This week we have a book by an author author/blogger who Audrey Driscoll talked about having read on her blog some time back. She read a large collection of this author's horror stories. I, however, don't do horror, so I chose one of his many other non-horror novels to sample.
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below
The Education of Uncle Paul by Algeron Blackwood C
The story begins with Paul Rivers, age 45, returning home to England after having spent twenty years in America as a "Wood Cruiser," which is to say someone employed by a logging company to survey, judge, mark, and report on the vast lots of timber owned by the company that could be profitably harvested. He traveled and lived year round very close to nature in his almost solitary life within the virgin forests from Minnesota to Hudson's Bay, far removed from civilization. Having inherited some money from an aunt, he is returning to live for a year with his decade younger sister, who he barely knew in his youth. She had married his best friend of his youth, but he died leaving her a widow, with three children, his nieces and nephew, as well as the children of his best friend.
Paul's great fear is that he knows that he never grew up. He never had to, living his life far from the conventions of grownup society. In his heart, he's still very much a child. He fears that people will discover it, and almost certainly his nieces and nephew will sense that he is a kindred spirit. They, of course, do. His other problem is that he has all these deep and impossible yearnings that he, being very shy, he can't express, though they've been building up within him, without a "safety-valve" for years.
Eldest amongst these children in Nixie, and elf-like child wise beyond her years, who with the help of her younger brother, sister, a couple of cats, dogs, and other animals who inhabit his sister's house see through him right off, and eventually, lead him on many "adventures" that unleash all his pent up yearnings.
I have remarked in a previous how strange some of these old books are, and this 1909 book is another example. It is very lyrically written, delving deep into the thoughts of Uncle Paul as he discovers this new life in the country home of his widowed sister and her children. I enjoyed the first third of the book, that covered his introduction to the household, and the household.
But then the book takes a turn to the lyrical supernatural fantasy, with Uncle Paul being led to these fantasy realms by Nixie. Places like where the winds sleep at night, so that he could see them "awake" in the morning, or "The Crack" through which, when the church clock chimes midnight, you could enter into a timeless land where you meet all the things you might've broken, all the pets that died, all sorts of things. Nothing happens, they are just lyrical descriptions, and it is deliberately unclear if we are to take them as actually happening, just Nixie's children's imagination or dreams.
I have a problem with fantasy elements that do not seem grounded in reality. When, as in this case, they are untethered to the story or the reality within the story, I find them simply exercises in creative writing. Fine, but.. I want a story. In any event, Uncle Paul is designated to write down these fantasy "adventures" and then read them to the children, eventually writing them as a book that he sells and gets published.
But the book keeps getting more and more lyrically philosophical, and weird, with a ghost, life after death, and exploring the author's ideas of real reality, ties to nature, all of which lost me completely. My eyes glazed over with all the rambling mumbo-jumbo philosophy Blackwood carries on about in the final chapters, burying any semblance of a story. As usual, the fault is mine. I'm just a simple fellow, a clod, with no interest in philosophy, nor the afterlife. And I appreciate distinctness... I graded it as a "C" because I more or less finished it, and it had its points, but unless you are deeply into nature, the supernatural, and philosophy, you can probably give this book a miss. But if you are, pick it up.
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