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Writer in the Garret

~ A writer living one word at a time

Writer in the Garret

Category Archives: Books I like

Summertime, when the reading is…wonderful

05 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in books, Books I like, Reading

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Reading

Sunrise at Haystack Rock on Cannon Beach

Sunrise at Haystack Rock on Cannon Beach Oregon

 

I know, I know. I said I was going to get back to the regular blog posts, but then we hit June. We’re talking graduations, birthdays, anniversaries…and did I mention that my sweet husband and I celebrated 50 years and a few lousy months together? That, too.

Anyway, during all this marking of Important Occasions, I’ve come across one of the best writers I’ve ever read. Louise Perry is Canadian and writes the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache mysteries. I haven’t been this excited since I read Dorothy Dunnett’s books. Perry is a superb writer and plotter, and I’m in love with her characters. I just finished Book 9 of the series and can’t wait to begin Book 10. (I came up to my computer to pay bills and need to get downstairs to watch a movie with my hubs. Will include specific titles next time.)

One of the best things ever is to live in another world created by a first-class writer. I’m having such a great time hanging out with Chief Gamache. Come join me!

And more soon!

 

 

 

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Dino in the rye…

17 Thursday May 2018

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Books I like, Life

≈ Leave a comment

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Literature

Field of rye

Just finished rereading Catcher in the Rye. I loved that book as I first read it a hundred years ago, when it gave me a lump in the throat I carried around for a long time. I wondered how I’d react to it now that I’m an old crock.  The lump is back and who knows how long it’ll last.

I never forgot the hyper-awareness of Holden Caulfield. I couldn’t imagine his ever being happy. I still can’t fathom his finding a way to break through his own loneliness to bond with someone on an equal footing, even though I still hope he will. As I read this time, I kept thinking about how much grief he’d gone through and how nowadays he’d be on meds for PTSD. And I still love the lines:

“Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.”  Boy, does that resonate for me at this stage in life.
                                                             ****
“When you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write “Fuck you” right under your nose.”  Should be the Boomer motto.
                                                              ****
“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”   I’ll always see Holden catching those kids, and the thought gives me comfort.
                                                               ****

Shoebill in the Wild - Uganda, Africa

And why, do you ask, would I put a photo of a Shoebill Stork cheek by jowl with Holden Caulfield? Because some things in this strange and ever-twisting life share a level of perfection. No, not perfection, which is a human concept capable of destroying lives. There’s a shared rightness to both Holden and a Shoebill, and that makes me happy.

Here’s to Spring.

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31 Days of Spooky Stuff, October 18: As Helen Lovejoy always said…

18 Tuesday Oct 2016

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Books I like, Children's books, Hallowe'en

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

books, Childhood

helenlovejoy2

“Won’t somebody think of the children?”

Yes, somebody will.

Halloween is coming and if you and your children haven’t read Bunnicula, you’re missing a literary treat.

bunniculacover

                                           http://amzn.to/2dy524N

Bunnicula: A Rabbit Tale of Mystery, is a children’s book by James Howe and Deborah Howe, featuring a rabbit that sucks the juice from vegetables. Could he be a vampire bunny? Harold, dog to the Monroe family, isn’t sure, although the family did give him that strange name since finding the bunny at the theater where they’d gone to see a Dracula movie. Chester, the Monroes’ cat, is convinced Bunnicula is a vampire and tries to get Harold to help him save the family from danger. The story is dryly witty and the illustrations are great fun. (And there are six more books in the series.)

Think of the children and read a wonderful book together during this Halloween season.

To win a signed copy of each of my three Wisdom Court books, comment on this post. A drawing to determine the winner will occur on October 31.

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31 Days of Spooky Stuff, October 6: The Uninvited

06 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Books I like, Ghosts, Gothic, Hauntings, Uncategorized

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books, horror

One of the inspirations for my Wisdom Court novels is this 1942 novel written by Irish author Dorothy Macardle. It’s a thumping good ghost story that was later adapted to film in 1944.

In this January 9, 2016, review in the Irish Times, author Anna Carey provides an interesting feminist slant to an old form: the haunted house novel.

The Uninvited, by Dorothy Macardle: ghosts of a sensible persuasion

by Anna Carey

This chiller from 1942 is decidely old-fashioned, but the author makes it all enjoyably eerie – and throws in a few pithy social observations as well

Dorothy Macardle: like many other Republican feminists, was appalled by the decision to enshrine the domestic role of women in the Constitution. So perhaps it’s not surprising that, a few years later, she wrote an excellent novel that shows just how unhealthy it can be to idolise women as pure domestic goddessesDorothy Macardle: like many other Republican feminists, was appalled by the decision to enshrine the domestic role of women in the Constitution. So perhaps it’s not surprising that, a few years later, she wrote an excellent novel that shows just how unhealthy it can be to idolise women as pure domestic goddesses

After the Irish Constitution was introduced in 1937, the writer and activist Dorothy Macardle wrote to her good friend, Éamon de Valera, to tell him what she thought of it. “As the Constitution stands,” she wrote, “I do not see how anyone holding advanced views on the rights of women can support it, and that is a tragic dilemma for those who have been loyal and ardent workers in the national cause.”

Macardle, like many other Republican feminists, was appalled by the decision to enshrine the domestic role of women in the Constitution. So perhaps it’s not surprising that, a few years later, she wrote an excellent novel that shows just how unhealthy it can be to idolise women as pure domestic goddesses.

First published in 1942, Uneasy Freehold has been reissued as the second in Tramp Press’s brilliant Recovered Voices series, The Uninvited (its American title). In it, two Anglo-Irish siblings, Roddy and Pamela Fitzgerald, find an enchanting house for sale in Devon called Cliff End. But when they make enquiries about purchasing it, the owner tells them that it’s been empty for 15 years.

Its previous residents were the owner’s daughter Mary, her artist husband Lyn, their small daughter Stella, and Lyn’s model and mistress, Carmel. Mary and Carmel both died tragically at Cliff End, and Stella was brought up by her grandfather. Six years earlier, a couple lived there, but left after having “experienced disturbances”.

Roddy and Pamela are undeterred, but once they’ve moved into Cliff End strange things start to happen. They hear a woman sobbing and see mysterious lights. And then a mist appears, a mist that looks very like a woman with cold blue eyes.

Who exactly is haunting the house? And what does this spirit want with Stella, now a young woman who yearns for the perfect mother she never really knew?

Stella’s fascination with Mary allows Macardle to explore the dark side of the blind veneration of a saintly mother figure. Stella’s bedroom is a Marian shrine – in both senses of the word: “Pale blue walls – her mother’s favourite colour . . . Mary’s pictures – Florentine madonnas; a sketch of Mary as a girl and before it, in a glass vase, one white rose; even a statuette of her mother – a white plaster thing. It’s a culte. Oh the piety, the austerity, the white virginal charm!”

Macardle shows how limiting this cold ideal of virtue can be – and how long its unhealthy effects can linger.

Of course, the ultimate test of a ghost story is whether it’s scary or not. And while The Uninvited is enormously readable and full of nicely spooky moments, it rarely produces the sort of creeping dread triggered by, say, Elizabeth Bowen’s The Demon Lover. This is mostly because the moments of terror are generally balanced by the characters’ sensible and thoughtful discussions of what might be causing them. This may sound tame, but turns The Uninvited into a different yet equally enjoyable ghost story.

Pamela and Roddy become not just the victims of a haunting, but amateur sleuths determined to unearth the source of the mysterious incidents at Cliff End. They put together a dossier on the previous household and bring in friends and experts to help them. I was not surprised that Roddy, putting off writing a book review, wondered “how on earth was I to give my mind to Peter Wimsey and his mysteries while our own diabolical problem was crying out to be tackled?” There’s more than a touch of Wimsey-creator Dorothy L Sayers’s wit and inventiveness about The Uninvited.

In fact, the dark subject matter and the complex issues explored by Macardle, combined with the engaging characters and light touch, make The Uninvited one of the most entertaining Irish novels I’ve read all year.

When de Valera was asked for his verdict on the 1944 film version of The Uninvited, his response was: “Typical Dorothy”. I hope she took it as a compliment.

Anna Carey’s latest novel is Rebecca Is Always Right

Comment to be entered in the Halloween drawing. A signed copy of the Wisdom Court Trilogy: Edge of the Shadow, A Signal Shown, and All In Bad Time, is the prize.

the-uninvited

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GhostPost

07 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Books I like, e-books, Ghosts

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curling up with a book, Reading, winter blahs

img_2345.jpgSometimes I feel I’m a ghost, never more than after the holidays. The past and present collide every year and tendrils of the future ooze through the cracks. My endless fingering of plot puzzle pieces gives way to a jaded look at at the rubble around me. Tired decorations, gifts left waiting for a permanent home in the clutter, unsorted mail, ice bonded to the sidewalks in front of the house…the list of Things To Do ever grows. Glowing nuggets of hope and anticipation dim in the vapor of dread swirling around me like snow on the wind. Dental appointments lurk in the shadows, peering around the hideous promise of income taxes.

Obviously, it’s time to read.

I’m almost done with a fascinating book by Barbara Goldsmith, Other Powers, about the intersection of spiritualism, women’s suffrage, and the life of Victoria Woodhull. Gives a raucous new slant on the “Victorian Age.” Good stuff.

I read Peg Brantley’s first two thrillers, Red Tide and The Missings, both fast-moving, well-plotted tales set in Colorado that ruined my manicure.

Douglas D. Hawk’s Mark of the Black Claw, terrific fun in an action-filled revisit to the pulp fiction of the forties. Loved it.

I’ve been wandering through a bunch of books and, with any luck at all, I’ll be able to put off the evil have-tos for another week or so. That’s not to say I’m not working on my third Wisdom Court book, All In Bad Time. It’s definitely coming along. But as my Great-aunt Lizzie always said, “There’s nothing like reading to get you through the dark times. Reading and hot buttered rum.” Yeah, and maybe some cookies.

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Guilty Pleasures

15 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Books I like, Mysteries, Writing

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detective fiction, Writing

Here’s a reblog of a lovely tribute to one of my favorite authors, Lawrence Block and his greatest character, Matthew Scudder.

 

Guilty Pleasures.

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What Romance Writers Can Learn from Eloisa James and the Essex Sisters Series: The Significance of Friendships

14 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Books I like, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

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Eloisa James, plot elements

Here’s a good blog post about a terrific writer.

What Romance Writers Can Learn from Eloisa James and the Essex Sisters Series: The Significance of Friendships.

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