Gamers, Vampires, Volcanoes, Demons and A Superhero Kid
My reading for July 2024 was eclectic as always but with the usual break from reality and accompanied by a cast of memorable characters. These are just post-it notes style remarks on the books I’ve read this month.
TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW
by Gabrielle Zevin
When Sam catches sight of Sadie at a crowded train station one morning he is catapulted straight back to childhood, and the hours they spent immersed in playing games.
Their spark is instantly reignited and sets off a creative collaboration that will make them superstars. It is the 90s, and anything is possible.
What comes next is a decades-long tale of friendship and rivalry, fame and art, betrayal and tragedy, perfect worlds and imperfect ones. And, above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.
My daughter, A, highly recommended this book and when she gave me the four sentence synopsis I
thought she’d lost her mind. Nothing she said made me think it was anything other than a love story and nothing else. I was right, but then again I was wrong too. This is a story about love more than a love story. It chronicles the story of three people caught up in a maelstrom of experiences that challenge, obliterate, strengthen and restore their love for each other over a number of decades. Extremely well written it never descends into romantic mush but still manages to make you travel through a gamut of emotions right to the last page. Well worth the time invested in getting to know these people.
ERUPTION
by Michael Crichton & James Paterson
A once-in-a-century volcanic eruption is about to destroy the Big Island of Hawaii.
But a decades-old military secret could turn the volcano into something even more terrifying…
Now it’s up to a handful of brave individuals to save the island – and the entire world.
When you see the author’s names it’s probably enough to point out this is the novel Paterson completed
from Crichtons notes. It is exactly what you would expect from either or both of these writers. A fast paced race against time populated by a variety of characters that frankly we’ve all seen before. It does exactly what it says on the tin and provides you with a good summer read for the plane or the beach (or the garden as in my case!).
A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS
by Paul Tremblay
A chilling thriller that brilliantly blends psychological suspense and supernatural horror, reminiscent of Stephen King’s The Shining, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist.
The lives of the Barretts, a suburban New England family, are torn apart when 14-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. To her parents’ despair, the doctors are unable to halt Marjorie’s descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend. Fifteen years later a best-selling writer interviews Marjorie’s younger sister, Merry. As she recalls the terrifying events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories begin to surface, and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed.
I have to confess that I’ve read this book before and wasn’t really enamoured with it. It seemed too much like all of the books mentioned in the blurb above and the Conjuring movies to boot. However, having read his The Pall Bearer’s Club back in March and listened to him on Neil McRoberts podcast (Talking Scared) I decided to give it another go and I’m really glad I did. Obviously the podcast gave me more of an insight into the subtleties I missed first time around, but also I think I was more open to seeing the long list of earlier novels and movies as informing the setting for the story, more than this novel being a reworking of any of them. The is-it-isn’t-it a possession was really well handled and honestly I still think that argument remained unanswered for me, although it wasn’t exactly left hanging in the novel. I’m glad I gave it another go.
THE LIFE & TIMES OF THE THUNDERBOLT KID
by Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson’s hilarious memoir of growing up in middle America in the Fifties, complete, unabridged, and read by the author.
Born in 1951 in the middle of the United States, Des Moines, Iowa, Bill Bryson is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24 carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generation, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around the house wearing a jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel round his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing evildoers (in his head) as The Thunderbolt Kid.
Using his old fantasy life as a springboard, Bill Bryson recreates the life of his family in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality. In a period that saw the inexorable rise of television, the opening of Disneyland, the testing of the atomic bomb, and the explosion of choice in everything from food to cars, Bill Bryson’s days followed in reassuringly cosy succession, enlivened by modest triumphs and disasters.
Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, The Thunderbolt Kid is full of Bill Bryson’s inimitable, pitch-perfect observations and this unabridged recording contains every single amusing anecdote and amazing fact. Nothing is left out, so you can enjoy the whole book in its entirety, read by Bill Bryson himself.
For the record I wasn’t around in the 1950s and I’ve never lived in the USA but this funny and imaginative memoir drew me in with a world that still felt somewhat familiar to a child of the 60s who grew up in Ireland (always thought to be 10 years behind the States anyway up until the Celtic Tiger). Bryson tells the story from the perspective of a young boy and includes so many side trips filled with weird and wonderful titbits of information that you can at times forget you’re not actually a part of the story yourself. Of course for anyone under the ripe old age of 60 this may as well be a history text and so I’m not sure Millennials would get some of this book (and forget about anyone younger even engaging).
ANNO DRACULA
by Kim Newman
It is 1888 and Queen Victoria has remarried, taking as her new consort Vlad Tepes, the Wallachian Prince infamously known as Count Dracula. Peppered with familiar characters from Victorian history and fiction, the novel tells the story of vampire Geneviève Dieudonné and Charles Beauregard of the Diogenes Club as they strive to solve the mystery of the Ripper murders. Anno Dracula is a rich and panoramic tale, combining horror, politics, mystery and romance to create a unique and compelling alternate history. Acclaimed novelist Kim Newman explores the darkest depths of a reinvented Victorian London. This brand-new edition of the bestselling novel contains unique bonus material, including a new afterword from Kim Newman, annotations, articles and alternate endings to the original novel.
This is a novel I revisited too, but I originally read this one way back in 1992 when it was first released. I
have to say the rereading didn’t disappoint, it was every bit as good as I remembered it, if not more so. The almost steampunk feel to the setting of a rethought Victorian England gave it an intriguing atmosphere a modern setting could never have stood up to and the broad cast of very familiar literary characters would help it hold its own with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) anyday. Universal Studios would have done better to sink their teeth (see what I did there?) into this world rather than trying to resurrect (oh stop that!…) the Tom Cruise lead rubbish they ultimately abandoned. In fact a sensible TV producer could do a lot worse than to take this novel and its sequels and create a sweeping series with great breadth and depth. I immediately tracked down and bought the sequels so I could enjoy the wild ride even longer.
What have you read so far this summer?
