octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

I have to be honest: I really don't know what to make of this series! I've read a handful of the collections, and they're weirdly compelling. I don't think I've ever read anything like them before, but half the time I don't know what the hell is going on. Mostly I'm just glad that there's a cast of characters and their relationships to each other at the back, because the cast list here is enormous and they're shown over generations, and not always in order.

It's mostly a collection of comic strips about the everyday lives of ordinary people living in the small town of Palomar. It's poor and rural and there are occasional elements of magical realism, but mostly it's general fiction. (As one of the characters says, a little magical realism goes a long way.) There's a serial killer and a pestilential invasion of monkeys and a decrepit old man who seems to be some sort of undying protector of generations of women in a family. There's also arguments between mothers and daughters, emigration to the USA, earthquakes, adultery... so much is thrown at the wall that I'm almost overwhelmed with it all, and want a timeline and a cheat sheet. And yet, and yet... I want to read more about little one-armed Casimira, and Doralis with her tv series, the artist who throws his sculptures in the river, the sheriff carrying around a mummified foetus, and all the rest. It's completely bizarre, but it's interesting. 

Fucked if I know what's happening here, but it's got style. 

It's funny. I started reading this and it struck me almost instantly that it was historical fiction. The original books never felt that way to me, even though they were set in the past. I suppose that's the definition of genre, with historical fiction being different from fiction written by historical authors. Which doesn't have much to do with this little prequel, really. Just a random observation.

The kids have loving parents, who do their best to help others and so the kids have clearly learned the same. I note, though, that it's not entirely generational. My reaction to the kids' grandfather, in the Boxcar books, has tended to be not very positive. From the children's point of view, he comes to be seen as this loving wish-fulfillment sort of figure as the books go on, but reading these books for the first time as an adult, without the memory of childhood enjoyment, he often comes across as someone who doesn't always treat other people well. Such is the case here. His grown son doesn't want to live where grandfather says he should live, and so the entirely family's cut off (and not for the first time; I remember how Grandfather Alden abandoned his sister for decades because she wouldn't choose to live where her younger brother insisted she should). He's not a nice man.

It's no surprise the kids don't love him here, or trust him. The bigger surprise is that their father learned how to treat people well from someone, enough to teach them, because he sure as hell didn't learn it from his own parent. 

Honesty compels me to say that I thought the kids were actually kind of rude in this... but rudeness pays, apparently! Or at least it does here, where their dogged determination to get straight answers out of adults leads to the return of a long-lost necklace. I did smile to myself at their innocent wondering as to why the adults were so short with them, though, considering the kids basically invited themselves to their houses and implicitly accused them of stealing. ("Our grandmother's necklace was stolen and we think you have it!" Not in so many words, of course, but how did they think that would be taken? I'd say they're so used to being nosy that it doesn't register anymore, but the past few books they've gone back to being normal friendly kids, instead of nosy brats, so that's not a fair assessment.)

Still. Rightness covers a multitude of sins, and they (or more particularly Jessie, who spearheaded the interrogations) were right. The final donation of the necklace was generous as well, so Jessie gets extra points for that. 

These books. I think I'm supposed to enjoy them for the (apparent) helpfulness and kindness and good nature of the protagonists, but half the time I end up with my jaw hanging open at their nosiness and presumption. They're all just so entitled, which is a change for the definite worse from the first in the series.

Anyway, in this volume the bad behaviour continues. Little Benny demands to be taken mountain climbing, so of course Grandfather Alden indulges the brat. From the top of said mountain they see a light in the woods, which park rangers later inform them is an old American Indian, who wants nothing more than to be left alone. Of course the family descends upon her en masse, out of base curiosity. "Oh, we wanted to see if you were in trouble," they say, knowing full well from said rangers that she's fine. It turns out that old Lovan is worried about losing her land, and instead of, say, hiring her a lawyer so that it isn't stolen out from under her, Grandfather buys it (of course he does) continuing his habit of hoovering up every resource he can get his grubby mitts on. And of course there's a lost relative in there, because there always, always is. Warner has an obsession with lost relatives, apparently, and the story wanders on its condescending way from there. 

These children are spoilt as anything. Driving home from Aunt Jane's, they spot a lighthouse for sale, and immediately beg grandfather to buy it for them so that they can spend a few weeks(!) of their summer there. Grandfather, who is a poor example of decent behaviour at the best of times, does not tell this grabby foursome to shut their traps and stop being such gimme pigs, but he should. Hence the mystery in the lighthouse, because when you've been trained to be just this entitled - and what a contrast to how attractive these kids were in the first volume of this series, when they made the best of very little without complaint - it's only a matter of time before you start poking your noses into other people's business.

On the plus side, there actually is a nice kid in this. Larry, the subject of said mystery, is a marine biology nerd of the highest order. He spends his time running experiments on seaweed and plankton - having done this myself I am predisposed to like him - and being disinterestedly focused on the welfare of others... instead of merely interfering out of boredom. 

The kids are off camping on a tiny deserted South Sea island, on which they find a mystery because of course they do, they're like bloodhounds that way. I'm on the sixth of these books now and I think I'm slowly becoming inured to the utter ridiculousness of the plots. I mean, I get it's adventure wish-fulfilment for kids, and they're so enormously optimistic because they are for early readers, who no doubt don't want to be put off literacy for life by the infantile equivalent of Tess of the D'Urbervilles (which I just finished reading yesterday, so thank you for that endless dose of misery Mr. Hardy, appreciate it I do not). But still. Even with the ridiculousness there are some things that cannot be overlooked - like the fact that, on this tiny island, the kids discover a 100 foot long giant stone statue, like the ones of Easter Island, when the man who was shipwrecked on that island for literally years never noticed it. I swear I felt my brain stutter at that one. But, credit where it's due, these books are thoroughly good-natured, everyone's always kind to each other and tries their best to be happy and self-sufficient and you know, no-one's playing in a uranium mine this time around so as ridiculous as the plot is, it's still a cut above some of the previous volumes. 

I think this is the first of these books that I've read where the mystery really was one! Usually, the bad guys (if not everything about their motives or actions) are fairly obvious, but here there were three different possible culprits, and all had plausible opportunity to keep sabotaging the renovations at the old motel. 

I did laugh, though, at the changes the new author has made to the way the kids behave. Generally, when the kids were organising their own food with money from their grandad, it was meal after meal of bread and milk, and the Enid Blyton books I read as a kid seemed to indicate that bread and milk was acceptable food for kids, but it sounds mushy and unappetising. Especially as I'm pretty sure I remember them (Boxcar and Blyton) having bread and milk mixed together in the same bowl. Times have clearly moved on, because now when it's time to shop the kids are getting fruit and vegetables and meat and ice-cream and generally not developing scurvy or rickets or whatever it is you get from a life of soggy bread and poor nutrition. Depression, probably. 

I am not the biggest fan of Lovecraft. I find him overwritten and histrionic... but I get the dim feeling that this Flagg story, first published in Weird Tales, produces in me what Lovecraft may well produce in all those who find his work disturbing. Flagg's version of weird fiction is, in comparison, stripped back and is all the more effective for it.

I will say, though, it took a stupidly long time for anyone here to think of a rope, and a stupidly short time for that rope to be lost. I am forced to conclude that some people simply deserve to be swallowed by spatial distortion. 

The first two Sherlock Holmes books, collected together, and they were both surprisingly brief. I guess I'm more used to contemporary mysteries, which can run several hundred pages longer than either of these, but then I do appreciate concision in my reading!

The collection rating reflects that of each individual book, as I read and reviewed those separately (this being just for my own records). I gave both Scarlet and Sign three stars each, but on balance I prefer the latter. Not just for the romance, which introduces another side to Watson, but because it felt a tighter read. Both books have a long accounting of an adventure in another country (the USA and India) towards the end, but the Mormon interlude felt as if it made its novel a little more unbalanced when compared to the other. 

I have a vague recollection of giving a higher rating to one of the Holmes short story collections. Not surprising if so, as I do enjoy the shorts. 

Quick, fun little locked room mystery which only stays a locked room mystery for three and a half seconds, because Holmes solves it that fast. It takes him rather longer to get the rest of the mystery unraveled to his satisfaction, but even that is over quickly. (This may be more novella than novel length.)

The most interesting subplot, after the locked room bit, was the romance between Dr. Watson and Mary. It was both touching and entirely incredible, in that I find it hard to credit that poor, plodding old Watson falls head over heels at first glance. I suppose stranger things have happened, but even so, that was the quickest meet-cute-to-marriage-proposal I think I've ever read. I don't even mean in page count... did they know each other three days, or spend upwards of six hours in each other's company first? I doubt it, and I can't help but think that the greatest attraction, for Watson, is the prospect of living with someone other than Holmes. He's a fascinating man, of course, but there's a limit to how much cocaine and smugness one should have to stand before breakfast.