Story on the Brain

You know how her books usually are: tightly plotted, lots of action, interesting characters. None of those things happened in this book. The characters had no depth whatsoever. The plot was nonsense and did not hang together. I don't think I could even tell you what it was supposed to be, never mind what it was. The main characters vanished for large portions of the book. And everyone, absolutely everyone, went on long rambling speeches about NOTHING, like about how the Youth of Today Are Budding Fascists, based on, again, nothing. It also went into some kind of weird and vague alternate future where Things Are Otherwise. Worldwide riots by The Youth. And there was a bizarre fixation on Hitler youth and Siegfried and actual Hitler getting exported to South America. Plus Big Charlotte, one of the most hateful depictions of a fat person I've ever seen, and that includes J.K. Rowling, who hates them a whole lot. There was nothing you wondered about or wanted to know, other than ...

This was a fascinating read for me, partly because it solved a story problem I've been having with a work in progress that's been stuck in draft form for ages. I don't even want to think about how long. A decade? Brrrr. That novel is Summerlands , which anyone who reads anything I write will know keeps cropping up regularly as I get all excited to tackle it again, then get discouraged by the way it never quite works. I wrote it when I didn't know how to write novels yet. It's strange how completely dysfunctional it is as a draft, while having two absolutely amazing characters.  Sleeping Murder is about Gwen and Giles, two New Zealanders who are moving to England for no clear reason. (It doesn't matter.) Gwen picks a town and buys a house and then has repeated eerie experiences about the house, things she knows that she could not possibly know, including a sudden terrifying memory of seeing a murder. She thinks she's going insane until Miss Marple (yay!) tal...

I really wanted to see this. In fact, I watched Knives Out purely so I could see it fully educated in the ways of this series. Knives Out was fantastic, so tightly plotted that even my picky brain never found a single hole in the story. I loved it. I should watch it again. Instead, I watched Glass Onion, then the next day kept thinking, "Wait..." and watched it again. And it has holes, alas.  Spoilers going forward for both movies, probably, but definitely for Glass Onion. There were a lot of things I adored about the movie. I loved that we thought we knew what was going on, then learned that we were seeing everything wrong. That was similar to Knives Out and was something I loved there, too. I loved the way we saw Whiskey very differently once Andi talked to her and got past the surface appearance. I loved all the various things that seemed completely different once we saw them from multiple angles. That's something Johnson does brilliantly.  But there were plot holes.  ...

It's almost painful to write criticism of any of Willis's work, since she's one of my top three favorite authors. I've been reading her books lately as I'm thinking a lot about close third person in my own work. She does it so well! First I read Blackout and All Clear over the weekend. Then I read Crosstalk because I got so stressed out from all the panic and fear and everyone being cold and wet and starving and frightened and the falling bombs and so on. And the time travel terrifies me, since it's been going wrong ever since Doomsday Book . How would anyone ever be brave enough to get into that machine after that? Well, okay, that's not fair. But to say why would give away the plot.  I have a lot of thoughts about Blackout and All Clear but that's for another post. Crosstalk is an interesting idea. It bothers me a lot of ways, though.  First big issue is that the heroine and main character, Briddey, does not drive the story in any way whatsoever. ...

This is going to be all spoilers, so look out. You've been warned. I was excited to read this book and enjoyed it to a certain degree the first time through, as I was wondering who committed the murder, but then I read it again and it all fell apart. The mystery makes no sense at all once you have read the book. Look at all the incredible logic flaws. The country house is set up so that it's essentially impossible that anyone else but the nine were there that night, with the power outage and the road blocked off by a downed wire and a power truck. But nobody from the nine themselves to the police ever suspect or investigate any of the nine. That is completely nonsensical. In a typical country house murder, yes, the situation is closed off so that we know the suspect HAS to be one of the people present. This does half of that and then everyone is inexplicably stricken with severe stupidity and they all go, "I don't know, burglars?" and shrug and just LET IT GO. No....