Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old

Review of “Family Lore” by Elizabeth Acevedo

Plot:

Widowed and about 70, Flor Marte asks her family for a living wake so she can enjoy it while she’s still here. She’ll get to see everyone again, especially her three sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila. They are originally from the countryside of the Dominican Republic and immigrated to the United States at different times.

Each woman was born with a gift. Flor predicts death. She dreams her teeth are smashed. Pastora can tell if someone is telling the truth. Ona, Flor’s anthropologist daughter, has an “alpha vagina.”

When Flor asks for the living wake, everyone wonders if she is well. Has she had a dream? She says very little. She asks for this favor.

The action of the book starts six weeks before Flor’s wake, with most of it concentrated in the few days before. However, flashbacks tell the stories of the sisters and their daughters.

For example, the reader learns of the courtship and wedding of Mati and her wandering husband. His constant philandering leads to consequences that reach into the present, forcing Mati to make a choice she’s been avoiding for decades.

Thoughts:

The anthropologist Ona, interviewing family members for a project, provides the framework for the book. A couple of short chapters appear in question-and-answer form. In more places, comments from Ona occur as insets, like notes. The narrative moves back and forth between the past and the present.

This sounds more complicated than it is. What emerges is a mosaic of an immigrant family story, remembering the home country while living in the new one.

Author Acevedo provides a list of characters at the beginning of the book, with descriptions of how they’re related and their supernatural gifts. This is helpful but also shows how many characters the reader has to contend with. I had to refer to the list more than once (“Whose daughter is Yadi again?”)

There is a bit of untranslated Spanish throughout the book. I was proud of myself when I read a complete sentence and understood it. Most of the meanings are clear from context, however. I can understand where other English speakers might find this a bit distracting, however.

I liked the characters and cared what happened to them. I enjoyed the stories of their lives, even if the men, for the most part, got short shrift. Many are philanderers or predators. In general, they are useless.

The ending is not a surprise. The reader knows about Flor’s dream early in the book, though she tells no one. There is acceptance and peace rather than mourning, but she wants to go on her terms.

Family Lore was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel 2023 Prize and longlisted for the NAACP 2024 Image Awards. Just the same, many of the reviews I read online complained about the large cast of characters. It does take a little effort, but I enjoyed reading about the characters—their squabbles, triumphs, and losses—so I found the effort worth it.

There is humor and enjoyment of life. For example, Matilde takes dance classes. Why shouldn’t she? She likes to dance, even if she isn’t sixteen years old anymore.

While I can understand this book isn’t for everyone, I enjoyed it and found it easy to read, stumbling over the Spanish notwithstanding.

Bio: Elizabeth Acevedo was born in Harlem to Dominican immigrant parents. She is best known for her YA books and poetry. Her debut novel, The Poet X (2018), was a New York Times best seller and won a National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Family Lore is her first novel for an adult audience.

Title: Family Lore
Author: Elizabeth Acevedo
First published: 2023

Review of “What You Are Looking For is In the Library” by Michiko Aoyama

Plot:

This is a collection of five interrelated stories of people who come into the library in Hatori Community House in Tokyo. There, the librarian asks each person, “What are you looking for?”

Ms. Sayuri Komachi, the librarian, is not a mousy person with black-framed winged glasses, but something of a presence. In the first story, twenty-one-year-old Tomoko is looking for books on Excel, which she wishes to learn to help her find a better job. She describes Ms. Komachi:

“My eyes nearly jump out of their sockets. The librarian is huge…I mean, like really huge. But huge as in big, not fat. She takes up the entire space between the L-shaped counter and the partition. Her skin is super pale—you can’t even see where her chin ends and her neck begins—and she is wearing a beige apron over an off-white loose-knit cardigan. She reminds me of a polar bear curled up in a cave for winter.” (p. 25)

Ms. Komachi asks her not only what she is looking for, but why she wants it. She then types on the keyboard, tatatatat, and produces several books that seem relevant to Tomoko’s request and one that does not. She also gives her a “bonus gift,” a little frying she’s made of felt.

Tomoko finds the oddball book the most useful, not in helping her find another job, but in making her happy.

The same pattern repeats in different forms in the other stories; Ryo, a thirty-five-year-old who works in the accounts department of a furniture manufacturer and dreams of opening an antiques store; Natsumi, a forty-year-old, former magazine editor who finds herself marginalized when she returns to work after having a child; Hiroya, a thirty-year-old NEET (not in employment, education or training) who once dreamed of being an artist; and Masao, who at sixty-five, is having a hard time adjusting to retirement.

Thoughts:

The loaded question, “What are you looking for?” has to do with more than just books. Each person who comes to the library is also trying to improve their life. Some are at a crossroads. The librarian is magic (or is she?). She looks and acts oddly. She asks intrusive questions, but the interrogatee does not resent this. On the contrary, they feel warmth and comfort in her presence. But they understand when the interview is over.

She is depicted with a hair bun, spiked by hairpins, from which three white flower tassels hang, a traditional Japanese hairstyle. Maybe there’s something in Japanese folklore I’m not picking up on, but my guess is Ms. Komachi is not entirely human.

Many who have reviewed this book note that it is inspirational and offers hope. While I don’t wish to detract from that, I also sensed an underlying theme. Most of the stories dealt with employment. The book opens with Tomoko, who is beginning her career, and ends with Masao, who has retired. Happiness generally comes from being a productive member of society.

Some of the off-topic books the librarian recommends seem to come out of left field: children’s books, books on worms (useful for gardeners?), or books of poetry. They are real books, listed along with other books mentioned in an index at the back. Perhaps of limited use to the non-Japanese-speaking reading public, but these are interesting all the same.

The similarities in the stories did not make them boring or tiresome. The characters are individual and well-drawn. They face different situations with unique outcomes.

I did not get the feelings of hope and inspiration that others who have reviewed the book have written about. Not that the book offered defeat, despair, and gloom, either. The reading remained interesting, despite the repetition, and the character of the librarian was herself intriguing. This was a fairly quick read.

I enjoyed it.

Bio: Michiko Aoyama (b. 1970) is from Honshu, Japan. She has been a reporter for a Japanese newspaper based in Sydney and worked as a magazine editor in Tokyo. The author’s debut novel is Hot Chocolate on Thursday. Its companion novel is Matcha on Monday. What You are Looking for is in the Library was shortlisted for the Japan Booksellers’ Award, in addition to being a Time Book of the Year, a Times bestseller, and a New York Times Book of the Month.

Title: What You Are Looking For is in the Library
Author: Michiko Aoyama (b. 1970)
Translated by: Alison Watts
First published: 2023
Length: 300 pages

Review of: “The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding” by Osita Nwanevu

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…
Winston Churchill, 1947

The Stuff:

This book is an examination of American democracy, in theory and practice. It offers a variety of prescriptions to aid that ailing democracy, some of which are easier to administer than others. Ancient Athens may be the birthplace of Western democracy, but its current practice bears little resemblance to that of the ancients.

Author Nwanevu states that democracy offers us three valuable tools for governance: agency, dynamism, and procedure. Democracies can be designed and implemented in different ways, depending on need, balancing participation, representation, and deliberation.

That sounds rather abstract, but the author defines each term and takes the reader through a mini-essay on each. It’s still abstract, but coming into focus. It makes more sense when he discusses the detractors who bring up specific arguments for limiting democracy.

For example, in the view that democracy begins with voters (not a view shared by the author), many voters do not participate. They don’t even know their own representative’s names. Some will even go so far as to say that many of these non-participants and low-information voters tend to be younger voters, women, and minorities. It’s not that they’re stupid; they’re simply too distracted to sort through the information, so… should they be included in the franchise?

One detractor made an argument for the establishment of an epistocracy (p. 50), that is, rule by the most knowledgeable.

Yeah, no ethical problems there.

I’m sure this detractor would count himself among the worthy electorate in his epistrocracy.

Nwanevu is not just using the detractors as punching bags. He is using this to form his own definition of democracy:

“Democracy isn’t about the will of the people winning out in a given collective decision. It’s about the right of the people to govern themselves through collective decision-making in the first place.” (p.68)

But democracy is more than voting, according to Nwanevu. It must also provide a mechanism to secure basic rights, give means to ward off domination by more certain groups over others, an acceptance of division and conflict, and a recognition that economic conditions “shape our democratic agency.” (p. 101)
He further argues that the United States is not a democracy, according to this definition, nor was it founded as one.

Part II of the book looks at specific institutions of the United States—the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, among others—and points to undemocratic aspects of each. It then offers ways these institutions might be made more democratic.

Part II also contains a full (long) chapter on a “democratic economy,” dealing with empowering the American worker through labor unions and eliminating right-to-work laws, among other, less routine mechanisms.

He uses Amazon as a case study. Jeff Bezos thanking his workers has always brought the following clip to mind:

Thoughts:

Both as a retired union member and as one who has called for the abolition of the Electoral College since a civics teacher explained it to the class long ago and far away, I confess that reading this part of the book turned me into a kid with my nose pressed up against the window of a candy store. Oh—wouldn’t this be cool! And that! Yes, please, may I have some of that?

More soberly, while I find some of his proposals, such as ranked choice voting, quite doable, others, such as making the Senate more representative of the population rather than the states, hit constitutional roadblocks. But frankly, I’d worry if I agreed completely with any author on the subject.

Alas! Things in the country are the way they are because they serve the interests of those with a bit more sway (i.e., money) than I have. And there is the enemy of us all: inertia. Yet, a girl can dream. And maybe shout a little in the meantime.

The subject matter is perhaps a little abstract at points, and I don’t think the book is for everyone, but I think it is an important book, with respect to a view of American history and to the present. The author explains without talking down to the reader. The writing is clear, amusing at times, and never dry. If the topic interests you, you should find the book well worth your time.

Bio: Osita Nwanevu (b.1993) is a contributing editor at The New Republic and a columnist at The Guardian. He is a former staff writer at The New Republic, The New Yorker, and Slate. This is his first book. He lives in Baltimore.

Title: The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding
Author: Osita Nwanevu
First published: 2025
Length: nonfiction book

Review of “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie

The Stuff and Ramblings:

This semi-autobiographical YA novel centers on an adolescent young man called Junior growing up on the Spokane Reservation. Like the author, he was born with hydrocephalus and underwent surgery as an infant. Both also suffered seizures as children. Because he is not athletic, he is easy prey for bullies. He has one friend, however, Rowdy, who is both fearless and willing to knock the daylights out of most bullies.

Rowdy’s father is a mean drunk. Junior’s father also drinks but isn’t mean. Junior’s family, with its shortcomings, is loving. After a teacher advises him to leave the reservation, Junior tells his parents he wants to go to school in Reardon, an all-white school off the reservation, twenty-two miles away. They readily agree, though transportation remains an issue.

This draws immediate backlash. Others on the reservation see him as a white-lover and call him an apple, meaning someone red on the outside and white on the inside. Rowdy, Junior’s best friend, is especially hard on him, even though Junior tries to talk Rowdy into coming with him.

Early in the book, before he leaves for the off-reservation school, Junior talks about the effects of poverty. He had a dog named Oscar, who was the only being he could trust—more than any human. Oscar got sick. His mother finally had to tell him there was no money to take Oscar to the vet.

When his father got home from wherever, his parents had a talk. Junior’s dad got his gun and bullets and told Junior to bring Oscar outside.

“So, poor and small and weak, I picked up Oscar. He licked my face because he loved and trusted me. And I carried him out to the lawn, and I laid him down beneath our green apple tree. “(p. 13)

In describing this terrible loss, the author says:

“Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.” (p. 13)

Another notable theme is alcoholism. After a series of tragic losses, Junior notes how many of them had to do with alcohol. One can be killed by drink without even imbibing if someone else gets behind the wheel drunk.

But I think by far the greatest underlying theme is the dual nature of Junior. He is an Indian, a self-designated “reservation boy,” but he also wants to build a life outside the reservation. This is indicated in the title “part-time Indian.” It also follows the relationship between Junior and Rowdy, where he concludes that Rowdy is his best friend, even if he hates him. The book is dedicated to Reardon and Wellpinit, the author’s “two hometowns.”

I did go on a bit…

One nice thing about the book is the many drawings by Ellen Forney, executed to look like sketches taped to walls or comic-book panels. Some give the impression of kid drawings, but there are also beautiful pencil portraits.

This book was the most banned and/or challenged from 2010 to 2019, according to the American Library Association. Really? I might have to re-read it in case I missed something. Okay, there were a couple of naughty words, and it mentioned that people gamble. It also discussed people drinking and doing stupid, sometimes hurtful and deadly things. But it advocates none of the above.

I have mixed feelings about the book. I enjoyed reading it, yet I hesitate to recommend it because of the allegations of sexual harassment made against the author, which I was unaware of when I chose this book at the library. Banning the book, however, would be pointless. It is a story worth reading.

Bio: Sherman Alexie (b. 1966) is a US writer, poet, and filmmaker who was raised on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Among his works are The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), which received a Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and was adapted into the movie Smoke Signals (1998), for which he wrote the screenplay. Among his books of poetry are The Man Who Loves Salmon (1998), One Stick Song (2000), and Face (2009).

Several women have come forward with allegations of sexual harassment against Alexie.

He has apologized.

It is a sad business throughout.

Review of “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson

Warning: the book reviewed deals with sexual violence. The review mentions it but does not describe it.

Plot:

Melinda Sordino starts high school with everyone hating her. Her old friends from middle school aren’t talking to her. She really does eat her lunch all by herself.

Maybe if she could tell them about what happened, about why she did what she did, they’d understand. But Melinda can’t find the words.

Heather, a new girl from Ohio, becomes a friend. Heather has plans. Against her better judgment, Melinda lets Heather drag her to a pep rally. While Heather is talking to a sophomore she knows, a girl turns to Melinda and asks, “Aren’t you the one who called the cops on Kyle Rodger’s party at the end of summer?”

Melinda does not answer. Another girl says, “My brother got arrested at that party. He got fired because of the arrest. I can’t believe you did that. Asshole.”

Melinda might tell them why she called the cops, but she can’t. There are no words. She is an Outcast.

I don’t suppose I give much away if I say she finds her voice and there is, eventually, a reckoning.

Thoughts:

As one who’s been around the block, I heard what Melinda couldn’t say, but I’m not the book’s target audience. The author drops hints, involving writers like Maya Angelou and outcasts like Heather Prynne of that perennial high school favorite, The Scarlet Letter.

The book contains other nice touches. When Melinda is getting her feet, she begins doing some yardwork—without parental nagging—and cleaning out debris under the bushes in front of her house. In turn, her dad begins working on the yard, planting new flowers.

One weakness I found in the books is that many of the secondary characters lack depth, especially the antagonists. For example, the football coach/social studies teacher (that’s never happened), whom Melinda calls Mr. Neck. Not only does Mr. Neck have it out for Melinda, asking questions like “Where’s your hall pass?” but he also blames “immigrants” because his son can’t get a job as a firefighter. He tries to set a class debate topic in class: “America should have closed her borders in 1900.” When one student objects to the tone of the lesson as “racist, intolerant, and xenophobic,” he is sent to the principal’s office.

Not everything is depicted realistically, IMseldomHO, but Melinda’s internal world, where the reader spends most of their time, is authentic.

The YA novel’s awards are too numerous to list, but include being a 1999 National Book Award Finalist, 2000 Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults, and 2001 and 2005 New York Times Paperback Children’s Bestseller.

Because of the themes the book deals with, it has also been a frequent target for parental ire. The American Library Association lists it among the top ten most challenged books of 2020: “Banned, challenged, and restricted because it was thought to contain a political viewpoint and it was claimed to be biased against male students, and for the novel’s inclusion of rape and profanity.”

This is a good book for young people, especially girls, I believe, because it shows the importance of speaking up. There will be consequences because few people will want to hear what you have to say, but you have to say it anyway.

Title: Speak
Author: Laurie Halse Anderson (b. 1961)
First published: 1999
Length: novel

Review of “The Life of a Stupid Man” by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

A warning: This work, published posthumously, was written shortly before its author took his life in 1927 and reflects his long-standing despair. I wish to add that if you are dealing with issues like this, please call the Suicide Prevention and Crisis Hotline at 988.

The Stuff and Ramblings:

This extremely short semi-autobiographical book can be read in an afternoon, even if you have a helpful cat. It consists of fifty-one “chapters” or interconnected vignettes, offering the reader an impressionistic view rather than a consistent, chronological narrative.

Yet, there is a story here. The reader understands the author’s despair and pain. The main character is never named and is most often referred to simply as “he.” At the same time, the vignettes are not merely navel-gazing and never stoop to woe-is-me. Even in translation, there is genuine beauty that makes me wish I could read the original Japanese.

One example of the profound (?) in the mundane:

“Then, an overhead wire in front of him emitted a purple spark. He felt strangely moved. The pocket of his jacket concealed his manuscript to be published in the coterie magazine. As he walked in the rain, he looked up at the overhead wire behind him once more.

“The overhead wire continued to emit sharp sparks. Looking at life, there was nothing in particular he wanted. But just these purple sparks—just these fierce sparks in the sky—he wanted to catch even if it meant exchanging his life for them.”

I found the book beautiful and heart-rending, if obscure in some places. Above all, it is very human, making the reader (or at least this reader) wish to ask the author to stay—stay for just one more day.

None of which is to minimize or dismiss the agony the author must have been in toward the end of his life. He was experiencing insomnia and hallucinations, plus the terror of being convinced he would fall victim to the same mental illness that had struck his mother.

While I can understand that this book might not be for everyone, I found it poignant and a reminder of humanity at its barest.

This work is also known by the titles A Fool’s Life or The Life of a Fool.

Bio: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) was a Japanese writer who is known as the “father of the Japanese short story.” Several of his works, such as “Rashomon” (1915), “The Nose” (1916), and “In the Grove” (1921), have become classics. The Akutagawa Prize, awarded to promising emerging authors, was established in his honor in 1935. The 1950 film, Rashomon, directed by Akira Kurosawa, was based on two of Akutagawa’s stories, “Rashomon” and “In the Grove.”

Title: The Life of a Stupid Man
Author: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927)
Translated by: Clayton Maris
First published: 1927
Length: short story

Review of “The Folly of Realism: How the West Deceived Itself about Russia and Betrayed Ukraine” by Alexander Vindman

For it is the US and its allies, I argue, that have enabled the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine. The West’s failings to constrain Russian aggression and harden Ukraine against it have nourished the Russian sense of impunity.
–Alexander Vindman, The Folly of Realism, p. 3

In his introduction, author Alexander Vindman describes the history of America’s foreign policy with the Soviet Union/Russia with respect to Ukraine. During and following the Cold War, the foreign policy actions were based on what he describes as “realism.” This was associated with Henry Kissinger, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, and Kenneth Waltz, and held national interest as its highest goal.

Realism was a reaction to the Wilsonian era’s idea of promoting American values of democracy and freedom and of “making the world safe for democracy.” Vindman calls this view “liberalism.”

The author argues for a foreign policy stance that he labels “neo-liberalism,” one that, in short, promotes national interests while also promoting national values. It was developed by Benjamin Tallis.

Vindman writes (pp. 8-9) “Neo-liberalism demands using a more nuanced and coherent understanding of interest, viewed through our values, along with other important inputs, to determine a compass heading for a US foreign policy approach.”

Vindman claims that in practice, neo-liberalism will provide the stability in foreign relations that realism seeks but is incapable of delivering because it is transactional in nature and dependent on the actions of others.

Yeah, that’s all very abstract. And that’s just the introduction.

Thoughts:

I confess that I don’t know jack about Ukrainian history. There was the Pale of Settlement, and the Holodomor, but outside of that, it was a big chunk of land in Eastern Europe and a former Soviet Republic (kids, ask your grandparents), so reading the brief medieval and Renaissance history that I knew nothing of was nice, if a bit depressing.

The rest of the book is a history (with maps) of Ukraine, beginning with the settlement of a people now known as the Kyivan Rus from roughly present-day St. Petersburg to Kyiv, and whose hegemony lasted from the 9^th to the 12^th centuries, C.E. From this group sprang both the Ukrainians and later the Russians.

Enter the 20^th century. Vindman shows how the US, in its dealings with Russia and former Soviet states, seemed—almost without fail—to choose the wrong door every chance it got because it saw Russia as the big kid on the block. The US didn’t want to anger nuclear-capable Russia. With the right incentives, Russia could become a functioning democracy, ya know. Ukraine and other former Soviet republics—like Chechnya—are nice, and the US certainly didn’t want them to fail, but it would only go so far with its support. Sink or swim, boys.

And the US expected the republics to play nice. Ukraine, for example, had to give up the Soviet-era nuclear weapons on its soil. In return, the US would, uh, offer promises of support—not Article V support as if Ukraine were a member of NATO or anything. But criminey—Ukraine had the third largest collection of nukes in the world, and we can’t have that! So, let’s get together in Budapest and hammer out a deal in 1994 that it would take the Russians twenty years to violate with the annexation of Crimea.

Actually, the situation was a little more complicated than that: The US did give aid to Ukraine in the form of cash and non-weapons-grade uranium. It considered the matter finished, however. The point was to get the weapons out of Ukrainian hands and into Russian hands, not to bolster Ukrainian democracy. When Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, the US applied sanctions to Russia and told them, in effect, “Now you stop that!”

I am poking fun, but this and other incidents are deadly serious. People lost their lives. With the Russian incursion (“Special military operation,” huh? It’s a war!), people are losing their lives every day.

Smarter people than I (there are more than a few) have argued the merits of foreign policy actions and inaction endlessly. Could Vindman’s prescriptions have been followed to happier outcomes in the past? Can they lead to better outcomes in the future? I don’t know. I lack the expertise and experience to say one way or the other. To my inexpert eye, he makes a good prima facie case for the US trying to plan in the long term as opposed to reacting in the short term.

I also see the football being dropped in the past. I see needless suffering and the expansionist and damnable invasion of a sovereign land. Ukraine is a sovereign land not because it was permitted to be one, but simply because it wishes to be one.

Vindman’s writing style is clear and, for the most part, free of jargon. He did use two words I had to look up. I found them both appropriate for the material: 1) revanche: the policy of a state intent on regaining areas of its original territory that have been lost to other states as a result of war, a treaty signed under duress, etc. and 2) irredentism: the acquisition or annexation of a region previously included in another country because of cultural, historical, ethnic, racial, or other ties, or advocacy for such an acquisition.

Nor is the book overly long. At about 240 pages of text (plus notes, acknowledgments, bibliographies, etc.), it is not something a reader has to dedicate too much time to. If you are interested in the topic, this should be an intriguing read.

It’s hard to say I enjoyed this, as it hurt to watch smart, well-meaning people fumble the ball so many times. But I learned a lot. It made me think.

Vindman, who immigrated to the US as a toddler with his family from Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union, has dedicated the book “to those killed in the Russia-Ukraine War…May we learn to avoid such tragedies.”

Bio: Alexander Vindman (b. 1975) is a retired Lieutenant Colonel, US Army, was the director for European Affairs on the White House Security Council, a former political-military affairs officer for the Pentagon, and an attaché at the American embassies in Moscow and Kyiv. He became a national figure for his testimony during the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump. His earlier book is titled Here, Right Matters.

Title: The Folly of Realism: How the West Deceived Itself about Russia and Betrayed Ukraine
Author: Alexander Vindman
First published: 2025
Length: nonfiction book

Review of “The Beast with Five Fingers” by William Fryer Harvey: Halloween Countdown

Plot:

The narrator introduces Mr. Adrian Borlsover, who was good with his hands, able to illustrate his own scientific paper, and carve wood. At the time, the narrator was a child, and Mr. Borlsover was elderly. He’d lost his eyesight in midlife but adapted, learning Braille and maintaining his ability to write.

Mr. Borlsover had no children. He had a nephew, Eustace, who visited him seldom but regularly. Like most of his family, Eustace was an accomplished naturalist, having advanced degrees from universities on the continent. He has traveled to the East and South America.

On his final visit to his uncle, he notices the elderly man is failing. Adrian tells him he is leaving him no legacy, as he is well provided for, but is leaving him his books. Adrian dozes but seems to write. For the most part, it is nonsense, bits and pieces, like a child learning to write, but the words respond to questions Eustace asks. When Adrian wakes, he says he’s been dreaming and dispenses avuncular advice, including a warning to choose his friends wisely.

Eustace glances at the writing: “It’s too late, Adrian. We’re friends already, aren’t we, Eustace Borlsover?”

Two months later, while he is in Milan, Eustache reads Adrian’s obituary.

Eustace returns to his uncle’s home with his secretary, Saunders, to try to figure out what to do with all the books. A package arrives with something bouncing around in it, some kind of animal, no doubt. As Eustace opens the package, the whatever flees into the library before he can get a good look at it.

Oh, well. Where is it going to go? It’ll come down when it’s good and hungry. He hears it scuttling around, knocking books down.

And then he sees it…

Thoughts:

This is a creepy little story. Among Adrian’s avuncular advice is a note that toward the end of life, people tend to request odd things. Eustace is to ignore the odd things he requests.

Hmmm…

After a note from Adrian’s solicitor arrives, stating that Adrian had requested to be embalmed and had further requested that his right hand be sent to Eustace, the nephew begins to piece things together. While believing the hand is secure in the house safe, Eustace and his secretary take a vacation.

Letters from the house staff start coming, tendering resignations, and claiming there are toads in the house. The housekeeper writes to say that others have quit with stories about the big, old, empty house being haunted—not that she believes the stories for a moment, her mother having always been a Wesleyan.

The hand grows sinister, stalking Eustace for no apparent reason. He wonders if he’s paying for his sins. He’s no worse than other men, though he mentions some “dirty business in San Diego,” which he promptly blames on Saunders (what are personal secretaries for?).

“It’s not that, of course,” Saunders assures him. “We are in the twentieth century, and even the parsons have dropped the idea of your old sins finding you out.” He adds that the hand was malevolent from the beginning. Only since Eustace fought it did it focus on him.

What’s behind the hand’s inherent malevolence? That’s more difficult to discern. It shows independence from Adrian while he is still alive, as well as a spark of mischievousness. In his last speech to his nephew, Adrian says, “Education is good so long as you know to whom and for what purpose you give it. But with the lower orders of men, the baser and more sordid spirits, I have grave doubts as to its results.”

Is he being a snob? Or is he speaking of over-educating his hand? It’s a bit in the weeds.

As for tension, this is a good read. Just when you think the beast is done for, there’s a knock at the door, and it’s not Thing with the mail.

This story was adapted into a 1946 movie of the same name, directed by Robert Florey and starring Robert Alda, Julie Holden, and Peter Lorre. The names and some of the elements were changed considerably, but the creepiness remained.

Bio: William Fryer Harvey (1885-1937) was a UK writer and journalist who, according to the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, became a “semi-invalid” after saving the life of a comrade during WWI. As a practicing Quaker, he served in the Friends’ Ambulance Unit and later as a surgeon-lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Among his writings is a memoir, We Were Seven (1936), but he wrote primarily psychological horror.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (1:04:44)

And just a gentle reminder: if you live in a state with an election this November, please vote. Something truly scary could happen if you sit this one out.

Happy Halloween!

Title: “The Beast with Five Fingers”
Author: William Fryer Harvey (1885-1937)
First published: The New Decameron, Basil Blackwell (Oxford), 1919; The story was revised for its first book publication in 1928. All subsequent publications will probably reprint the revised version
Length: novelette

Review of “The Yellow Sign” by Robert W. Chambers: Halloween Countdown

Getty Images and tip o’ the hat to Tracy

Plot:

The painter, Mr. Scott, writes that he first sees the watchman go into a church on Washington Square and thinks nothing of it. The next time he sees him, he glances from his window and sees his face. It reminds him of a “coffin-worm” or “grave-worm” (a maggot).

He turns back to his easel but finds something has spoiled his painting. Tessie, his model, examines the work and wonders if something is wrong with the paint or the canvas. Mr. Scott scrapes the paint off and applies turpentine, but nothing seems to work.

Tessie gets dressed and tells him about a dream she’s had several times. In her dream, she wakes to stand by the window. Outside, a “black-plumed” horse pulls a hearse. Inside the hearse, lying in a glass-covered coffin, is Mr. Scott. She wakes then to find herself standing by the window, cold.

Mr. Scott later tells her that he had the same dream, only from his point of view. He woke to find himself confined in a tight box with a glass top. He knew he was moving and heard the horse’s hooves against the pavement.

Hearing this distresses Tessie. Mr. Scott kisses her, something he promised himself he would not do.

Sometime later, coming home from a dinner and a show with another woman, he sees the watchman in the square outside the church.

“Have you found the Yellow Sign?” the watchman asks.

Mr. Scott doesn’t answer but storms off as if offended.

Thoughts:

There is a dreaminess to the story as well as a feeling of inescapable fate, as if the former could soften the latter.

This story is one in a series of interrelated tales in the collection titled The King in Yellow. The title refers to a (fictitious) play that is said to drive its readers mad. The broader narrative of the book moves back and forth in time.

While there is no direct mention of sexual contact between Mr. Scott and Tessie, Mr. Scott is attached to her. He will not marry her, for he believes himself unsuited to marriage. He likes the company of women. There are several mentions of a (deceased?) lover named Sylvia. It seems he likes keeping his options open.

But he’d also like to keep his model.

“I said that I was no good,” he tells the reader. “That is true, but still I was not exactly a comic opera villain.”

However, there is one complication. Now that she’s in love with him, Tessie is reluctant to continue to pose in the nude.

Mr. Scott reflects on this: “Alas! Alas! We had eaten of the tree of knowledge, and Eden and native innocence were dreams of the past.”

Ideas of lost innocence infuse the narrative, though this is relative. Neither of the main characters is exactly an innocent, yet they are still susceptible to the corruption (so to speak) of the maggot/watchman. The watchman is not Satan tempting them astray with promises of wealth and pleasure. He offers only malice, corruption, and evil.

This tale is creepy and sad, designed for the “decadent” set of the late nineteenth century. I enjoyed the creepiness of it and watching poor Mr. Scott trying to get his painting mojo back. The ending didn’t quite click for me, though none of it was a surprise.

Bio: Robert W. Chambers (1865-1933) was a playwright, artist, and illustrator who turned to writing supernatural and weird fiction. Of his seventy books, his best-known is The King in Yellow, which was influenced by Ambrose Bierce and, in turn, influenced H. P. Lovecraft. Told in vignettes that jump forward and backward in time, it describes a play that drives its readers mad.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (45:47)

Title: “The Yellow Sign”
Author: Robert W. Chambers
First published: The King in Yellow, 1895
Length: novelette

Review of “The Undying Thing” by Barry Pain: Halloween Countdown

Plot:

Sir Edric murdered his wife, Alice, and sent their son away. He loves his present wife, Eve. For some unexplained reason, he began keeping wolves on his estate. Eve begged him to “destroy” the animals, but he liked them until they attacked Eve without biting her (huh?). He then shot them all himself.

Now that Eve is struggling in childbirth, he’s afraid he may lose her. He gets right with God, promising, “Whatsoever punishment Thou givest me to bear I will bear it; whatsoever Thou givest me to do I will do it. Whether Thou killest Eve or whether Thou keepest her in life—and never have I loved but her—I will from this night be good.”

Eve dies. Her child is born in such a state—no detail is given—that Dr. Dennison suggests holding a hand over its mouth and nose. Sir Edric refuses, but later, he and Dr. Dennison carry a bundle into an area known for caves. They return without the bundle.

Sir Edric has his son by his first wife brought back, educates him, and lives by the straight and narrow. Six years later, he dies. His last words are, “Wolves, wolves, wolves!”

Four generations later, at the end of the nineteenth century, the current baronet, another Sir Edric, is the “last surviving member of the race” and “a pleasant-spoken young man.” He’s about to be married and has stopped by to fix up the old family place. Yes, there’s this old curse, but it’s nonsense, right?

Thoughts:

The family curse in this story goes mostly unseen. It seems to rely on old folk wisdom that emotional trauma during pregnancy could disfigure a developing child. The townsfolk view the area known as Hal’s Planting, where the caves are that the first Sir Edric and Dr. Dennison once left a bundle, as haunted. More than one person ends up dead there without a mark of violence.

One local, John Marsh, likes to drink for free in the watering hole known as the Stag in exchange for stories of local history. He can tell you on good authority that your grandfather was hanged for larceny. And he knows far too much about the doings of Sir Edric’s line. With the exception of the current one, they were all miserable bastards.

All this adds to the idea of dread of the curse coming due, the sins of the fathers being passed on to the third and fourth generations, and so on. John Marsh’s mooching drinks might provide a bit of comic relief, but at the same time, all the stories he tells are dark and dreary. Is this meant to be satirical?

The ending struck me as abrupt, if logical. The reader never sees the monster/abandoned baby all grown up/werewolf (?), so the possibilities are endless. Leaving it all up to the reader’s imagination is perhaps more powerful than actually showing it, but it is also more disappointing.

The greatest weakness is that there are few surprises. It’s not a bad story, but there are better ones.

Bio: Barry Pain (1864-1928) was a UK journalist and writer best known during his lifetime for his humorous work. He contributed to magazines such as Punch and Granata. According to the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, his humorous work “grates now.” He is currently best known for his horror works, although he also wrote fantasy and some science fiction. Among his short story collections are Stories and Interludes (1892), Stories in the Dark (1901), Stories in Grey (1911), and The New Gulliver and Other Stories (1913).

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (29:04)

Title: “The Undying Thing”
Author: Barry Pain (1864-1928)
First published: Black and White, Christmas Number 1893
Length: short story