Taylor Rhodes

The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago

brittany — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

During the 1920s, a rash of killings rocked Chicago. The murderers were young women who drank, and most killed their lovers. Most were white and all-male juries that refused to believe women were capable of cold-blooded murder released most of them. During this time, the crimes were reported in the newspapers by “sob sisters,” female reporters who were able to interview female inmates and victim’s family members.

The Girls of Murder City is about this period in time, two killers in particular, Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner, and a female reporter, Maurine Watkins. Beulah and Belva both killed their lovers after the men threatened to leave them. Both were beautiful, rich, white, and relatively young. The newspapers gave both women a chance to be famous, and both used it to their advantage.

Maurine Watkins was a hardworking, pious Christian who came to Chicago with the plan to use her column to show the evils of the world. Her sarcastic, strong-willed writing was often the only counterpoint to the sob sisters’ tales of woe in the papers. She would eventually use her stories to write the play Chicago, which would become the long-running musical.

The book tells an interesting story about the rise of the “girl gunners” and the creation of Chicago. The problem is that the story feels a bit unfocused. Maurine is not the main focus of the book, but neither are Belva and Beulah (or Chicago characters Velma and Roxie, if you will). The book explores their cases and delves into the lives of the other women in jail with them, but then switches to focus on Maurine. As a result, the story feels a bit shallow. I wanted more from both of the stories. Other narratives, like the story of the murder of Bobby Franks by teenaged killers Leopold and Loeb, are shoehorned into the story and feel tacked on.

Most importantly, the book is very poorly cited. For a while, I did not know if I was reading a non-fiction book or a “non-fiction” fiction book like In Cold Blood. Douglas Perry included details he seemingly could not know unless he had been there. There is an extensive note section in the back of the back of the book, but without explanation as to where each note belonged, reading them was slow going. More confusingly, there are footnotes in the book, but not to the main facts. They function more as author asides. Actual footnotes would have made the book much better, and given it much more authority.

I enjoyed The Girls of Murder City, but it could have been much better.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, April 12th 2011

Shadowfever

brittany — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Karen Marie Moning

Delacorte Press

How do I review Shadowfever by Karen Marie Moning? Do I caution readers about the fact that it is book five in a five book series? That previous events are not described and characters come into play with little explanation? Or do I discuss how enthralled I was by the story? How I could not put it down, even without understanding a lot of the plot?

The plot of Shadowfever is hard to describe. The main character, Mackayla Lane, or Mac, came to Dublin to find out who killed her sister in the first book, Darkfever. Not long after she arrived, the walls between the human world and the fairy world fell, bringing together both good and bad fairies, the Seelies and the Unseelies. It destroyed Dublin as the two groups fought each other and the humans. Over the course of the series, Mac learns about her sister’s life, about her own past and its connection to the fairy world and the keepers of the magic, and meets her lover, Jerricho Barrons. Shadowfever brings her story to its conclusion.

Much of the book is hard to follow, if only because the elements are unfamiliar. The book opens with Mac mourning the death of Barrons. The scene is long and painful, but without knowing who Barrons is, it has little impact. Mac has to find the Sinsar Duhb, which is both a book and a sentient being. There is lots of fighting between the various groups looking for the book, and without a chart, it was hard to follow the various groups, between the Seelie, the Unseelie, the Druids, the Abbey, and the humans. The narrator even changes without warning.

But, despite all of this, I was hooked on this book. Once I was able to situate myself in the story, I had a good sense of the characters and the basic plot. Mac is a wonderful character, strong, powerful, and complicated. All of the other characters, good and bad, fairy and human, are interesting, if leaning a bit too much toward “perfect,” “complicated,” and “sexy.” Still, trying to figure out who they were was interesting.

If you are a fan of urban fantasy, I recommend the Fever series, but I would start with the first one.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, April 10th 2011

Give Me Liberty

beth — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Valerie Joan Connors

Give Me Liberty, by Valerie Joan Connors, is terrible. The book reads like someone narrating a Lifetime movie: one-dimensional, wooden, and worst of all, boring. You can guess what is going to happen well before it does, no characters are anything but exactly what you expect them to be, and the writing is pedestrian.

The story follows Eva Larkin from her courtship with her boyfriend to her abusive marriage in Michigan to her following her dream to write novels in New York. Getting from point A to point B happens exactly like you expect it to. Nothing interesting, new, or exciting happens—even when a possibility presents itself, Connors does not take it. For example, when Eva gets to New York, she has a disastrous first job, and then gets the job of her dreams in publishing. Her new boss loves her, promotes to columnist without reading any of her writing, and supports her without question. Everything goes her way, except for her first husband.

The characters are more than one dimensional—they have one character trait. That includes Eva. She’s saintly. Her ex-husband Leo is an alcoholic. It is hard to see why Eva ever liked him. Besides her ex-husband, the men in her life are generous. The women are supportive. All of them. Every woman she meets in New York City, all five of them, are older, rich, and willing to give Eva money, support, and love without question. And all of them have been abused, and saved by loving second husbands. She and son, Daniel, have no long-term effects of severe abuse, stalking, and assault. No one resembles a real person.

Connors’ dialogue sounds nothing like actual conversation. Characters state their feelings without subtext, or anything approaching conversational language. For example, one character asks Eva about a potential date. The question is “Is he good looking? Smart?” Eva’s response is “I guess so... He’s a little older than me.” That’s the entire explanation of him. Most of the conversations in the book sound exactly like that. No personality, no slang. Every character sounds exactly the same.

As I said, Give Me Liberty is not a good book. The characters need more depth, the writing needs to be sharpened, and the plot could use a twist somewhere. It feels like a first draft. Wait for the next one.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, March 3rd 2011

The Autobiography of Jenny X

beth — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Lisa Dierbeck

Mischief + Mayhem

The Autobiography of Jenny X is amazing. Every time you think you know what is going to happen, author Lisa Dierbeck takes the story in a different, exciting direction. Using a well-known starting off point, Dierbeck opens up a whole new world.

The book switches between three narrators: Nadia Orsini, a photographer with a beautiful family, gorgeous house, and happy marriage; Dan Orsini, her driven, doctor husband; and Christopher Benedict, the former hippie, current incarcerated convict. Dan finds letters from Christopher addressed to “Jenny X,” and in his mind, his perfect marriage falls apart. The same letters cause Nadia to go to great lengths to ensure secrets stay hidden. To Christopher, the letters give him hope for the future, and a connection to his past. The lives of the three are connected in more intimate ways than any of them are comfortable with, and mere possibility of that connection causes all three of them to act out of character. Using the turmoil of the ‘60s as the beginning and through the ostensible mystery of who Jenny X is, Dierbeck takes the story someplace unexpected.

Each of these characters is a vivid person, with deep internal lives and powerful, relatable emotions. Dan, a man so used to being in control, panics when he realizes his wife has kept secrets from him. At first, he assumes she is cheating on him, but when he finds the first Jenny X letter, he realizes it may be much worse. Christopher, in prison for the majority of the story, is a relic of the ‘60s idealism. Prison calcified him, and when he is released, judges the world and everyone he knows by the same ‘60s ideals. Dierbeck gives the reader a view of culture shock to the extreme. As their story unfolds, all three reveal hidden depth as the novel goes on. It becomes very difficult to guess what any of them are going to do.

Nadia is the most interesting character in a novel full of them. Discovering who she truly is becomes the key to the story. Parts of the story are narrated by her, but she is still a bit of a mystery. Her connection to Jenny X is not apparent at first, despite how obvious it seems to be. She never becomes a cliché, even when her emotions and actions are familiar. She reacts completely naturally, but still in surprising ways. She has depth in spades.

The Autobiography of Jenny X is an incredible book. Dierbeck took the cliché of the ‘60s and weaved a mystery that takes them to their obvious ends without making the plot line as obvious. Highly recommended.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, February 27th 2011

Jealousy: The Other Life of Catherine M.

alicia — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Catherine Millet

Grove Press

I am at a loss as to how to review Jealousy: The Other Life of Catherine M. I suppose that’s not a very good way to write a review, but it’s the truth. After reading this memoir, I feel as though I know nothing about the author Catherine, her partner Jacques, or any of the nameless lovers that passed through both of their lives.

Catherine Millet is an art critic, and, in her words, a libertine. Her first memoir, The Sexual Life of Catherine M., was the story of her life told through the numerous sexual encounters she has had. She participated in outdoor sex, orgies, and same sex encounters, among others. In Jealousy, Catherine let us into the love side of her life. “I had love at home. I sought only pleasure in the world outside.” When she discovers her partner Jacques has had numerous affairs, she is devastated. She obsesses over his affairs, trying to figure out when they occurred, with whom and who knew.

Yet, her narrative voice is disconcerting. In The Sexual Life of Catherine M., the detached voice Millet writes with was a fascinating way to present such lusty endeavors. In Jealousy, that detachment becomes a wall between the author and her audience. It began to feel less like a narrative decision and more like Millet is detached from herself. When she casually mentions that her previous partner beat her, but “I never saw any anger in his face,” it is legitimately hard to judge how to take that information. Her descriptions of how she dealt with Jacques’ betrayal are similarly detached. “Discovering the name to match the initial, putting a face to it, piecing together a set of circumstances and a precise place, based on a given date. And above all, translating two or three words used by Jacques into a whole dialogue, with gestures and speech, between him and the figure I had created, with more or less accuracy.” She channels all of her angry, jealousy, and rage into sexual fantasies that both humiliate and empower her.

She admits that Jacques was not happy at her sexual life when they met, and that they had never discussed the boundaries in their relationship. She never connects his actions with her own. Because Jacques is so enigmatic, her reaction seems much more like an overreaction. He is so far removed that he is more of a concept than a person. The memoir needed him as much as her, and without him, it feels imbalanced.

I do not know whether to tell you to read the book or not. If you enjoyed The Sexual Life of Catherine M., Jealousy may be the perfect complement to it. If you did not like Sexual Life, you will not like Jealousy. Also, if you haven’t read Sexual Life, then this is not the book for you.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, January 13th 2011

Hard Times Require Furious Dancing: New Poems

alicia — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Alice Walker

New World Library

All too often, words are put together solely to get from one plot point to another. It can be easy to forget that when put together well, they can be transcendent. Luckily, Alice Walker is here to remind us of that fact. With her new book of poems, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing, Walker creates images that stick with you for their simplicity and strength.

Most of her poems are short, made up of a sentence or two, but all the more powerful for their brevity. One poem, called “I Will Not Deny,” takes up a single page, and ends with the very sensible advice “I will deny/me nothing/of myself.” Her turn of phrase makes her very short poems seem much longer, and much better for it. In “You Confide In Me,” she replies, after being told that the subject of the poem is lonely, that “You do not/own/a sofa!” and later, “A sofa is/essential/to all/that/lures/romance/to/your boudoir.” The sentiment is delightfully simple and wonderfully astute. The whole book is approximately 150 pages, which manages to feel complete yet not long enough.

Most of them cover topics on love or loss of love, particularly of family members. Walker discusses that her family history led her to learn how to dance, and that made her an unbridled optimist. That warmth flows freely through the poems. Predictably, they are also unabashedly feminist. She writes in the poem “The Taste of Grudge,” “I do not/regret/that/I am/imperfect./In each crack/there is/an orchid/growing.” In another poem, she warns “There is no/graceful/way/to/carry/hatred.” She writes about the strength within yourself, and how to find it. You can sense her life has not been easy, but her poems give the reader the benefit of her hard work.

Hard Times Require Furious Dancing should be required reading. It is full of beautiful words, gorgeous messages and powerful images. As Walker herself says, “I was born to grow, /alongside my garden of plants, /poems list this one.” Thank goodness for that.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, January 11th 2011

Queen of the Night

andrea — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By J.A. Jance

William Morrow Printing

There is only one word to describe J.A. Jance’s Queen of the Night: lazy. Reading it makes you feel like you’ve turned on a bad soap opera. Plot lines pick up in the middle, then disappear. Certain twists appear out of nowhere, and connect to nothing else. Some characters come in with no introduction, relationships are assumed between others.

The book is apparently a sequel to Day of Dead, though this is not mentioned anywhere. It opens with a murder on a beach in San Diego in 1959. This murder is not the mystery to be solved; it’s solved three quarters of the way in, and is not connected to anything else. The focus then shifts to Tucson, Arizona, where a cast of dozens is introduced and haphazardly connected to each other. The story is focused around an annual party for the opening of the Queen of the Night flowers.

The mystery lacks edge, making it feel like color-by-numbers plotting. We know who the murderer is before the murder is committed, and this person is barely connected to the rest of the characters. The murderer is not sympathetic enough to draw the reader in, and not depraved enough to be interesting. If you’ve watched a procedural TV show in the last five years, you easily can follow all of the threads to their inevitable end.

I wanted to get angry about the Native American stereotypes, but the fact is all of the characters are badly drawn. That said, some of the Native Americans are stoic older types with names like Looks at Nothing, who use traditions to decide everything, including whether to go to parties. Others are more westernized and feel bad about it. Or they are portrayed as greedy, superstitious drunks who live in fear and rob at will. The Anglo characters are wealthy, kindhearted, and well-educated.

The laziness even negates some of the potentially interesting ideas, like the fact that one of the older women is haunted by her abusive first husband, and believes she has early onset Alzheimer’s. How can her grandson also see him? (Answer: he’s a future medicine man, because tribes need medicine men, obviously.) But wait, no, it is just the interaction of some medication she’s taking. (But her grandson? Medicine man!)

The characters of Queen of the Night are easily drawn and the plot is boring, although simple to follow. However, Jance is a talented author as evidenced by her previous books such as Birds of Prey and Partner in Crime. Find one of those books, if you are really interested in reading her best work.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, November 4th 2010

A Season of Seduction

andrea — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Jennifer Haymore

Forever Publishing

When critiquing a work, being meh is the worst feeling. If a book or a movie is bad, there is plenty to say. The same thing applies when it is wonderful. But when it is neither, it gets hard. What do you say? It was adequately plotted? The characters were pleasant?

A Season of Seduction by Jennifer Haymore falls into this category. Some parts of the novel were good, others bad, but overall, it just was. A romance novel set in 1827, the story follows Lady Rebecca Fisk, a young widow with a dark history, as she falls in and out of love with Jack Fulton, sailor rogue extraordinaire who also has a dark history. The novel opens with the two of them getting caught in bed together by her family, which is used to set up an entirely plausible plot. Events happen around Christmas, thus the name.

The characters are well-drawn and yes, pleasant. Lady Rebecca, or Becky as she’s known, is a level-headed, smart, interesting young woman with an entirely reasonable fear of commitment. I can honestly say she’s a good character, maybe one of the best female characters I’ve read in a while. She does some rash things, but for logical reasons. Jack Fulton, on the other hand, veers towards idealized character a bit too much. He’s a rough and tumble sailor, who knows how to keep house, is a generous lover and manages to save her on a few occasions. He is very close to being as real a person as Becky, which makes him a bit of a letdown. Did I mention Becky shoots him? And he admits he deserved it? Situations like that highlight the differences between the two of them. However, the other characters, and there are a lot of them, are not shown in particularly sharp focus, but they are not objectionable either. Just pleasant.

In the past, I’ve been guilty of pre-judging romance novels as less than novels, and not worth reading. But recently, I’ve realized that is unfair. Like any genre, there are standouts and disappointments. What strikes me is the feeling that, authors of romance novels seem to be reaching only for what’s good enough. Jennifer Haymore has flashes of brilliance and obvious talent, but she stopped at pleasant. I hope she reaches for more than A Season of Seduction. She can do it easily.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, November 1st 2010

Murder Under the Bridge: A Palestine Mystery

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:21:00 +0000

By Kate Raphael

Political intrigue is a great backdrop for a mystery. Look at The Manchurian Candidate, The Third Man or any of Henning Mankell’s wonderful Wallander mysteries. A murder can highlight the struggles for power, the needs of the many versus the needs of the few, and the ways people hurt each other at both the micro and macro levels. If they are written well. If they aren’t, the work feels something like Murder Under the Bridge by Kate Raphael.

Set in modern day Israel and the Occupied Territories, Murder Under the Bridge opens with the death of a young woman found in a field near the wall between the two countries. Rania, a Palestinian police officer, and Chloe, an American peace activist, work together (or in parallel) to solve the case, which winds along both sides of the wall through various political ideologies and into human trafficking and war crimes. One of the most important aspects of a good mystery is that all of the pieces have to be put on the table, and then put together. The complexity of the crime is inverse to the number of subplots.

If the victim dies in a locked room from a bee sting when they aren’t allergic to bees, confining all of the players to a big country house focuses the narrative enough to allow the reader to follow the plot twists. When it takes five pages to get from one side of the city to the other, the crime can’t have too many twists, or the reader gets lost. Murder Under the Bridge falls into the second category. An unfamiliar setting, new characters, and a complicated murder with at least fifteen named characters present too many strands for Raphael to weave together coherently. There is not even time for an ending.

I wish Raphael had focused solely on Chloe, the character she cares the most about. Her scenes are dynamic, interesting, and fleshed out. As an outsider, Chloe would be a good introduction to the setting. Not one of the other characters does anything special, exciting, or interesting; everyone starts out as a cliché and ends the same way.

The scenes with Rania are rushed and poorly drawn. When the Israeli police officer was introduced as Rania’s partner, I was hoping that the narrative would focus on them and use their similarities as way for each of them—both very bigoted characters—to evolve. Instead, the longest, most lovingly written scene is of graphic sex that is only tangentially related to the murder. The discussion of finding the dead body is only half as detailed.

Perhaps a good mystery is hidden in this book. Right now, it’s stuck under the layers of useless detail, pointless scenes, and cliché.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, July 21st 2010

No One Dies in Lily Dale

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Steven Cantor

Stick Figure Productions

Spiritualism as a religion began in the 1840s in the "Burned-Over District" of Upstate New York. Taking elements of Christianity and shamanism, the religion is focused around mediums speaking to spirits that spiritualists believe continue to exist after one's physical death. The religion became a trend in the United States and Europe after thousands of young soldiers died in World War I. Looking for closure, families turned to mediums. Readings became entertainment and fraudulent mediums sprung up, as did debunkers like Harry Houdini, who used his knowledge of stage magic to reveal their tricks. After attempts by psychologists to prove mediumistic abilities authentic failed, the trend died down, and spiritualism faded from popular imagination.

As a religion, spiritualism has continued, with its stronghold back in the Burned-Over District in a small town called Lily Dale, which is thirty miles outside of Buffalo. Most people know nothing about spiritualism beyond seances and the turn of the century images of mediums, making it the perfect subject for an insightful documentary. The town of Lily Dale and its inhabitants seem like the perfect subjects: sincere, passionate, and eccentric. It’s too bad Stick Figure Productions didn’t make that documentary.

No One Dies in Lily Dale is a mess, with no salient points to make and no strong storyline. Too many characters to follow are introduced, including Greta Gehman, a Polish medium; Ronald Holt, a police officer grieving the loss of his teenage son; and Rebecca Frabricius, a young woman mourning the death of her fiance. Ronald Holt is the closest full story we get, as he begins to release some of the guilt he feels over not protecting his son and show signs of healing. No one else gets anywhere near a storyline at all.

The spiritualists are portrayed as warm, happy, new age-y people who see dead family members walking down the street, and the people coming for readings are, overall, seen as seen logical, normal people who are driven by their grief to readings. The readings follow a traditional script; only one is inaccurate, no one is told anything negative, and no one questions the mediums or their abilities.

No one except Susan Heinrichs, the born-again, evangelical Christian who lost her son eight months before coming to Lily Dale. Setting up an evangelical Christian, a group not known for their open mindedness, as the voice of reason would have been provocative, but that didn’t happen. Even the attempt to draw comparisons between both groups as providing answers for people’s grief is ignored. Instead, Susan is shown as a boorish, small-minded woman who wants to convert the town. Her actions invalidate her important question of one medium, telling him that answering whether he is correct or not is “not testing the spirit” or the medium. It’s an important point that is never raised again.

The community of Lily Dale, and the persistent popularity of Spiritualism, are wonderful topics for a serious documentary that focuses on the need for humanity to understand death and grief. No One Dies in Lily Dale is not that documentary, unfortunately.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, June 30th 2010

The Red Riding Trilogy

admin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Directed by Julian Jarrold, James Marsh, Anand Tucker

Channel Four Film

Movies about rape, murder, and child abuse should not be photographed this beautifully. Channel Four Film’s Red Riding Trilogy, shown as a miniseries in the UK but as three movies in the U.S., is one larger story connected by characters, place and the unrepentant horror of Yorkshire, in the northern England. In the north, as the characters say, they do what they want.

The three films are set in three years, 1974, 1980, and 1983, respectively. The first, 1974, directed by Julian Jarrold, focuses on Andrew Garfield’s Eddie Dunford, the new crime reporter for the Yorkshire Post, and his investigation into the disappearance of three young girls, the most recent found with wings sewn into her back. The second, 1980, directed by James Marsh, focuses on Paddy Considine’s Peter Hunter, a Manchester detective brought to Yorkshire to review the police’s handling of the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer. The third, 1983, directed by Anand Tucker, has two focuses: the first is on David Morrisey’s Maurice Jacbson, a corrupt detective having second thoughts, and the second is Mark Addy’s Eddie Pigford, a local boy turned lawyer who returns home to close his mother’s affairs and gets tangled up in the crimes, and becomes an unlikely hero. Characters appear and reappear in each story, changing in significance depending on who is seeing them.

The overarching mystery of the films is intriguing, if not original. Much of the joy from watching them comes from witnessing the characters move the pieces into place. As I watched 1983, I gasped out loud at certain parts. Waiting between the movies was legitimately frustrating, as I wanted to know what would happen almost more than I could stand, even though I knew it couldn’t be good. However, 1980 felt a bit disconnected from the other two. The timeline, fractured by the style of the movie, made some parts of all three hard to follow, but 1980 was all over the place. Ultimately, the story carried beyond the confusion.

The direction is amazing. All three parts are incredibly vivid, with powerful, dreamlike scenes haunting me well after the credits. All three employ dreamlike touches, with slow motion, flashbacks, time skips, and nontraditional camera angles. The movies looked like 1970s horror movies, and this gave the whole proceedings an eerie undertone. 1974, in particular, is gorgeous, and that beauty is used in such wonderfully unsettling ways. 1980 is a bit more straightforward, to mirror Peter’s traditional views. 1983, though, loses a bit of its power by having two main characters, diluting the style choices to very different men.

The entire cast is incredible. The standout is Andrew Garfield, who carries 1974 with ease, giving Eddie the believability of a cocky young investigative reporter and runs the gamut of emotions, making his ending both shocking and inevitable. Paddy Considine carries the conflicted nature of 1980’s Peter Hunter like a second skin-does actor carry sorrow better? Mark Addy is a pleasant addition to 1983, but isn’t around enough to make a big impact. David Morrisey’s Maurice Jobson has the strength to hold his character’s honor while doing terrible things, and still make you pity him. There were few female characters, but Rebecca Hall, as the mother of one of the lost girls in 1974, makes a strong impression. Secondary characters, including Sean Bean, Sean Harris, Richard Sheehan, and Daniel Mays, are wonderful. No one fits a false note.

If you like thrillers, horror movies, or mysteries, you aren’t going to do any better than the Red Riding Trilogy.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, June 6th 2010

The Prospect of Magic

admin — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By M.O. Walsh

Livingston Press

The Prospect of Magic, a collection of ten stories, sets up a wonderful world where the real and magical live side by side. It’s enchanting. Some of the stories are hopeful, some are tragic, and some are sad, just like real life. All of them feature flights of fancy, just like the best magic trick.

The story centers around Fluker, Louisiana, where the World Famous Ploofop Travelling Circus decides to stay after its owner, Abidail Ploofop, dies. Margo the Mind Reader gives a eulogy, “a speech that, legend has it, wrapped a hopeful message around the mind of every person in attendance.” Soon, the townsfolk are playing poker on their roof with giants, receiving lions in the mail, and angry clown gangs roam the streets, making trouble. These delightful images of a circus gone to seed populate the stories, but never pull away from Walsh's general message of good will and that people can be accepted no matter what.

In "The Cat Who Ate The Boy," the young narrator receives a lion named Big Kitty mailed to the carnival, and after attempting to care for it, takes the beast to his grandfather. The story is told through the boy’s eyes, and Big Kitty that lurks in and out of the story soon becomes a metaphor for his parent’s relationship – an element that is in many ways big, strong and beyond the boy's control.

The title story tells of a teenage boy learning to deal with the magic he has, and how to reconcile it with the reality of the world. "The Dream Tow" tells of a fortune telling machine that reminds the characters to savour what they have in life, whether it’s a musical skill with a trombone or a happy marriage. The final story, "The Ploofop Refugees," follows Margo the Mind Reader’s husband as he deals with her impending death, and the possibility of the circus folks leaving Fluker.

All of these stories deal with the people from the circus and the Fluker townspeople as both everyday people, and people filled with magic. The ease the characters and stories show with the idea of giraffes eating leaves off the trees in the town square in the same story as the death of wife is remarkable, and is what sets these stories apart from other short stories in their sense of fun and community. The prospect of magic indeed.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, June 1st 2010

Don’t Act Like You Know Me

admin — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Ten Year Vamp

Daisy Rock Records

When I was a teenager, rock radio had its fair share of female voices. Shirley Manson, Gwen Stefani, and Courtney Love all wrote songs and fronted bands full of men, and gave us songs like “I’m Just a Girl” and “Celebrity Skin.” D’Arcy Wrentz played a mean bass for Smashing Pumpkins. On the indie front, Tori Amos, Liz Phair, and to some extent, Alanis Morrisette, all gave voice to the issues women face through guitar-heavy songs. They took over the tradition from the greats like Joan Jett and the Runaways, Blondie, and Tina Weymouth of the Talking Heads.

In the new millennium, female-fronted rock, like a lot of music, has been manufactured within an inch of itself. Avril Lavigne, a talented pop songwriter, became "punk" because she wore a hoodie with a skull on it. Kelly Clarkson attempted to get darker on My December, but when sales didn’t crack the multi-millions, she went back to disposable pop. Amy Lee, the powerful singer-songwriter of the pop-metal powerhouse Evanescence, self-destructed under the pressure of a follow-up album. Pink tried to be the rock voice, but her pop sensibility has overridden everything else. No new female-fronted rock music has stepped up to talk to the next generation.

All of this brings me to Ten Year Vamp. The Don't Act Like You Know Me album cover features only Debbie Gabrione, who is credited as singer, lyricist, and guitar player. She is a viable option for the next voice of female-fronted rock, even if this album is a bit more like Kelly Clarkson than Shirley Manson. Her lyrics speak of dissatisfaction with her life, needing to start over, and her inability to reach the person who she loves, but more importantly, she writes about her shortcomings. In particular, “Pleasures (That I Call Mine)” is a great rock song where she boasts that “I like to step it up/baby, to intensify/it’s just what I do/And it’s my choice what I do/And who I do it to.” Her attitude, her independence, and her enjoyment of her life are all a great example for young women, and the song's power chords and “whoa” chorus are wonderful.

The rest of album is not as strong, but still a good listen. “Rockstar” is a nice mediation on being a singer that “hates the sound of her own voice,” and “Call it” has some interesting thoughts about fate and destiny. Don't Act Like You Know Me has many of the limitations of other debut albums. The band is still working to find their own voice, but when they do, they will be unstoppable.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, February 19th 2010

A Scandal of Choice

admin — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 01:00:00 +0000

By Allyson Whipple

The president is pregnant. What a provocative idea. How would the country, still so new to the idea of a female president, feel about her pregnancy? How would Congress react? What would the media say? How would the rest of the world react, especially in countries where female oppression is common? How would the president do her job while pregnant? She would have to fly for work, have meetings during prime morning sickness hours, and be on her feet all day long. What if the baby’s father, who is not her husband, wanted nothing to do with the child? Surely, those would be huge obstacles to overcome.

Now imagine that, due to years of sexual scandals by Democratic presidents, the now pregnant female president faces a law dictating that the president had to remain celibate while in office, even if he or she was married. Now the pregnancy, which would be impossible to hide after month six, would be illegal, and lead to an impeachment. That makes the matter infinitely more complicated. How would her staff, which depends on her for their livelihoods, react to her indiscretion? What would the Supreme Court say on the matter?

All of these questions are interesting, thought provoking, and worth answering. However, if you are reading Allyson Whipple’s A Scandal of Choice, not one of them would be addressed. Her story centers on President Lydia Worth, cousin to the first female president Lisa Finn, author of the aforementioned celibacy clause, and her struggle upon becoming pregnant not long into her first term as president. The story starts out promising, but ultimately, feels poorly thought-out, ill researched, and weakly written.

There are two characters in the story that are developed, Lydia and her best friend/gynecologist, Melanie. There are almost no other characters. Thomas, the speechwriter/baby daddy, pops in once or twice, just to disavow the child to try and save himself. At this point in the story, I thought it might be an interesting mediation on the concept of choice—that a pregnant woman with the option to have an abortion would chose not to—but I was sorely mistaken.

Lydia does nothing, as far as I can tell, as president. She does not have to travel, has no work to do, and is able to visit her friend in Connecticut without anyone noticing. Even her Secret Service detail don’t really care that much. There is no Chief of Staff, no staff at all really, no Congress members, no press, no American public. Take out the president title, and the story could have been a Lifetime television movie.

In addition, the governmental aspects of this story make absolutely no sense. Even if you give Ms. Whipple the premise that an amendment demanding celibacy would pass, she clearly has no idea about impeachment proceedings. She has the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding over the Senate while arguments are heard, and witnesses are sworn in on a Bible. As far as I can tell, the impeachment hearings in the story are set up exactly like a trial scene from Law and Order, right down to the defendant hugging her lawyer at the end.

Despite a wonderful story idea, the execution of this novella is pretty bad.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, February 18th 2010

Freudian Mythologies: Greek Tragedies and Modern Identities

admin — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:00:00 +0000

By Rachel Bowlby

Oxford University Press

In college, I heard a joke that summed up Freudian theory to a tee: A Freudian slip is when you say one thing and mean your mother. This joke, referencing a Freudian theory that an unconscious thought may reveal itself as a verbal manifestation, sums up the popular idea of psychoanalysis, the branch of psychology Freud created. Popular culture often ceases at what Freud wrote in the nineteenth century, ignoring all of psychology before and after. Freud’s theories captured the popular imagination and have not given up their grip for 100 years. After all, how familiar are you with B.F. Skinner’s work?

Freud’s existence in popular culture has led to the application of his Interpretation of Dreams in numerous contexts, including looking back at the Greek Tragedies. Freud himself gave birth to the Oedipus complex to explain the male child’s gender identification as they grow up. The hypothesis has been simplified into the idea that a little boy wants to kill his father and marry his mother, which is a very simplistic reading of both the theory and the myth.

I bring this up to explain Freudian Mythologies. It is very telling that Bowlby is an English Professor, not a psychologist or a classicist. This book is in the unenviable position of being too complex for the average reader and not complex enough for even college students. Her reading of Freudian mythology and of the ancient tragedies is correct, but she adds nothing new to any of the criticisms. A further explanation of the Oedipus myth through a Freudian lens is not necessary; Freud explained it himself. A reading of the Danaeds is more interesting, but is ultimately concluded with the statement that Freud didn’t understand women. One must have read extensively into the Freudian catalogue, to point that they must be on a first name basis with Anna O. They also must be aware of the stories of Ion, the Danaeds and both versions of Oedipus. At the same time, they must not understand basic Freudian attachment.

After a while, the tragedies themselves become secondary to Bowlby’s attempts to explain Freudian theory. The more interesting story, one touched upon at the beginning of the book, is how Freud chose which version of which myth. Why did he omit the earlier version of Oedipus, where his birth father molests and kills a little boy, bringing on the curse Oedipus ultimately fulfills? Why did he not address Apollo as Ion’s father? This is an area where something new could be uncovered. Simply using Freudian mythology to describe Greek tragedy adds nothing; after all, Freud did it himself.

If you are comfortable but not overly familiar with Freud’s theories or the Greek tragedies, Freudian Mythologies might interest you. However, if you are acquainted with either, this book won’t hold your interest.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, January 16th 2010