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.  ...