A History of Absurdity

Gilbert Blythe, after knowing Anne for all of three minutes:

Fake marriage! Victoria is going home, pregnant and unwed, so when Paul, a kindly stranger, offers to pose as her husband and then “abandon” her, she takes him up on the offer. After throwing up on him.

Bed sharing! Her father is suspicious, and the family keeps wandering in to say goodnight, so he’s just going to have to give up his honourable plan to sleep on the floor, okay?

Found family! Every night in the orphanage, he used to climb to the roof and wish on all the stars for a family. Her family (aside from her father, who is the main roadblock to happily-ever-after, along with the fact that Paul is already married) – immediately adopt him, While You Were Sleeping-style, feeding him, and stealing his clothes to wash (so he can’t leave), and getting him drunk and talking him into serenading his ‘wife’.

Found family, baby variant! His recurrent nightmares about the war are replaced by lovely visions of him and her and the baby becoming a little family of their own. The fact that it’s someone else’s child is dismissed in one line – it’s a non-issue.

‘I saw you crushing grapes and now I am OVERCOME WITH PASSION’. Okay, that’s not a trope, but it should be. Seriously, though, they are absolutely soaked in grape juice. I keep watching this scene and thinking, ‘But the bedsheets…!’

See the droplets flying from her hair? Lovely cinematography, very romantic, but I can’t forget that it’s all grape juice. Ew.

There’s also Paul’s wife, who is NOT coded as a bitch despite the fact that she’s sleeping with someone else – they just married too fast, the weekend before he went off to war, and they’re fundamentally incompatible. He was going to try to make it work, because he’s that brand of stupid/honourable, but she is far more practical and gets an annulment.

IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN: Hadestown is on my speakers, my fav pumpkin beer is in my paw, my fav pumpkin bread is fragrant and warm from the oven, and the only thing that matters is the urge to curl up in a cozy burrow, light a bunch of candles and SPOOK MY OWN SELF OUT. Here are some of the books that, for me, have that chilly magical dreaminess about them: perennial fall re-reads that I would recommend to anyone.

The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson.  When it comes to the fall spooks I have no interest in gore, but i L O V E creeping, overwhelming, suffocating dread. SHIRLEY is the hands-down world-beater when it comes to that sweet spine-tingling action. Her women are dreamy, imaginative, isolated, terrifying. I love the audiobooks, too: Bernadette Dunne has an eerie, shivery voice that’s as perfect for tight-wound Eleanor and the inexorable omniscient narrator of Hill House as it is for spooky, sharp-toothed Merricat. 

The Secret History, Donna Tartt. Have I talked about this book enough yet? Have you figured out that I love it? You probably have, but just to confirm, i do. I really, really love this book. You know the whole “mystery” from about page 2, but the horror of it ebbs and flows, nightmarish and captivating. There are so many moments of loveliness and so many moments that are chilling and the whole thing feels suspended, like a spiderweb or a dream. It’s not as generous as The Goldfinch and a lot of people find Richard irksome, but who cares. I hope we’re all ready to leave the phenomenal world, and enter into the sublime?

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke. This book is so expansive, so vivid, so – well, magical – that it transcends the usual prerequisites of an autumn read (viz., Be Creepy). Not that it doesn’t have its creep factor moments – Childermass turning Vinculus’s cards, Stephen in Lost-Hope, Lascelles at the castle of the plucked eye and heart – but they are scary mostly because you are wound so breathlessly in the spell of Clarke’s world. This book is like 900 pages long and I’ve read it, estimating without exaggeration, probably 6 times all the way through and way more than that in snippets. I LOVE THIS BOOK.

The Turn of the Screw, Henry James. The Turn of the Screw is a classic for a reason. It will take you about an afternoon to get through, and it doesn’t matter where you are during that afternoon – an office, an airport, a cozy room, a crowded metro car – there will be a moment that catches you, a trickle of ice water down the spine that you’ll remember just when you’re trying to go to sleep. In the best way.

Deathless, Cathrynne M. Valente

Fingersmith, Sarah Waters

The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith

White Is For Witching, Helen Oyeyemi

Eileen, Otessa Moshfegh

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and Other Lessons From the Crematory, Caitlin Doughty

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield

Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

Sabriel, Garth Nix

And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie

Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken

Dare Me, Megan Abbott

Artists In Crime, Ngaio Marsh

The Raven Boys, Maggie Stiefvater

The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman

Dark Entries, Robert Aickman

Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers

The Prestige, Christopher Priest

Rebecca, Daphne DuMaurier

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

The Diviners, Libba Bray

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, M.R. James

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

Shadow in the North, Phillip Pullman

Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn

Dracula, Bram Stoker

Rivers of London, Ben Aaronovitch

Ghosts I Have Been, Richard Peck

Enduring Love, Ian McEwan

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara

In The Woods, Tana French

A Morbid Taste for Bones, Ellis Peters

Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado

Hide and seek 2016 - 2018

Nixie’s Rare Pair AU Challenge, Day Thirty Four: Diana x Lois - Personal Trainer AU.

“I think your trying to kill me,” Lois mutters while rolling onto her back, chest heaving as she sucks in lungfuls of air. “I really think you are.”

Diana let out a tinkling of laughter as she squats down next to the redheaded woman. Her lips quirked up into a small, fond but amused smile. “Only trying to help you build up stamina, not trying to kill you.”