14. Gone Girl

By Gillian Flynn

 

21. Holes

By Louis Sachar

My daughter really enjoyed Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game and requested more mystery books for her birthday. I googled "best YA mystery books like The Westing Game" and Louis Sachar's Holes showed up as one of 'em.

The kid gulped down Holes (and The Tattooed Potato) not long after her birthday, learned in the afterword a movie adaptation exists and promptly informed her parents that we should all watch it as a family. Her bookish parents said, well, maybe we should read the book first... well, after trying to wait patiently for about a week, she pretty much demanded that we watch Holes for our movie night (double-billed with my choice for Gremlins 2 since Halloween was approaching).

I had never in my life heard of Holes the movie before, so I was a little wary until I saw some raving Letterboxd reviews. We were all pleasantly surprised at how good the movie was. I realize now the love for this movie comes from Millennials who grew up with Holes. For Gen X parents with a Gen Z kid, this made an excellent family movie.

I ended up reading Holes about a couple of weeks later, and I can now say the movie adaptation was surprisingly faithful to the novel.  It kept the non-linear structure where it jumped back in time to Stanley’s great-great-grandfather and back to current events and then back to the story of Kissin Kate Barlow and Sam the Onion Seller.  I was surprised that the Warden’s snake venom-tainted nail polish scene was in the book – it was so nasty how she scratched Mr Sir’s face with her painted nails!

I might as well write a quick summary:  Stanley lives in a big city and gets caught with a stolen pair of used shoes donated by a famous baseball player, only he didn't steal them.  He gets sent to a remote detention centre in the middle of nowhere that's overseen by the Warden, a wealthy woman whose family has owned the land for generations.  It's called Camp Green Lake because there used to be a lake over a century ago but it's now just parched barren desert.  The boys are all forced to dig one big hole each day to "build character" but there is a nefarious reason that only the Warden knows.  The land is perforated with hundreds and hundreds of five-foot wide and five-foot deep holes.  Stanley gradually gets used to the physical demands of the daily hole-digging and becomes one of the boys.  He makes friends with the very quiet Zero, a very bright but illiterate boy. We also learn that Stanley had a great-great-grandfather in Latvia who was cursed by a fortune teller before he immigrated to America because he broke a promise. When Stanley's great-great-grandfather was travelling from New York to Texas, he was robbed by Kiss Kate Barlow.  Ever since then, Stanley's family has always had bad luck.  Stanley's father is a struggling inventor obsessed with finding a cure for foot odor.  When Stanley finds a small object in one of his digs, this sets off a chain of events.  The reader gradually learns that there is a connection between Stanley's family history, the barren land at Camp Green Lake, the Warden, and the boy known as Zero.  Some adventure ensues, and everything gets explained at the end with a satisfying conclusion.

One main difference was that Clyde Livingston was a baseball player in the book, while in the movie, he was a basketball star (which actually makes more sense as basketball has become the more popular sport).  The ending was also slightly different.  In the movie, the storm scene was made more dramatic by having it rain down on all the characters at the Camp Green Lake compound.  In the book, the rain only started as Stanley and Zero/Hector were driving away from Camp Green Lake in the lawyer’s car.

The book was as enjoyable and fun as the movie.  There are many characters and a lot of stuff going on with the nonlinear plot that is fairly complex for a YA novel.  Sachar mentioned how it was important for him to make it digestible and appealing for a 10-11 year old, and he pretty much succeeds in tying up all the loose ends.  I can now understand why my daughter was so impatient to watch the movie after she finished the book.  I heard that Sigourney Weaver wanted to star in Holes the movie because her daughter was also a big fan.

Louis Sachar seems like a genuinely nice, personable guy.  I liked his notes at the end, when he mentioned how Holes was very popular at juvenile detention centers, and he’d received fan mail from the kids there.  He also admitted that he only learned that you can’t actually dig a hole 5 feet deep and 5 feet wide using a five-foot shovel until the movie was being made. There was no room for the actors to swing their shovels!

p.s. Also learned another piece of trivia while reading Letterboxed reviews of Holes: some people can't watch the movie due to a condition known as trypophobia: a fear of holes, or, "a strong aversion towards clusters of holes or patterns. While not officially recognized as a mental disorder, it's characterized by a range of negative physical and emotional responses, such as disgust, fear, and anxiety, when exposed to such imagery."

10. Enola Holmes: The Case of the Missing Marquess

By Nancy Springer

I had already watched the Netflix adaptation of Enola Holmes a couple of years ago with my daughter.  I enjoyed it, but I think she was a little too young to appreciate it.  I found this used paperback copy of The Case of the Missing Marquess at Chainon not long after and read it during my annual summer visit in Vancouver.  The book was just as enjoyable, though I can't remember much in the way of detal (I'm writing this review in 2024) except that it was a lot like the movie!

Anyway, I'm going to put this book in my daughter's bookshelf in case she ever wants to read it.  Leafing through my copy, I did note this one passage that I liked:

  Once upon a time—it seemed long ago, in another world, but it was really only six weeks ago—once, pedalling along a country road and thinking of my brother, I had made a mental list of my talents, comparing them unfavorably with his.

  Now, riding in a London cab instead of on a bicycle, I found myself compiling in my mind a different list of my talents and abilities. I knew things Sherlock Holmes failed even to imagine. Whereas he had overlooked the significance of my mother’s bustle (baggage) and her tall hat (in which I suspected she had carried quite a stout roll of bank notes), I, on the other hand, understood the structures and uses of ladies’ underpinnings and adornments. I had shown myself adept at disguise. I knew the encoded meanings of flowers. In fact, while Sherlock Holmes dismissed “the fair sex” as irrational and insignificant, I knew of matters his “logical” mind could never grasp. I knew an entire world of communications belonging to women, secret codes of hat brims and rebellion, handkerchiefs and subterfuge, feather fans and covert defiance, sealing-wax and messages in the positioning of a postage-stamp, calling cards and a cloak of ladylike conspiracy in which I could wrap myself. I expected that without much difficulty I could incorporate weaponry as well as defense and supplies into a corset. I could go places and accomplish things Sherlock Holmes could never understand or imagine, much less do.

  And I planned to.

10. Dead Calm

 By Charles Williams

Olman had been searching for a used copy of Dead Calm for years, and ended up buying himself a new trade paperback.  I realized this was the source for that Aussie thriller with Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman. I remember having watched Dead Calm on VHS in the 90’s and recall parts of it quite clearly, probably due to its streamlined premise and execution. It was a memorable thriller but I never thought to look up the American source novel.

 

What I appreciated most about Charles Williams’ Dead Calm were two things:  its efficient and economical writing style and how refreshingly non-sexist it was (rather unusual for a genre thriller published in 1963).  It also makes the story rather timeless, which is no surprise how well it adapted into a film 25 years later.  The major difference between the book and 1989 film is that the film is even more pared down, as it only features three of the five characters: John, Rae and Hughie.

 

John Ingram is portrayed as an overall competent person; both physically and mentally tough and fairly woke for a fortyish dude of his time.  His beautiful wife Rae, though less worldly, also demonstrates intelligence, courage and perseverance in the face of extreme situations. The older woman, Mrs Warriner, is a flawed yet complex and capable character.  According to John Ingram, she’s worth fifty of the other two men in the book, who embody some of the worst traits of masculinity, from extreme immaturity to toxic narcissism. They are exactly the kind of people you don’t want to be trapped with on a boat in the middle of the ocean, whether it’s in danger of sinking or not!

 

My only complaint is how the narrative is structured, or not structured. The pacing is quick from the get-go. The first chapter introduces Rae and Ingram alone on their honeymoon aboard the Saracen, and within the first chapter, the third character is also introduced.  This is obvs not a character-driven story, but still, a bit of setup would’ve been nice.

 

Then when Ingram boards the Orpheus and discovers the two people, Hughie takes off with Rae, who then becomes captive on the Saracen, leaving Ingram and the others stranded on the slowly sinking Orpheus. This is when the narrative is split between the occupants aboard the Orpheus and Saracen with the POV shifting between the characters on each boat as they struggle to overcome their obstacles.

 

The conventional method would be to organize the POV into separate chapters, or into sections within a chapter. However, the POV shifts seamlessly from one paragraph to the next and there is nothing in the text to distinguish each POV shift, not even a single line space to signal that a POV change had occurred.  At least, this is the case in the Overlook Duckworth 2014 trade paperback edition that I was reading from.

 

It was so disconcerting that I wondered if it was done on purpose to confuse the reader? I mentioned it to Olman and he had noticed too, though he claimed he got used to it after a while.  When I tried to look for an example of this odd editing choice online, I discovered that the pdf version I found used *** to demarcate the POV shifts!!!

 

Example: https://100vampirenovels.net/pdf-novels/dead-calm-by-charles-williams-free/17-page

 

So now I’m wondering if the lack of section demarcations was a printing error with this edition?

It does make you realize how bad formatting can have a detrimental effect on one’s reading experience.  But it didn’t detract too much from my overall enjoyment of Dead Calm.

6. Greenglass House

By Kate Milford 

I first heard of this book by noticing the illustrated hardcover edition for only 6 or 7 dollars at BMV in Toronto, and an award-winning young adult mystery... tempting.  I didn't end up getting it, and I slightly regretted it as the beautiful cover illustration was enough to intrigue me.

Then earlier this spring, I spotted a used paperback in a nicely built wooden freebie cabinet in my neighbourhood when we went for a family walk on Mont Royal – it must have been the previous month, so partway into the pandemic. 

I enjoyed it, as it was a charming, pleasant read. But I didn't love it.

 

2. The Cutting Room

By Louise Welsh 

I picked this up when we were used book hunting in Charlottetown at one of their many excellent book stores.  I think this copy was at The Book Emporium, but not sure.  It was big, with different floors.  I was upstairs in their huge fiction section.  Surprisingly I only found a few books to purchase, but Olman found a pile as usual. 

 I remember I also got a charming fairy craft book for my daughter.  They were cut-out fairies with cut-out outfits painted in a Rosetti-esque Romantic style.  We played with the cut-outs while was had an early dinner el fresco at a nearby brewery.  It was a pleasant day.

This is the 2002 debut novel of Louise Welsh.  It had an interesting premise, which was why I had this book on my list (which I consulted at The Book Emporium).  The narrative was competently executed but I didn't enjoy it as much as I had expected. 

25. Beast In View

By Margaret Millar

I was following a yoga video while Olman was bathing the baby when all of a sudden there was a loud boom and then everything was plunged into darkness.

My eyes were immediately drawn outside the window where just across the street a bright shower of sparks rained down from above like fireworks. Oil splattered on our poor neighbour’s black Audi. Turns out that the transformer across our building blew up. Perfect timing too, since this was the first cold night of winter (I think it was supposed to drop down to -15 C)!

The reason why I mention this event was because I finished reading Beast In View by candlelight. It turned out to be a cozy evening where we went out for dinner (shared a steak at Burger De Ville) and came home to read since there’s not much you can do sans electricité. Beast In View was a great read, even though I probably did not love it as much as Olman did.

It was Olman who happened to borrow this book for me when he was at La Bibliotheque Nationale. Since I’m a newish parent, I’ll let Olman’s review speak for me as well. But in a nutshell, the book starts off with a very intriguing mystery:  wealthy spinster, Helen Clarvoe, receives a prank call one day that impels her to hire an investigator. The story then evolves into a twisted tale full about a deeply dysfunctional family and the psychological (and homicidal!) ramifications that can bring.

… Then Miss Clarvoe stretched out her hand and Blackshear took it. 
    Her skin was cool and dry and stiff like parchment, and there was no pressure of friendliness, or even of interest, in her clasp. She shook hands because she’d been brought up to shake hands as a gesture of politeness. Blackshear felt that she disliked the personal contact. Skin on skin offended her; she was a private person. The private I, Blackshear thought, always looking through a single keyhole.

Book 37 – City of Glass: the Graphic Novel

By Paul Auster
Adaptation by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli

I had read Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy a few years ago as separate books (City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room). My review did not provide any plot summary, so I don’t remember much except the exquisite atmosphere of dreamy dread that permeated each book.  And that I really liked them. This turned out to be advantageous since the 1994 comic adaptation of City of Glass recently fell into my hands thanks to my coworker via Olman (the copy was the 2004 Picador edition). Reading the comic made me remember everything about the original novella as I went along, so it was almost like re-experiencing the story in a new way.

As Art Spiegelman mentioned in his introduction, I was impressed with how Karasik and Mazzucchelli created such an effective comic out of a strange and metaphysical work as City of Glass, which apparently posed a challenge for many to visualize (there have been a number of unsuccessful attempts to adapt it as a screenplay).

City of Glass starts off as a fairly straightforward detective mystery, though with a pervasive feeling that something is a little off. At some point, the narrative becomes unhinged and takes a turn toward po-mo existentialism, but compellingly so. I always wondered what City of Glass would’ve been like had Auster stuck to genre conventions because I think it would’ve made a great detective story. But that’s crazy talk since part of the story’s power lies in its deconstruction of narrative and character. After all, City of Glass is one of many novels where Auster explores his trademark themes: the disintegration of reality and identity.

Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli were able to take those trademark Auster themes and visualize them in comic form. They utilized everything they knew about the art of comics into City of Glass, but each panel is designed in a very controlled and thoughtful way.  It is a wonderful synthesis of two different but complementary mediums.  For anyone interested in a deeper analysis of how Karasik & Mazzuchhelli translate prose to the comic form, take a look at this blog.

If you haven’t read the original novel or the comic adaptation, then I would recommend reading the novel first then waiting a long while before reading the comic. Like long enough to not remember any details of the novel (say a few years!). But if you lack the discipline and cannot wait that long, then I liked what this Guardian review had to say about this little quandary: 

If you haven't read City of Glass, then you have an intriguing dilemma: not which of the two books to read - you should read both - but which to read first. I can't really answer that question, because setting them against one another, trying to decide which is more successful, seems pointless. Both are wonderful works of art. Both are worth reading again and again. And each complements the other, the comic driving you back the novel, and vice versa.