Book Review: A VOICE CALLING

TITLE: A Voice Calling

AUTHOR: Christopher Barzak

103 pages, Psychopomp, ISBN 9798891160019 (softcover, also in e-book)

MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5

Christopher Barzak’s new novella A Voice Calling is ostensibly a haunted house story, but it is also very much a haunted community story, an elegiacally written and unsparing look at the way secrets and violence can permeate and shape both places and people (individually and collectively).

In Barzak’s hands, Button House takes a rightful place alongside Shirley Jackson’s Hill House, Poe’s House of Usher, King’s Marsten House, and Elizabeth Hand’s Wylding Hall as iconic haunted houses (each of those listed left an indelible mark on my imagination; your list may be different). Button House has a mood I can only describe as “habitable desolation,” thanks to its history. That history, revealed through flashbacks of varying lengths throughout the narrative, starts with an unsurety as to whether the house or the orchards that surround it came first. One way or the other, the property has roots that are more than one hundred years old, and most of that history is sordid and bloody. House and orchard together are fixed in my mind as someplace I wouldn’t want to be alone in at any time of day – and Barzak works this magic with very few detailed descriptions of the house and grounds. It is largely through mood and inference that a picture of the property forms in the reader’s mind, which I think is far more effective than overly detailed descriptions of the furniture in every room.

But as I said, it’s not just the house that is haunted. It is the nearby community as well. This community narrates the story with a collective “we.” These faceless, and mostly nameless, voices are at times judgmental, speculative, defensive, infuriated, occasionally even concerned – but they are never warm, never really welcoming or hospitable. And thus they are also blind both to how complicit they are in the events that occur (by turning a blind eye to the house and its inhabitants when attention might have swayed matters) and to how haunted they are by those events. The fear of a community is a palpable thing, self-perpetuating and uncontrollable. As the book progressed, I found myself increasingly picturing the narrators as one of the angry mobs from the early Universal monster films. Like those mobs, Barzak’s narrators never really gain any sense of individuality. Sure, we get a townsperson’s name here and there, for color. But we never get to know them.

We do get to know the focal character of the present day portions of the novel, the character the nameless narrators are most concerned about because she used to be one of their own: Rose Billings (the narrators never really accept her marriage to Button House’s last living resident, Jonas Addleson, and thus never refer to her by her married name, another manifestation of their fear and mistrust). Caught out near Button House during a bad storm, Rose, who has heard voices in her head all her life, feels called to the House. But did the House call to Rose because Jonas needed rescue, or because something else did? Barzak neatly conjoins this mystery with the bloody history of the house in prose that is compelling and engrossing, with not a superfluous word in the work. Even with chapter breaks, the story has so much momentum that it qualifies as my first “couldn’t put it down until I was done” read of 2024.

Throughout my reading, I kept feeling like the story was familiar, like I’d read it before. I chalked it up to Barzak being one of my favorite writers and just feeling at home in his style, because this is the first publication in any form of A Voice Calling. My feeling was correct, though. This novella grew out of a short story “What We Know About the Lost Families of –House,” which I’ve read at least once. The original story is great, but the novella format gives the story a bit more room to breath and to suck the reader into Button House’s history.

This book is also the first release from small press publisher Psychopomp (previously known for The Deadlands magazine). It is an excellent start to what I am confident will be a lengthy line of eerie books that explore our relationship with death in all its myriad facets, as well as what may or may not come after.

Theater Thursday: WITHOUT YOU

Based on his memoir of the same name, Anthony Rapp’s “one man with a band” show Without You is a tour-de-force look at grief, chronicling Rapp’s friendship with playwright/composer/lyricist Jonathan Larson, Larson’s unexpected death just as RENT was opening, and the slow decline and death from cancer of Rapp’s mother. It’s an emotional 90 minutes of theater, filled with a combination of Larson’s music and original songs written by Anthony Rapp with David Matos, Joe Pisapia, and Daniel A. Weiss, and Rapp holds nothing back emotionally. It’s clear throughout that he is still in touch with the raw emotions of the highs and lows of that period of his life, even if he has made peace with it.

The show is not all doom and gloom. There are cathartic moments of humor spread throughout, and lots of joy at the happier moments. Rapp’s warmth, and his love for his family and friends, shines through even the darkest moments, and he is a fantastic storyteller. From the start, his voice and his body language draw you in – you want to hear his story, and you want to hear it from him. Still, as a cancer survivor myself and as someone who was primary caregiver to my mother during the final three months of her battle with cancer, some moments hit hard. But those moments also allowed me to accept that grief is never-ending, to shed some of my own long-pent-up tears … and also to celebrate my mother as Rapp was celebrating his.

The set is minimal: a few chairs and rolling tables that Rapp moves around throughout the show stand in for his New York City apartment, the RENT audition/rehearsal/performance spaces, his mother’s home and hospital room, and other sundry locations. Photos are projected onto the walls of the set (which evoked memories of the RENT set) at key moments, and the lighting and sound design perfectly complement and support the story Rapp is telling without overwhelming the actor himself.

The band is on-stage throughout. For the off-Broadway run at New World Stages, which I saw in May of 2023, that band was composed of Daniel A. Weiss on keyboards, Clérida Eltimé on cello, Paul Gil on the bass, Jerry Marotta on drums, and Lee Moretti on guitar. They were terrific, very well meshed.

During the run at New World Stages, most performances concluded (after the bows) with Rapp being joined on stage by a friend or industry peer for a duet of a number from RENT. The night I saw the show, the effervescent Jessica Vosk joined Rapp for a high-energy, incredibly funny rendition of “Tango Maureen.”

Since closing off-Broadway, Anthony Rapp has been intermittently touring the show. He had some dates in Japan in March and is playing at the Wimberly Theatre in Boston through April 14th. If you can get to Boston to see the show, I highly recommend it! (I have no idea if the post-bow duets happen during the tour, but how awesome if they do!)

Side Note: I saw the evening performance of Without You at New World Stages the same day I saw the matinee performance of Oliver! at New York City Center (My review of Oliver! can be found HERE). That was quite the heavy day of theater!

I’ve always loved live theater, and in the past couple of years I’ve been making a stronger effort to see more of it. Theater Thursday is a new occasionally series where I talk about live theater, both shows I’ve seen recently and shows I’ve loved in the past.

Reading Round-Up: March 2024

Here’s what I’ve been reading, listening to, and watching in March 2024!

BOOKS

I read 8 books in March: 4 in print, 3 in e-book format, and 1 in audio format. They were:

1.       Something is Killing the Children Volume 7 by James Tynion IV, Werner Dell’Edera, Miguel Muerto and others. (PRINT, GRAPHIC NOVEL CHALLENGE)

2.       Death Comes Too Late by Charles Ardai (E-BOOK, ARC) REVIEW LINK

3.       Crone Unleashed (Crone Wars #4) by Lydia M. Hawke (PRINT)

4.       Chita: A Memoir by Chita Rivera (AUDIO, NON-FICTION CHALLENGE)

5.       The Vineyard Remains by Addison McKnight (E-BOOK, ARC) REVIEW LINK

6.       A Voice Calling by Christopher Barzak (E-BOOK)

7.       Mammoths at the Gates (Singing Hills Cycle #4) by Nghi Vo (PRINT, REREAD) REVIEW LINK

8.       Seven Swords by Evan Daugherty, Frederico Dallochio, Riccardo Latina, Valentina Bianconi, and Dave Sharpe (PRINT, GRAPHIC NOVEL CHALLENGE)

STORIES

Here’s what I read this month and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too. If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it.

1.       “Let the Star Explode” by Shingai Njeri Kagunda, in Lightspeed Magazine #166, edited by John Joseph Adams

2.       “An Incomplete Body Has No Answers” by Angela Liu

3.       “The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-First Law of Robotics” by Adam-Troy Castro

4.       “Islands of Stability” by Marissa Lingen

5.       “Fragments of a Symbiotic Life” by Will McMahon

6.       “Kopki and the Fish” by Alex Levine

7.       “Only Some of True Love's Miracles” by P H Lee

8.       “Season of Weddings” by Sharang Biswas REVIEW LINK

9.       “The Home Front” by Charles Ardai, in Death Comes Too Late

10.   “Game Over” by Charles Ardai

11.   “The Day After Tomorrow” by Charles Ardai

12.   “The Case” by Charles Ardai

13.   “Goin' West” by Charles Ardai

14.   “The Shadow Line” by Charles Ardai

15.   “Nobody Wins” by Charles Ardai

16.   “Jonas and the Frail” by Charles Ardai

17.   “The Deadly Embrace” by Charles Ardai

18.   “Don't Be Cruel” by Charles Ardai

19.   “Mother of Pearl” by Charles Ardai

20.   “The Fall of Man” by Charles Ardai

21.   “Fathers and Sons” by Charles Ardai

22.   “Sleep! Sleep! Beauty Bright” by Charles Ardai

23.   “Masks” by Charles Ardai

24.   “My Husband's Wife” by Charles Ardai

25.   “Secret Service” by Charles Ardai

26.   “A Bar Called Charley's” by Charles Ardai

27.   “A Free Man” by Charles Ardai

28.   “The Investigation of Things” by Charles Ardai

29.   “Hello! Hello! Hello!” by Fiona Jones, in Clarkesworld #210, edited by Neil Clarke

30.   “Big Bad” by Chandler Baker, from Amazon’s Creature Feature collection

31.   “Best of Luck” by Jason Mott

32.   “The Pram” by Joe Hill

33.   “Ankle Snatcher” by Grady Hendrix

34.   “It Waits in the Woods” by Josh Malerman

So that’s 34 short stories in March. More than “1 per day” for the first time this year, which catches me up a little bit but still behind pace for the year so far. (March 31st was the 91st day of 2024.)

MOVIES

March was an improvement over February because I managed to watch one movie in March:

1.       Gamera vs. Gyaos (1967)

TELEVISION

·       Slow Horses Season 2, Episodes 2-6 (5 episodes) REVIEW LINK

·       Love, Death & Robots Season 2, Episodes 1 – 8 (8 episodes)

·       Love, Death & Robots Season 3, Episodes 1 – 9 (9 episodes)

·       Star Trek: Discovery Inside the Final Season (1 episode)

That’s 23 episodes of television, again not the “1 per day” I was shooting for, but slightly better than February’s total.

LIVE THEATER

It was a good month for live theater:

·       Drunk Shakespeare, Ruby Theater, NYC (for goddaughter’s 21st birthday) REVIEW LINK

·       Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age, Studio 54, NYC (cabaret-style show)

·       All The Devils Are Here, DR2 Theater, NYC (2nd time seeing Patrick Page’s 1-man show about Shakespeare’s villains) REVIEW LINK (from the first time I saw the show; 2nd time was as great)

Summary of Challenges:

“To Be Read” Challenge: This month: 0 read; YTD: 1 of 14 read.

366 Short Stories Challenge: This month:  34 read; YTD: 79 of 366 read.

Goodreads Challenge: This month: 8 read; YTD: 27 of 120 read.

Graphic Novels Challenge:  This month: 2 read; YTD: 8 of 52 read.

Non-Fiction Challenge: This month: 1 read; YTD: 4 of 12 read.

Read the Book / Watch the Movie Challenge: This month: 0 read/watched; YTD: 1 read/watched.

Movie Challenge: This month: 1 watched; YTD: 5 of 52 watched.

TV Shows Challenge: This month: 23 episodes watched; YTD: 63 of 366 watched.

Live Theater Challenge: This month: 3 shows attended; YTD: 4 of 12 attended.

Book Review: MAMMOTHS AT THE GATES

TITLE: Mammoths at the Gates (Singing Hills Cycle #4)

AUTHOR: Nghi Vo

128 pages, TorDotCom Publishing, ISBN 9781250851437 (hardcover, also e-book and audio)

MY RATING:  5 stars out of 5

Mammoths at the Gates, the fourth novella in Nghi Vo’s Singing Hills Cycle, finally introduces readers to Cleric Chih’s home monastery. Chih’s return to Singing Hills is not as joyous as it should be. Chih’s mentor, Cleric Thien, has passed away. Most of the monastery inhabitants are away studying a recently uncovered flooded city. And Singing Hills is being threatened by the granddaughters of Cleric Thien, who want their grandfather’s remains to lie in state, because of his high status as clan head before becoming a Cleric and be buried alongside their recently deceased grandmother. Chih must find a way to help the acting head of the monastery, who also happens to be Chih’s childhood best friend Ru, deal with the granddaughters while honoring Thien’s memory and teachings under the traditions of Singing Hills.

Mammoths at the Gates is one of several books I’ve read recently that delve into the myriad ways in which we process grief and loss. Both Chih and Ru exhibit behaviors I found very familiar as they process their loss: the great outpouring of emotion only when alone or with the closest of friends, and the using of work, even if it’s just “busy work,” to blunt the raw emotions enough to get through the days/weeks that follow the loss. But while for Chih keeping busy is a choice, for Ru it is a requirement; as acting head of Singing Hills Ru must attend to the visitors at the gates as well as the day-to-day operations of the monastery. Vo also expertly addresses the swings that happen from recalling happy memories to recognizing the reality that the person is truly gone, including those moments when we “hear” the person, or “see” them out of the corner of our eye and think for a moment that maybe news of their passing was incorrect … or those moments when we simply forget the person is gone.

By contrast, there is Thien’s avian companion Many Virtues. In the Singing Hills Cycle, Cleric are accompanied by neixin, birds with infallible memory – they recall everything they see and hear, which makes them amazing repositories of world history, legend, and the details of an individual’s life. The bond between Cleric and neixin is indelible and deep. Through Many Virtues, Vo explores what happens when our sense of loss is so profound we cannot imagine continuing to live without the one we’ve lost, and how sometimes that leads to self-harm (off-screen, in this case).

Through Thien’s granddaughters, Vo also looks at the way we sometimes mourn an idea rather than a real person. These granddaughters didn’t actually know their grandfather. But they were brought up on stories of his career and they say the palpable love their grandmother held for their grandfather even after he’d become a Cleric. But they still mourn the loss as though they knew him directly, mirroring the way in our world we mourn the passing of celebrities we’ve never actually met as though we knew them intimately.

Vo also comments on the cultural/societal ways in which we “say goodbye,” the rituals that are attached to acknowledging a person’s passing and the impact they had on our lives. I found Singing Hills’ ceremony, one of storytelling about the deceased with a touch of ritual rather than one focused more on the ritual than the person, to be sweet and ideal, providing some of the most poignant moments of the book.

Chih also must navigate the changes in their relationship with Run. As a traveling Cleric, Chih has been away from the monastery more than they have been present, while for reasons of health Ru has not been able to travel and has had to forge a life in the absence of their best friend. Watching Chih reconcile the past with the present was a bit uncomfortable at times but was important for both characters.

Even though this is the fourth book in the series, the Singing Hills novellas are all stand-alone. So even if you haven’t read the preceding three books you can pick up Mammoths at the Gates and quickly understand Cleric Chih and their world. For those that have read the earlier novellas, there are oblique references to those events that will tantalize without making new readers feel like they are missing vital information. (And the fifth Singing Hills Cycle entry, The Brides of High Hall, comes out on May 7, 2024!)

 I previously reviewed book three in the Singing Hills Cycle, Into the Riverlands, as well as Nghi Vo’s standalone novel The Chosen and the Beautiful.

I received an advance reading copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Sunday Shorts: Transgender Day of Visibility

March 31st is this year’s Transgender Day of Visibility. Rather than just review a story or two, I thought I’d list just a few of the many wonderful transgender, non-binary, and genderfluid short story and novella writers whose work I have enjoyed over the years (in no particular order) and give some links to where you can find their work or more about them. (Also, apologies in advance to anyone I leave off. It’s not purposeful, and this is not meant to be a complete list. I’m working under a little bit of a deadline.

Everett Maroon. I loved Everett’s memoir (Bumbling into Body Hair) and his novel (The Unintentional Time Traveler, which I’m hoping we’ll get a sequel to). His short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies as well as one collection (Spinning Around a Sun).  https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/5759590.Everett_Maroon

Charlie Jane Anders. Charlie Jane has written YA novels (the Unstoppable trilogy), writing advice books (Never Say You Can’t Survive), novels (All the Birds in the Sky among them), and a good number of short stories (many collected in Even Greater Mistakes).  https://www.charliejaneanders.com/

Lee Mandelo. Lee wrote one of my favorite novels of 2021 (Summer Sons), one of my favorite novellas of 2023 (Feed Them Silence) and has another novella out this month (The Woods All Black, sitting atop my TBR pile right now), and his short stories can be found in places like Uncanny Magazine.  https://leemandelo.com/

K.M. Szpara. Novelist (First Become Ashes and Docile) and short story writer (appearances in Uncanny, Lightspeed, and elsewhere), K.M. also edited Transcendent: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction 2016, published  by Lethe Press. https://www.kmszpara.com/

Jordan L. Hawk. Jordan mixes gay romance and sex with Lovecraftian horror (the Whyborne & Griffin series), supernatural detective stories (the Spirits series), shapeshifters (the Hexworld and Pride books) and more.  https://jordanlhawk.com/

Nino Cipri. Nino Cipri’s short stories have appeared in Fireside Fiction, Nightmare, and elsewhere and collected in Homesick: Stories. They have also written novellas (Finna and Defekt) and the upcoming YA novel Dead Girls Don’t Dream. https://ninocipri.com/

Bogi Takacs.  Bogi’s short stories have been collected in The Trans Space Octopus Congregation (2019) and Power to Yield (2024). E also edited the 2017 – 2019 editions of Transcendent: The Year’s Transgender Speculative Fiction. Check out eir Patreon as well. https://www.patreon.com/bogiperson/posts

S.A. Hunt. Samara Hunt is the author of the Malus Domestica horror series along with some short stories. She also has a Patreon. http://www.sahuntbooks.com/about.html https://www.patreon.com/sahuntbooks/posts?filters%5Btag%5D=space

A.M. Dellamonica. Author of the Indigo Springs and Hidden Sea Tales series, Dellamonica’s short stories have appeared in Lightspeed Magazine and Uncanny Magazine among other places.  https://alyxdellamonica.com/

Nisi Shawl. Novelist (Everfair and the recently-released Kinning) and non-fiction writer (including co-authoring Writing the Other with Cynthia Ward), Shawl’s short stories have appeared in Apex Magazine and  Nightmare Magazine among many others, as well as in too many anthologies to list.  http://www.nisishawl.com/Index.html

Neon Yang. The author of one of my favorite on-going novella series, the Tensorate series, as well as a novel (The Genesis of Misery), Yang’s short fiction has appeared in magazine like Clarkesworld, anthologies like The Book of Dragons, and on Tor.com (now called Reactor). https://neonyang.com/

Series Saturday: SLOW HORSES Season One

Slow Horses, Season One (2022)

Starred Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, Kristin Scott Thomas

Produced by See-Saw Films, Flying Studio Pictures, Sony Pictures Television Studios

Originally aired on Apple TV+

I’ll start this off by admitting two things that are particularly relevant to this post, the first of which many people already know:

1.       When too many people emphatically recommend the same movie/television show/novel/comic book and repeatedly tell me how great it is and how I “have” to watch/read it … I tend to be less inclined to do so. Because what if I don’t love it as much as they did? Does that call their taste into question, or mine? This results in me “sleeping on” several shows, movies, books, and comics that I wind up enjoying, if not outright loving, eventually. Yes, Slow Horses is one of those. Three seasons have aired, a fourth and fifth are on their way, and I’ve finally just watched season one.

2.       I have not read Mick Herron’s Slough House series of novels (of which Slow Horses is the first), or anything else by the author. Yes, it’s partially because of how many people recommended the books to me even before the series started airing. Yes, it’s a deficiency in my spy literature reading. Yes, I intend to read them (I’ve already purchased the first two). Yes, it’s a large part of the reason that this is a Series Saturday post and not a Page-to-Screen post.

For those who don’t know: Slow Horses is about the agents at Slough House in London, a dumping ground for MI5 agents who have bungled their jobs badly enough to be given drudge jobs away from the real action but not badly enough to be outright fired. Yet, at least. Slough House is overseen by Jackson Lamb (played by Gary Oldman) and his quiet-but-competent secretary Catherine Standish (played by Saskia Reeves), in charge of a motley crew of mostly amiable screw-ups that include, at the start of season one, Sid Baker (Olivia Cooke), Louisa Guy (Rosalind Eleazar), Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung), Min Harper (Dustin Demri-Burns), Struan Loy (Paul Higgins), and Jed Moody (Steven Waddington). Enter River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), who should be MI5 “royalty” as the grandson of retired agent David Cartwright (Jonathan Pryce), except that he bungled a live practice terrorist scenario that, had it been real, would have resulted in hundreds of deaths.

The question at the start of season one is: did he really bungle it? Or was he set up? And if so, why?

While Cartwright ponders this, Slough House is tasked with monitoring a disgraced reporter with extreme right wing political organization ties, and possibly to the kidnapping of a Pakistani college student by a white power organization that has the nation’s attention, as well as the attention of MI5’s “Second Chair” Diana Tavener (Kristin Scott Thomas) and her trusty sidekicks Nick Duffy (Chris Reilly) and James “Spider” Webb (Freddie Fox), who was also one of Cartwright’s best friends prior to “the incident.” And this is all just the set-up. Things get far more complicated from there.

With just six episodes, season one of Slow Horses is tightly packed and fast paced. There really is no filler. There are also no “out of left field” reveals. Every revealed connection and uncovered secret regarding the disgraced reporter, the kidnapping, and what really happened during Cartwright’s test scenario, makes sense, and is seeded well before the reveals. There wasn’t any moment where I thought “where did that come from” although there were plenty of moments that surprised me – just because things are seeded well in previous episodes doesn’t mean every reveal is predictable (the difference between “I knew that would happen” and “I should have seen that coming”).

There’s a fine line between making a character unlikeable and making them unwatchable, and both Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas (as well as, to a lesser extent, Freddie Fox and Christopher Chung) walk that line expertly. Oldman’s Jackson Lamb is a slovenly, grouchy, insult-hurling functional alcoholic whose disdain for the screw-ups working under him is palpable (and nicely juxtaposed with how quick he is to jump to their rescue while making it seem like he doesn’t care at all). Before watching Slow Horses, I’d have said that Oldman’s portrayal of George Smiley in the 2011 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was his best spy role ever, but his Jackson Lamb is easily as, if not more, compelling. Diana Tavener is all bitchy cool efficiency and condescension as assayed by Kristin Scott Thomas. “Ice wouldn’t melt” is the phrase that comes to mind. Her every step is calculated, and from her first appearance you can tell just how manipulative and disregarding she is. Lamb cares about his people even as he talks down about them; Tavener cares only for herself. It’s a credit to both actors’ skills that they can make static scenes of sitting on a park bench having a conversation more fraught with tensions than any high-speed foot chase through an airport.

Not that Jack Lowden wasn’t excellent in the opening scene of the first episode, which ended with that high-speed chase. Just – the bench scene was so much tenser.

Lowden is the third name in the opening credits alongside Oldman and Scott Thomas, and River Cartwright really is the focal character for season one and probably for the whole series. Lowden’s Cartwright is disgruntled, rightfully so, but not so bitter that he’s given up the way Lamb has. Cartwright knows he didn’t screw up; knows he was given bad intel by Webb – but doesn’t know why and is still determined to do the best job he can to work his way back into the department’s good graces. Lowden plays all the emotions of Cartwright’s arc well, including his truly clear love and respect for his grandfather.

The rest of the Slow Horses range from plot-device level characterization (Moody and Loy) to characters with intriguing hints of backstory I expect will play out over future seasons (Standish) or hopefully futures (Guy and Harper). Scenes later in the season where the team must figure out what’s going on while on the run from MI5’s security detail (nicknamed “the Dogs”) really give Reeves, Chung, Eleazar, and Demri-Burns moments to shine both on the characterizational and competency levels. Yes, the Slow Horses are all screw-ups – but there are scenes that remind us that most of them were agents in good standing at one time.

The season finale wraps up the main storylines, corresponding (or so I’ve been told) with the conclusion of book one in the novel series. But there are plenty of unanswered questions, particularly about Lamb and Standish’s former boss and about David Cartwright’s history, that will clearly propel subplots in season two (which I should be posting a review of in a few weeks).

I am glad I finally gave in to all the recommendations. If you’re a fan of spy thrillers that are a bit more thought-provoking and nuanced rather than being a series of ever-escalating stunts and explosions, I think you’ll enjoy Slow Horses as well.

This is a blog series about … well, series. I love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies, comics. If you liked this post, I’ve previously written about dramatic TV series such as Perry Mason Season One and Terriers both of which were also shows I “slept on” for too long.

Book Review: THE VINEYARD REMAINS

TITLE: The Vineyard Remains

AUTHOR: Addison McKnight

363 pages, Lake Union Publishing, ISBN 9781542038133 (paperback, also e-book)

MY RATING:  4 stars out of 5

The Vineyard Remains is the sophomore effort from Addison McKnight, following their 2023 debut An Imperfect Plan. Much like the previous novel, The Vineyard Remains focuses on the lives of two women inextricably connected through childhood trauma that reverberates into their adult lives. McKnight is adept at weaving secrets and psychological drama with a very realistic look at the way women are judged both by society and each other, regardless of whether the things they are being judged for are within their control or not.

Cousins Angel and Kiki were pre-teen long distance best friends, seeing each other in person for only a few weeks each summer when Angel’s family visited family on Martha’s Vineyard, both her mother’s parents and her father’s brothers, one of whom was Kiki’s father. That all changed the year Angel’s mother killed her abusive husband (a night Angel has only hallucinatory memories of). Angel and her brother TJ are taken in by her mother’s parents, renamed Angela and Thomas, but Kiki’s father refuses to let her be friends with Angela anymore. Things are never the same between the girls, despite the similarities in their upbringings and the personalities of their fathers. As they age, the girls become rivals for the same boy – high school baseball phenom Bo Brooks – and unknowingly both become pregnant by him at the same time. This sets them on a lifetime course of bitter, and increasingly hostile, interactions.

There are several underpinning mysteries that propel the narrative: what happened the night Angela’s father was killed? where did Kiki’s missing mother go? and what occurred the night the babies were born? McKnight peppers clues about each throughout the decade-plus-spanning chapters, and thus throughout Angela and Kiki’s lives. It’s definitely a slow burn to the final reveals. Perhaps too slow. If I have one complaint about the book, it’s that the third quarter of it feels like the narrative is spinning its wheels in place – all the complications have been introduced, revelations should be imminent, and yet they don’t come for another 70 pages or so. It reminded me of when dramatic television series were 22-24 episodes long and 3-4 of those episodes were usually filler material because the season’s big mystery couldn’t be solved until the final episodes.

On the other hand, where McKnight really excels is at showing the difficulties of recovering from trauma and the circular thought patterns and recurring unhealthy habits that come from that trauma. And maybe that’s the point of those “wheel spinning in place” chapters I felt were so slow. Both Angela and Kiki are locked in patterns both emotional and physical that directly tie back to their different but shared childhood traumas. Every breakthrough, every attempt to change the pattern, is followed by backsliding as old habits and emotions rear up.

I try to avoid spoiling big reveals, so the most I’ll say about the final quarter of the book is that all the mysteries of the past are revealed, and all the roadblocks and complications of the characters’ adult lives are resolved (if not necessarily happily for everyone involved).

Also, it only occurs to me as I’m posting this that the title of this book can be read (interpreted) more than one way. Very cool playing with words, Addison McKnight!

I received an advance reading e-book of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Theater Thursday: SWEENEY TODD (2023 Revival)

With the current revival of Sweeney Todd due to close in just over a month (May 5th), I thought it was high time for me to post my thoughts about the performance I saw back in January.

Ticket sales for Sweeney, by all accounts, dropped quite a bit between the final performances of Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford and the first performances of Aaron Tveit and Sutton Foster – and that’s a shame, because the cast we saw was unequivocally fantastic. This prevailing attitude that understudies/standbys/replacements aren’t as worthy of attention as “big name” stars is sad, in my opinion.

Nicholas Christopher’s Sweeney was everything you’d want Sweeney to be: gruff, obsessed, forlorn and yet at times kind of likeable despite, you know, the whole slitting throats thing. Christopher’s rendition of “My Friends” was moving, his “Epiphany” downright frightening. His portion of the “Johanna” sequence in act two was heartbreaking. He played the arc from revenge-driven to murder-obsessed to accepting of his fate beautifully.

Jeanna de Waal’s Mrs. Lovett was equally as layered and was the highlight of the show. I have never been a fan of “By the Sea,” but she made it an enjoyable character moment for me, the eye into just how obsessed Lovett is with Sweeney that I think the song was always intended to be, imagining a future we as the audience know is unrealistic to a fault. And boy, did she sell “The Worst Pies in London,” not just with her voice but with physical humor and facial contortions that stopped short of being over-the-top. “Wait,” a song I tend to forget even exists until it starts, displayed a subtler side of how convincing Lovett could be.

And needless to say based on the preceding two paragraphs, in the hands of Christopher and de Waal “A Little Priest” was every bit the dark, disturbing comedic tour-de-force it should be. It brought down the house.

In my opinion, the Beggar Woman is one of the more thankless roles in this or any show: the character doesn’t have any huge show-stopping number to showcase an actor’s chops. She is easily written off as more plot device than character, spending half the play being vulgar and the rest practically screaming. Ruthie Ann Miles imbued the part with the right levels of mania and anguish for us to see the Beggar Woman as a real, extremely damaged, person and thus elicit pity.

“Not While I’m Around” is my personal favorite song in the show, and Daniel Marconi as Tobias Ragg delivered it sweetly and innocently. If I have any complaint about this production, though, it’s that Marconi’s Tobias felt a little too cunning/wily while enticing customers during “Pirelli’s Magical Elixir,” at odds with the simple-minded boy who sings “Not While I’m Around.” Tobias is supposed to be a slow-witted victim, both of Pirelli’s obvious emotional and physical abuse and Mrs. Lovett’s condescension and treating him like a pet (“Isn’t it a sweet boy” – it, instead of he), which makes his awareness of Sweeney’s evil that much more of a surprise. Still, Marconi’s interpretation of Tobias’ love for his “rescuer,” Mrs. Lovett, and of his mental breakdown at the end of the play, were spot on.

Rounding out the main cast, Daniel Yearwood as Anthony and Maria Bilbao as Johanna were perfectly matched – earnest, infatuated young lovers who are obsessed with each other as Sweeney is with revenge and Lovett is with Sweeney. If I have a second complaint, it’s that I felt Jamie Jackson’s Judge Turpin, obsessed with Johanna and power, lacked any real sense of menace (although he did still come across as creepy/slimy), and that John Rapson’s Beadle Bamford was almost too flamboyant (an interpretation of the character I’ve never seen before). That said, “Pretty Women” was a highlight of the show, and “Parlor Songs” was humorous.

Full credit to the great Thomas Kail for his direction. He has a fantastic sense of when to focus on the spectacle (the final sequence) and when to focus on the characters. The set design by Mimi Lein is a minimalistically steampunk aesthetic, perfectly juxtaposed with Emilio Sosa’s period-appropriate costumes. I know there’s been some negativity about Steen Hoggett’s herky-jerky, swaying choreography but I found it to be intriguing and exactly right for the mood, especially in the opening and closing “Ballad of Sweeney Todd” numbers where it was mesmerizing. This is, after all, a horror story.

So – while you can, heed the words of the Ballad. Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd, at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater through May 5. (I would gladly see it one more time if finances and time permitted.)

I’ve always loved live theater, and in the past couple of years I’ve been making a stronger effort to see more of it. Theater Thursday is a new occasional series where I talk about live theater, both shows I’ve seen recently and shows I’ve loved in the past.

Macbeth Monday: WHY?

It is no secret that Macbeth is my favorite play by Williams Shakespeare. I will see every live production I can. I have many of the filmed versions on DVD (but not all, especially if you include all the pastiches and “based loosely on…” films). I have comic book and graphic novel adaptations, and more novels and non-fiction books about both the real King Macbeth and Shakespeare’s version than I have ever managed to read.

But if I’m being honest … I have no idea when my obsession with this Shakespeare work started.

 Most of my lifelong pop culture obsessions I can trace back to my father. His love of classic black and white horror films and Abbott and Costello led to my love of all things connected to Dracula. His love of musicals (Broadway and film) and classic Disney (animated and live action) led to my love of all things Arthurian (thanks to the Broadway cast album and movie versions of Camelot and the Disney animated classic The Sword in the Stone). My wildly diverse musical taste (Barbershop Quartet to hard rock)? My love of slapstick comedy and fast-talking comedy duos? My continuing to root for the Mets and the Giants despite rarely watching sports on television anymore? All Dad’s fault.

But Macbeth? Not sure I can toss the credit/blame his way on this one. He was not a fan of Shakespeare (except when there was a musical connection, as in Kiss Me, Kate). Yes, he and his brothers were first-generation Americans of Scots descent (both of my paternal grandparents came from Scotland as adults). But he never seemed to care about his Scots heritage (possibly because of bad blood between him and my grandfather, who passed when I was young), so I doubt Macbeth would have come up in that context.

I can’t even remember when I first encountered the play. I know it was before we studied it in high school. It may have been in the 1937 leatherbound edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare published by Walter J. Black, given to me in middle school by my Aunt Frances (who was not from the Scots side of the family), but did middle school me really randomly flip through the book and chance upon Macbeth some 1,100 pages in? I guess it’s possible. Or maybe it was a random Saturday or Sunday viewing of Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, his adaptation of Macbeth, on one of the local NYC television stations that filled weekend airwave hours with badly-dubbed Japanese martial arts and monster movies (another fave of my father’s, leading to my lifelong Kaiju affection) and occasionally threw in more high-brow dubbed fare.

The first live production I remember seeing was a touring company of British actors that came to Mahopac High School my senior year (or maybe it was junior). What I remember most about that production was that men played the Three Witches, something I’d previously only seen done in the comedy of Monty Python, Flip Wilson, the Carol Burnett Show, etc... In hindsight, it seems there wasn’t much memorable about the performance other than that it was the first time I saw Macbeth live. It certainly wasn’t the last.

Okay, so don’t remember my first encounter with the play, and only vaguely remember the first live production I saw. But the title of this post is “Why Macbeth?” As in, why is it my favorite?

Young me was definitely obsessed with the supernatural elements: the Witches, the visions, the ghost of Banquo! And probably a bit with the bloodshed as well. But definitely the supernatural elements. Middle school was also when I was becoming obsessed with Dracula and read Bram Stoker’s novel for the first time, and when my love of all things Arthurian was also ramping up (most of my classmates didn’t really like reading “Gawain and the Green Knight,” but man did I love it, because supernatural doings!) The more supernatural, the better!

But while those scenes remain favorites and are looked forward to every time I see the show, I’ve also come to appreciate Shakespeare’s depth of character in all the leads (Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Banquo, and Macduff), and how they respond to prophecy and to plain fact. Even though The Bard was writing several hundred years before the British historian Lord Acton penned his famous phrase about power, I do think that Shakespeare was delving into the concept that “power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Macbeth starts the play as a loyal Thane, confused by why the Witches would address him with titles beyond his scope. It takes him a while to come around to the idea of murdering Duncan; he vacillates mightily before agreeing to do the deed. But it’s all downhill from there. Even having murdered his predecessor, he could still have been a good King, lived a repentant life – but once he has the power, he becomes paranoid and controlling, obsessed with the idea of a legacy the Witches promised to someone else. Corrupt. While at the same time, his wife descends into mental illness, depression, and suicide. Lady Macbeth’s move from enabler and co-conspirator to guilt-wracked sleepwalker is as moving as her husband’s shift from loyal Thane to genocidal despot. And in my mind, there is no doubt that they love each other deeply, from start to finish. I am NOT a fan of Shakespeare’s romances (Romeo & Juliet: ugh) but I think he manages to make it clear Macbeth and his Lady do love each other, which enables us to wonder: in different circumstances, what kind of power couple could they have been?

In his fantastic one-man show All the Devils Are Here, the actor Patrick Page traces Shakespeare’s development of the concept of the villain. Macbeth is of course included in the show. In a talk-back with the audience after the performance I saw in December 2023, Page said something that made me view Macbeth in yet another light. Responding to a question about how he finds his way into playing so many villainous roles, Page said that his first question is always “what does this person ultimately want?” And, he said, for Macbeth that is to overcome his fears. He’s afraid of the Three Witches, so he meets them head-on. He’s afraid of killing Duncan, so he does it. He’s afraid of losing the power he’s gained, so he has more people killed to protect it. He’s afraid of death, so when confronted with Macduff, not “of woman born,” but “ripped untimely from his mother’s womb,” Macbeth cries “Lay on, Macduff, and damned be he who first cries ‘hold, enough.’” I had never looked at the character, or the arc of the play, from that perspective before: conquering one’s fears.

I am also intrigued by the staging and costuming choices made by each new production. I’ve seen the show performed in “authentic” Scots dress of the period Macbeth takes place in (roughly 1040, when the real Macbeth reigned), in the dress of Shakespeare’s time, in Russian military uniforms of the Cold War, in modern dress, and more. Each choice brings distinct aspects of the script, and its relationship to our current day obsessions with power, wealth, destiny, and legacy, to light.

So. Why do I love Macbeth so much? There’s no one reason. I love the supernatural aspects, I love the commentary on power and motivation and guilt and paranoia, I love the power of the soliloquies. I also love that Shakespeare gave us what might have been the first written “alternate history” (because he knew darn well that his history of Duncan, Macbeth, and company was nowhere near the real history) with speculative fiction aspects – which might need to be the subject of a future Macbeth Monday post.

Do you also love Macbeth? Why or why not? And if not – what is your favorite Shakespeare play?

It is no secret that my favorite Shakespeare play is Macbeth. I’ve lost count of how many live productions of it I’ve seen, plus movie and TV versions I own in various formats, not to mention all the novels, graphic novels, and non-fiction books. Macbeth Monday is intended to be an occasional feature on the blog where I discuss whatever version or aspect of the story catches my attention at a particular moment.

There’s currently only one previous Macbeth Monday post, about Drunk Shakespeare NYC’s production. But I also posted my thoughts on Patrick Page’s All the Devils Are Here in a recent Theater Thursday post.

Sunday Shorts: Two by Sharang Biswas

Sharang Biswas is a game designer, writer, and artist based in New York City whose stories and poetry have appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, Baffling Magazine, Sana Stories, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. Look him up on his website. Today, I’m going to look at his two most recent stories that appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, edited by John Joseph Adams. Lightspeed Magazine contents are free to read on the website and e-book subscriptions are also available.

“Real Magic” (Lightspeed Magazine #153, February 2023)

Three townspeople visit the Witch in the Woods to ask for help with their problems. She extracts a different price from each, something either cherished or endemic to the person’s sense of self. Each visitor ultimately finds what they are searching for (or searching for relief from), but not in the way they or the reader expects. The witch uses their ingredients to do real magic. This is a beautifully told story, a fairy tale in style but cloaked in Biswas’ beautiful sense of character and community. Biswas uses the needs of the visitors (and their resolutions) to show that every individual action has an effect outside the moment in which that action is taken or that choice is made. Nothing happens in a vacuum, no one person’s fate is theirs alone. What one person discards (willingly or not) may be picked up by another (who may or may not benefit from it). I also loved how Biswas doesn’t spoon-fed the connections between the villagers’ stories but lets them come out organically and not all at once.

“Season of Weddings” (Lightspeed Magazine #166, March 2024, story goes live on the website March 28th)

Nate receives seven wedding invitations in one year. Okay, two of them are for his job, which is maybe a little less fun than attending as a guest. Especially because it quickly becomes apparent to the reader that Nate is Thanatos, god of death. Sometimes, people die at weddings. Still reeling from his most recent relationship break-up (with Thor, who has moved on to loving a mortal woman), Nate must navigate these weddings, new singlehood, his job, his perhaps too-pushy best friend, and a cute guy he keeps bumping into at the weddings. This story is so sweet, so romantic and wistful. I recognized some of myself in Nate’s self-esteem issues around romance and relationships, which made me connect to the work even more. The world-building is also wonderful, bringing together characters from all sorts of world mythologies and religions but tweaking them in new and interesting ways (for instance, the Thor is this story is neither the “drunken jock” we often see nor the blond-tressed super-hero). I won’t spoil who all shows up, because part of the fun of the story is the reveals of Nate’s friends’ circle. I’m a sucker for “deities and personifications of human concepts walk among us and act like every-day people” types of stories (think the classic issue number eight of Neil Gaiman’s the Sandman, illustrated by Mike Dringenberg, among others), and this one fits the description very well. It also fits very well as a paranormal romance, and I love it when authors blend and blur genres.

I love short fiction, and Sunday Shorts is the feature where I get to blog about it. I’ve considered promising to review a short story every day, but that’s a lot of pressure. And while no one will fault me if I miss days, I’ll feel guilty, which will lead to not posting at all. So better to stick to a weekly post highlighting a couple/three stories, as I’ve done in the past. Click on the Sunday Shorts tab at the bottom of this post to find earlier entries in the series!