Story on the Brain

Shirley Jackson’s novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle raises questions like: what if my little sister was a murderous psychopath? And: how burned down does a house have to be before we’ll move out? And: Why do the villagers hate our family so much? The last question is because of the first one, really. Merricat poisoned most of her family and killed them. It’s not even really clear why. Because she got sent to bed without any supper? What had she done? None of that matters because Merricat is the narrator so we see what she sees. She hates and fears the villagers because they hate and fear her. She loves Constance, her older sister, who doesn’t like sugar on blackberries and so did not get poisoned, and Uncle Julian, who only got poisoned a little, so is stuck in a wheelchair with his mind wandering. It’s Cousin Charles she hates the most. He comes sniffing around after the family money and after Constance. Merricat wrecks his room, and when he sends her to bed without any supper...

This 1949 novel is one of the best ever. Do yourself a favor and read it before I talk about it. It seems criminal that I'm not writing a book about a giant unwieldy house while reading this. How could it be? I adore this book, then I got all mad at the ending, then when I went over it again, I had misread it—the ending is exactly right. Hurray! Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle is overtly a retelling of Pride and Prejudice except instead of being about either of those things, it’s about genteel poverty and what it’s okay to do to get out of it. The poverty is no joke in this book. Get ready to appreciate your fridge and pantry, as well as electricity and hot and cold running water. And that closet full of clothes. The characters deal with it, but aren’t about that, really, any more than the Bennets are about being on the edge of homelessness at any moment, if anything happens to Mr. Bennet. It’s huge and central to their lives, but they are about so much more. Cassandra is...

I'm naming the Becca book The Esker Road , so there, it finally has a title after what, a year and a half? It has had many titles through its previous incarnations, but they were all terrible, so let's forget them. At one point I had named Becca Saxony, but it kept on evoking medieval maps.  Once upon a time this book was set on Mount Desert Island, with a J.K. Rowling type author (minus the HATE) up in a mansion on top of one of the inhabited peaks near the shore, with the teen heroine living in a nearly abandoned house built by her dad (now divorced and gone) with a funicular up the mountain from the town where she went to school and where her exhausted mom worked. And there were toddler quintuplets she had to babysit, I believe. Anyway that might have to get written on its own one of these days. It's all part of the story about a girl avoiding reality by obsessing over a fictional world, see.  Quintuplet toddlers that a teen took care of full time. I'd escape too. AN...

Jellicoe Road is a novel by Melina Marchetta. It will ruin you, but in a good way. Also it's so complicated that you don't understand what's actually happening until the end, much like Code Name Verity . Half of the characters have two different names, one in the past and one in the present. But the past absolutely informs the lives of the important characters in the present. It's not really even over.  This book gives me such a feeling of tragedy, in the big epic classical sense.  We'll see how I do with it.  I was thinking about it because I named the Becca book The Esker Road finally. You know how roads are named for where they're going, at least around here? I think it's widespread but who knows. Well, the town of Esker is where all this action goes on, where the University is, the nearest town above a crossroads to Thrushcross.  Books that take place in and around the town of Esker, Maine: The Nerve Leaving Thrushcross Mazewood Summerlands The Esker R...

It's dystopian space opera with a happy ending, right? That fits the bill.  I'm still trying to invent a show for my character to become obsessed with. This movie has so many serious problems. It's really not good, but it's amazing anyway. Take the main character, for example. She gets sucked into this giant drama but plays almost no role in its resolution. She's the most passive heroine ever. This isn't a character-driven story, at least not on her part. You could argue that the wolf man Caine's character drives it much more than she does.  It is a DELIGHTFUL movie to watch because of the flying and diving and falling and swooping through the air, because of the larger than life villains who are fighting with each other, because of the gorgeous settings and costumes and beautifully imagined scenarios, but most of all because of Caine rollerblading through the sky and moving with such profound grace and strength. He gets wings at the end. It's AMAZING. B...

Farscape is one of my favorite shows of all time. Historically it went Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , then Farscape , then Battlestar Galactica . I've been moderately into Agents of SHIELD over the past however many years, but not to that same depth. Look! I'm a total sci-fi nerd! We know this.  Farscape is space opera while the others are not. What is space opera? I get into that in the episode. What does space opera do for you? That's a much more interesting question.  I'm looking into this for the imaginary show that Becca is obsessed with in the Becca book. It matters so much what your character is super into, especially when she's going to get to meet the actors and writers and all. What are they making and why? So I did a lot of thinking about that here. In the end I kind of talked myself out of using this type of show, though. I actually think she should be into a dystopian space opera, if that's a thing. I came up with two examples: Mad Max Fury Road and ...