Teen witches and a space diner
Two books and a podcast
Helloooo, my friends.
It is currently 80+ degrees out and the blackflies appear to be… er… appearing, but as it’s only mid-May, there’ll probably be a frost tonight, who even knows?
I’ve been reading and watching and listening and walking and baking and wanting to do ALL THE THINGS, which is a good feeling. We bought a whole ton of perennials and slammed them into the garden—by “we” I mean Josh, I just swan around and provide moral support, although it should be noted that by “moral support” I mean “heckle”—and I’ve been scrolling endlessly down through different sorts of daffodils and think I’m going to order a bunch to plant this fall? Also maybe I want to start some lavender because it rules and some butterfly weed because we’re working on further bird-bee-butterflying our backyard, so why not?
Also I’m back at Elder Scrolls Online, the game set in what Josh maintains is the most unpleasant fantasy realm ever because no matter where you go, someone is attacking you and everyone is always just very grunty and yell-y. I guess the moral of my story, all day and every day, is that we all find comfort in different things, heh.
A day passes without us speaking again; the door to Alex’s room remains shut, the only sign of the new occupant’s presence the occasional creak of a floorboard or a dirty coffee cup left out on the kitchen counter. At noon I spot her out on the porch, sitting in a rocking chair with a cigarette in one hand and Oryx and Crake in the other, dressed in a seersucker suit.
—A Lesson in Vengeance, by Victoria Lee
If you pulled muscles rolling your eyes at the obnoxious pretentiousness exhibited by BOTH the narrator and the girl she’s describing in this excerpt, you are not alone. And YET. I gobbled the whole of A Lesson in Vengeance up in an afternoon? I don’t know, man. I guess I just can’t resist witches and murder and girls in love at boarding school, especially when it’s all through the lens of an unreliable narrator?
Felicity Morrow left the Dalloway School after the tragic—and, it turns out, somewhat mysterious—death of her girlfriend, Alex. Now, a year later, she’s back to finish up her high school career. She’s back in Godwin House, the most sought-after dorm on campus… and the one with the bloodiest reputation. It’s supposed to be haunted by five girls—all witches—who all died the same night, all on campus, in various horrible ways.
New to Dalloway is Ellis Haley, a seventeen-year-old bestselling novelist with a penchant for cravets and whiskey. (She uses a manual typewriter because of course she does.)
Even though she actively tries not to be, Felicity is drawn to Ellis from the beginning, and Ellis is clearly intrigued by Felicity as well. Ellis asks Felicity to help her do research for her book, which she does… and that brings them closer together, but it also brings Felicity closer and closer to grappling with what she believes was unleashed at Dalloway the night that Alex died.
As I said up at the top, it’s about exceedingly pretentious characters, but I found it—even with all the Gothic overtones and overwrought overwroughtness—weirdly almost cheerfully pretentious? Like, it felt like the characters were largely taking themselves really seriously, but that the author was taking it all with a grain of salt.
Or maybe it was just me with the salt, I don’t know.
Either way, it’s also the sort of book that LAYS IT ALL OUT THERE in case you missed what was going on. Here’s Felicity on what her thesis is about:
“Mostly how depictions of mental illness are used to build suspense by introducing uncertainty and a sense of mistrust, especially with regard to the narrator’s perceptions of events, and the conflation of magic and madness in female characters.”
When I hit that passage about 3/4s of the way through, I literally had to put the book down for a few minutes until my giggles subsided. I don’t know, sometimes things just hit you funny? Basically, it was exactly what I look for in a beach book—or, well, a backyard-in-the-sun book, because I don’t go to the beach during tourist season because it’s too hot and too crowded and there’s no parking.
Anyway, it made me want to finally read Donna Tartt’s The Secret History—how can a book remind you of a book you haven’t read? I don’t know, but that happened here—and revisit The Virgin Suicides and watch all the Mary Shelley-related movies I haven’t seen yet. So that should all be super fun.
Random Maine adventure:
I get my car serviced at the dealership we bought it at. I’ve had wonderful luck with them, they’ve always treated me like a human being with agency and a brain and NOT like A Little Lady, they’ve never tried to upsell me, they’ve helped me out with used parts when they didn’t have to, they’ve got an outdoor waiting area with Adirondack chairs, they always err on the side of overestimating how long something will take (which I vastly prefer to underestimates), and there are dogs.
This past week, I had to go in for a service that was supposed to take about three hours. They offered me a loaner, but that seemed silly, so I figured I’d just walk around Saco for a while and pick up some Pikmin (yes, I’m still playing that ridiculous game, why would I just walk for the sake of walking when I could walk for the sake of picking up pretend cartoon friends wherever I go???)
ANYWAY, I discovered that THERE IS NO CROSSWALK anywhere near the Subaru dealership, even though it is LITERALLY across Route One from the most well-known amusement park in Maine? Like. There are multiple ice cream places and a movie theater on one side and an amusement park on the other, and no way to get from one to the other unless you want to be Frogger and dive into Death Race 2000. It is ABSOLUTELY ABSURD.
So I cut across a couple of parking lots and entertained myself by walking around and around and around the IMAX for two hours—and six miles!!—while listening to podcasts. I didn’t go see a movie because even if I wasn’t still pandemic-twitchy, it was 8am and the theater doesn’t open until way later.
…and that was what my Monday morning looked like, and I’ve got to admit, I was kind of okay with how uneventful it was???
I start with my usual opening: I, Katrell Davis, compel you to answer my call. Will says I’m too dramatic, but hey, it works. I scrawl a quick message mentioning Will and the art contest and sign my name. The ink turns orange, as usual, and then the letter bursts into flame. I drop it and the paper burns up before it hits the carpet. The ghostly image of Will’s grandma floats out of the smoke. Full size, barely translucent. It’s like she’s really standing here. The ghosts were just disembodied voices when I first started, but I’ve improved over the years. Practice makes perfect and all that, I guess.
—Bad Witch Burning, by Jessica Lewis
Katrell Davis has an after-school job at a burger place, but her mother is out of work, and a part-time job at minimum wage doesn’t cover rent, utilities, and groceries. So, despite the physical strain it puts on her, she uses her ghost-raising powers to make enough money to survive. But then one of the ghosts tells her that something bad is coming, and that she should avoid using her power completely.
But with rent coming due and her mother’s current boyfriend eating them out of house and home—and getting progressively more hateful—Katrell doesn’t feel like she has much of a choice. And when her power morphs and she realizes that she can actually raise the dead—like, actually bring people back to life… well, mostly—dollar signs look a lot more urgent than possible repercussions.
Wowzers, it’s been a while since I’ve read a book that really really had me in a place where I TRULY did not know where it was going to go?? As everything ramps up and up and up and Katrell is suddenly trying to navigate family stuff and friend stuff and school stuff and job stuff and local druglord stuff and undead stuff, I really was not sure if she—let alone her loved ones, because good lord, this book has a serious body count—was going to make it through the whole thing in one piece.
It’s a horror story and a paranormal fantasy; it’s a story about abuse and neglect.
It’s a story that answers the age-old horror question—WHY THE HECK WOULD A PROTAGONIST DO THIS THING THAT IS CLEARLY A TERRIBLE IDEA—and it answers it REALLY REALLY WELL. Even as you’re like, NOOOOO DON’T DO IT, KATRELL, you’re also like, oh buddy, i understand why you’re doing this and i’m so sorry. And in that way, it’s a real heartbreaker of a book.
It’s about how we are, in part, shaped by the way we are treated. That the way we are treated by the people we hold dear affects the lens through which we see ourselves—if the people we hold dear don’t value us, it can result in us not valuing ourselves.
It’s about realizing that just because we desperately love someone, they don’t necessarily love us back. It’s also about understanding where someone else is coming from; that some people aren’t all that demonstrative with their love, not because it isn’t there, but because they need time to feel safe in showing it. And it’s about figuring out the difference between those two things—which often requires paying more attention to actions and behavior than it does to words.
In other words: People can say all the right things all day long, but if their actions and behavior don’t reflect what they’re saying, well. Patterns are important.
Podcast Listening
Midnight Burger: A scripted workplace comedic audiodrama about a diner that travels through time and space and opens at 6pm on the dot, wherever and whenever they land. It’s staffed by a motley crew—including radio evangelists who seem to know more than they’re saying—who have no control over where or when they go. I’ve blown through seven episodes in just a couple of days, and I’ll probably be entirely caught up by the time this newsletter comes out. Funny, smart, touching—I’m REALLY enjoying it. (Also, I love that podcasts seem to have brought back olde-timey radio shows?? It’s such a great format.)
Will looks at me from the corner of her eye. “You should really go to therapy after this is over.”
I laugh for the first time all night.
—Bad Witch Burning, by Jessica Lewis
I hope you’re well.
Let me know if you’ve found any gems recently.
More soon,
Leila
FIRST OF ALL, who even knew there were that many kinds of daffs?! Some of them are so gorgeous I have the weird urge to eat them, and that's... a little worrying. Anyway, I'm so glad you all are all thawed, but ugh, to go straight into blackfly season. It's still chilly/sunny here, with random veering into breathlessly hot, because why not. Cheers to mechanics who treat you like you have a fully operational brain. Treasure those people!!! Also cheers to making your walk work. I kind of hate how we plop four lane roads in the middle of everything with no way across - totally been there, and I'm way too much of a chicken to do the Frogger thing. Also, I think it would piss me off to die running ungracefully like that. I'd have to come back and haunt...
Also, still smirking at Oryx & Crake AND seersucker in the same sentence. Soooo much pretentious, yet also so much cute imagining high school students rocking that, with their on-the-nose mental health projects. Bad Witch Burning sounds SO good, and I absolutely adore the cover. She looks like people I know. Minus the hellbeast, of course.
Was recommended a very random ebook called Legends & Lattes and I LOVED it. I don't normally read too much SFF written by men with female main characters because the mischaracterizations are exhausting, but this was most excellent and unexpectedly charming.