Unbreakable Ellie Kemper

For those few readers (Grandma and Granddad <3) who have been following this blog since its inception back in July, you will know that I have now very nearly read all the books I set out to read in my very first blog post. Time flies when you're having fun!

Although looking back now, out of the four reviewed so far, only really one has received positive commentary... should I be worried that my taste in books is faltering? (Nah. This is what reading contemporary authors is all about!)

Ellie Kemper's My Squirrel Days was a hotly anticipated debut (by me). Mostly because she is such a cutie. For those who don't know Ellie, she's an American actress, known for her roles in the American version of The Office (yet to watch), a supporting role in Bridesmaids (yet to rewatch) and, of course, her first leading role in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

This book is a collection of personal essays, covering things like growing up, having a crush on David Letterman and staging plays for the family at Christmas, where even a single forgotten word could mean catastrophe. Basically, a semi-fictional autobiography. How can it be semi-fictional, you ask? Hang on...

What did I like about it?

... Semi-fictional because finally someone owned up to the fact that we forget things. So some stuff will be made up. There is no way in hell that everyone can remember decade-old conversations word for word, and small, insignificant scenes from high school, and significant scenes that they must be too nervous to remember - except for me. Or I am really missing something. Were we supposed to take notes?

I liked that I read the whole thing in Ellie's voice. (There's a downside to this, but again, hang on.) She is alive in the pages, and is pretty much exactly how I imagined her. Minus fits of rage over missing lentils from a dish. Crazy stuff.

The essays are short, sweet and make for light reading. Juicy details about the lives of actors are always fun to read, and especially when names like Steve Carell (who is the only one allowed to touch the bagels on set) and Tina Fey (who may or may not be interested in taking up spin classes) pop up. It's a great insight into Ellie's life in general, and it's interesting to read about her journey from working in a cupcake shop (honestly, what did you expect?) to sort-of-stardom.

What was I not massively fond of?

Let's be honest - this book is superfluous. It's super cute too, it's fun because we like Ellie, but it's not a piece of great literature, and it doesn't really do much above promoting Ellie herself. This is not to say I didn't enjoy reading it, on the contrary. But I did wonder occasionally what I was hoping to get out of it, or why I was reading it in the first place.

But that's stardom, isn't it? If you're famous and you have some time on your hands (or if your publicist thinks it's a good idea) you are going to end up writing a book. Following from this then, of course, is the fact that only people who know Ellie will pick this up.

I also found that, although I really enjoy watching her on TV, I don't think her style of humour is particularly suited to written form. Her comedy forte in Kimmy was her attitude, her smile, her incessant enthusiasm, and I think this is stronger on screen.

Overall...

Despite everything, a person like Ellie is someone to aspire to be. Because she seems always happy, always optimistic (take the essay called Hysteric in which she describes her emailing habits. What's wrong with laughing in caps?).

And a little bit of light reading never hurt anyone.

6/10

I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat

[Please note: this review contains spoilers. It's hard to talk about it without them. Sorry.]

So, Stephen, we meet again!

I have so much respect for Stephen King and so little patience for people who have never read his books but just assume he's a pulp fiction writer who churns out the same stuff year after year after year. I also find it extremely amusing that someone called 'King' has managed to achieve, in his lifetime, the recognition that he is in fact the king of something (horror, in this case).

The first book I read by SK was Gerald's Game, as previously mentioned. The second was On Writing, a fantastic non-fiction book, half autobiography and half creative writing lecture, and if you've ever considered trying your hand at writing anything, ever, read it, for the love of god. The third book was Danse Macabre, a 400-page treatise on the genre of horror and despite my dislike for the genre, this was a totally captivating read. (A random selection at the charity shop.)

... And so we arrive to Pet Sematary - finally something that, you know, he is actually known for.

Casually described in the introduction by the King himself as "the most frightening book I've ever written", you're set up to have a ball. The Creed family moves into a large, gorgeous family home - all is well, except for the creepy pet cemetery up the hill at the back of the house. Word gets around it's more than it seems. Nightmares begin. Rumours are heard. And then the family cat gets hit by a truck...

What did I like about it?

SK is SUCH a good writer that even though the chills are running up and down your spine, you can't help but lazy about on his beautiful sentences: "Somewhere there was a drip of water and above them, like a steady river in a bed of sky, the monotonous whine of the wind." He is artfully terrifying. Come to think of it, when one hasn't read a horror book, one wonders how on earth a book could possibly be scary. This is how: "The swing door opened and let in shadows. One of the shadows was more substantial than the others. Dear God, that stink. Shuffling steps in the darkness." (Cue violins)

Some characters were shallower than others, but I thought the hero (hardly), Louis, was very well constructed, if not realistic. His incredible resistance to believe the facts, his denial of the things happening around him, his complete inability to lie - it all made for someone I loved to hate. From the first pages, really, you dislike him, after his little fantasy of abandoning his family on the side of the road; but it comes and goes in waves. You still care, somehow.

There were some truly terrifying elements of the book, but the worst of the worst was Louis' wife's dead sister, Zelda. She suffered from spinal meningitis, and her contracted body, her blackened face, her fists like claws and the loss of her sanity all contribute to one horrifying picture. And kids, that's why I won't be watching the film.


What was I not massively fond of?

Okay, I have to admit there were some significant points I noted won. First, basically, it was quite long. A little too long. Lots of building up and then over in a flash. I felt I deserved more after 300 pages of 'here it comes... any second now... '.

I felt SK asked a little too much for us to believe sometimes. So many things were glided over, little impossible things just put down in front of us, claiming it was magic. Such as, and here comes the spoiler, after Louis' young son Gage comes back from the grave - mind you, how old was he? Four, tops? - he murders two fully grown adults with ease. With a scalpel. His mom, okay I believe, she was distressed. But a grown-ass, robust old man? I don't think so.

Another stumbling block that just didn't work for me was the way to the burial ground - despite all efforts, it just seemed a bit lazy. Scary laughs in the dark? Oh, you bet if that happened to me I'd be wetting myself, but reading it in a book didn't feel powerful enough. (Again, this is why I'm not watching the film.) Not to mention the slightly overused element of 'OMG it wasn't a dream'.

There was also a lot of relying on the supporting character, Jud. He was the teller of stories, the clarifier of confusions, the well-wishers and know-it-alls. But he is still super loveable.

One more point, Mr King - don't kill the cat. And if you had to, don't go and make him the evil guy. He's not the one to blame for this.

Overall...

This book wouldn't be as enjoyable, I think, if it wasn't for SK's incredibly readable and enjoyable style. But then, just because I didn't find this scary at the time of reading, it doesn't mean my stomach didn't turn when the neighbour banged his door just now upstairs.

I'm alone tonight. Send help.

6/10

PS. Here's the link to the Facebook page of SK's to-die-for doggie, Molly aka The Thing of Evil. You're welcome.

A hopeless wanderer

I am not very good with scary things. Scary films especially - but I remember my first time when I decided to venture into the world of Stephen King and picked up Gerald's Game and despite massively enjoying his writing, I'm not lying by saying the images from that book still haunt me. (So, kudos, Stephen. By the way, I am reading Pet Sematary at the moment, ask me later.)

So I was undecided regarding Sarah Perry's new book, Melmoth. I say undecided, but - somewhat like the characters in the book itself - I feared it and I longed for it at the same time. Eventually, I had to do it.

Reasons being, Melmoth is a book about Melmoth the Wanderer, an ancient legendary figure - shall we say ghost? - who wanders the earth and bears witness to humanity's crimes. She is a he in most traditional tales, but in this setting she wanders alone, looking for lost souls she can tempt into joining her.

Of course, it's not so simple. The plot really follows Helen Franklin, a 40-ish woman living in Prague, who lives a somewhat ascetic lifestyle, the reasons of which we don't know. She is introduced to the legend of Melmoth by a friend, and hereafter begins to form a strange obsession with the tale - all the while increasingly feeling like she is being followed and watched...

What did I like about it?

I haven't read any of Sarah Perry's previous books, but it turns out the Essex Serpent received high praise when it came out, amongst others from The British Book Awards. So to judge Melmoth as a cheesy gothic horror, like I initially did, is clearly wrong.

And so it is! This tale, set in the framework of a gothic mystery unfolds to be a beautiful parallel about guilt, mostly, but also change. It is constructed of several stories, folded into one very neat package, weighing a ton. It's not a happy read; quite the opposite. But the horror, the true horror of it lies not in the gothic storyline, but in that of human stories being told.

Perry has a way with words that makes the book read like a classic piece of fiction - I would easily place it next to Mary Shelley on a bookshelf. I think this plays a massive part in creating a truly gothic novel, and it is a total triumph in this case. Open it on the first page and see: "Look! It is winter in Prague: night is rising in the mother of cities and over her thousand spires. Look down at the darkness around your feet, in all the lanes and alleys, as if it were a soft black dust swept there by a broom...".

One of the storylines in the book especially gripped me - images that are possibly engraved in my brain for good. This particular one concerns a young German boy in wartime Prague under German occupation, and all too realistically it presents that little switch in the brain that makes one go from childish imagination to an act of true horror. Like Melmoth, we are asked to bear witness, and suddenly we understand why the ghost suffers so from her duties.

What was I not massively fond of?

One element that stood out in the plot for me was the coming together of four female characters for dinner who aren't particularly familiar - proceeding to share their most intimate, most closely guarded secrets during the evening. Perhaps that's a bit forced in terms of plot, although if we allow a little for the imagination, later on we can possibly assign it an explanation. (I know this won't make a lot of sense if you haven't read the book. My apologies.)

Another thing, perhaps a bit more significant and as pointed out by the Guardian in this review, is that Perry gives away little in terms of the inner lives of our characters - even though they are all extremely interesting, and we would love to know more of the whys and hows and whens. Perhaps the reason behind this is that we're doomed - as they are - to witness, rather than understand. But it leaves us feeling like the people in the book are a bit cold, a little unfamiliar. I would have loved to know a bit more about them.

Overall...

I could write so much more about the inner workings of this book: metaphors, beautiful touches, favourite quotes... it was a chilling experience, reading this. A dark, heavy experience full of guilt and the haunting of the past. It reads true - and that's what makes it a great book.

I will be reading the Essex Serpent, for sure.

8/10

A little drop of poison

For the first two decades of my life, I didn't really read non-fiction except when forced to do so at school. (No, subtitled documentaries don't count.) Why? I'm not sure. It just never occurred to me. But in my recent attempt to catch up with contemporary literature, I have finally ventured into the non-fiction scene and to be perfectly honest, oftentimes nowadays I find myself enjoying these books even more than fiction. Plus, you know, I work for a non-fiction publisher, so this is probably good timing.

Sometimes though I'll come across a non-fiction book that not only outdoes fiction, but leaves it behind by miles. I mean, so juicy, so well written, so enjoyable that I cannot wait for my commute to begin so I can jump straight back in.

Enter The Royal Art of Poison by Eleanor Herman: a fascinating exploration into the world of poisons and poisoning (not all intentional), as well as history, tradition, myth-busting and delicious gossip. Eleanor is apparently known as the "Sherlock Holmes of history" and she wears the title proudly in this book. No stone is left unturned, no difficult topic untackled, no gross detail left out. You go, lady.

The book is built into three parts: the first discusses in detail the types of poisons popular around the 16th and 17th century and how they were used (we're talking human excrement powdered and blown into one's eye for medical reasons, for example). The second part takes 17 case studies in detail: the story, the contemporary postmortem and the modern analysis, and discusses whether the subjects were indeed poisoned, as rumored, or whether something else caused their death. The final part discusses poison in the modern era, from Russian state-sponsored poison research to the untimely death of the North Korean leader's brother.

What did I like about it?

Good writing style is essential, I think, for non-fiction. After all, you don't have a plot you can twist and bend to your liking to keep the reader entertained. And although Eleanor doesn't embellish, she doesn't bore either: she is matter-of-fact, often very amusingly sarcastic but doesn't dilly-dally. And you don't have time to doubt or question: the book is fast-paced, so you better pay attention.

The immense amount of research behind the book is clear. Historical figures from ancient Greece all the way to 2016 appear on the scene, from Socrates to Kim Jong-nam, and not just as superficial characters. Take the example of Erik XIV, king of Sweden: "The king sent suggestions to Erik's jailers on ways to kill him: smother him with a feather pillow, bleed him ostensibly for health reasons but take too much blood, and poison him with opium or arsenic." (No, they didn't like each other very much.) Or Cangrande della Scala, Italian warlord: "He plucked arrows out of his wounds and continued fighting." It's like she was there.

Her sources are also excellent: she quotes contemporary medics, healers, alchemists and apothecaries, convincingly explaining why their healing methods are fool-proof: a recipe for an antidote, for example, calls for "scorpions drowned in glass containers of olive oil to bake in the sun for forty days. They were then to be boiled for ten hours, the oil extracted and mixed with myrrh, rhubarb, saffron, and other plants. After another two weeks in the sun, the ointment would work 'against all kind of poison ingested by mouth, stings, and bites.'" Phew.

What was I not massively fond of?

One thing I noticed at the beginning is how in-medias-res the book felt. As I said, Eleanor doesn't dilly-dally, but at the time I remember thinking a bit softer, a bit longer of an introduction would have worked for me. But then again, we get a princess who "vomits and soils herself repeatedly" within the first paragraph, so that's a pretty efficient hook.

It's a delicate balance too between detail and facts. As the topic of the book is already dripping with juice, it's probably unfair of me to say I would have liked even more drops of detail on court gossip, perhaps a bit more of a story-like retelling of events - but once I got used to Eleanor's style, that wasn't a big miss either.

Overall...

A fascinating topic and a well-written book - it does everything good non-fiction should. It entertains; it informs - did you know, for example, that there were rumors that Napoleon died of poisoning? - and it makes for a great read.

If you like your books with just that little extra something, this one's for you!

9/10