often contradictory traits of that society: a delight in mysticism, a simultaneous belief in science, the new technique of photography, the importance of reputation vs. what went on behind closed doors anyway, the roles and opportunities open to women. As a lover of the history of that era, reading this novel was a real delight. I was never quite sure where Jane’s journey towards the recovery of her friend as well as her own self-discovery would end up.

I would recommend The White Forest to a more mature YA or adult audience because of its complexity especially as it approaches the ending. A knowledge of English literary tradition enriches the reading but is not necessary – anyone looking for something truly different in the fantasy or literary genre can enjoy this novel and the uniqueness of its world, plot and style.

I am awed. I’d actually rather write a literary essay on this one than a review.

Have you had the chance to read White Forest early? Is this something you think you might enjoy? As always, feel free to comment :)