Author Archives: Jaclyn

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Reader, writer, bookaholic for life!

Review | Birthdays for the Dead, Stuart MacBride

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Wow. Stuart MacBride just never lets up, does he? I received an ARC of Birthdays for the Dead at the Harper Collins Canada Stuart MacBride event, and it’s the only book I have with the inscription “Bieber!” scrawled on it. (Long story.) At a quiet moment during that event, I flipped through the first chapter of Birthdays. I shuddered at the detailed, creepy-as-hell account of a twelve year old girl tied to a chair and a man singing Happy Birthday to her, “the words coming out all broken and hesitant, like he’s scared to get them wrong.” For some reason, that touch of shyness and vulnerability just made that man even creepier. The chapter was barely three pages long, and I glanced up afterward, not wanting to get so engrossed in the book that I forget I’m at a public event. I saw the author whose words had scared me so much, and he was laughing at something someone said. Such a jolly, friendly man, seriously one of the nicest, funniest authors I’ve ever met. Also the writer of one of the darkest, twistiest, and yes, funniest psychological mystery/thrillers I’ve ever read. To anyone who heard MacBride read the first chapter from Birthdays at a literary festival, fair warning: it just gets darker.

Detective Constable Ash Henderson is investigating “The Birthday Boy,” a serial killer who, for the past twelve years, has been abducting girls just before their 13th birthdays. The Birthday Boy then sends birthday cards to his victims’ parents every year, chronicling their daughter’s torture and death. Ash’s own daughter Rebecca was kidnapped five years ago, and he’s been keeping it a secret from everyone, even his family, so that he won’t be taken off the Birthday Boy case. Ash’s desire for revenge fuels his investigation, and his need to continue to keep it hidden, even as more bodies are found and he fears his daughter’s body might be next, makes life even harder for him. Worse, because his ex-wife and younger daughter believe that Rebecca ran away and just never contacted them again, Ash has to deal with his ex-wife’s angry comments about Rebecca and his younger daughter’s guilt-induced rebellious behaviour.

There’s a lot going on in Birthdays, and MacBride never lets you stop to take a breath. Ash is a very sympathetic, complex character, and MacBride does a great job making Ash teeter on the very fine line between hero and anti-hero. Even when Ash does morally questionable things, you understand. As a reader, I’d sometimes be torn between feeling very sympathetic for Ash and thinking he’d gone a bit too far — and all this in the same scene. Birthdays takes the reader on an emotional roller coaster — you want them to catch the Birthday Boy (seriously, such a horrible, evil villain) and you feel for the characters as well, because they all seem so real.

Speaking of characters, I love Dr. Alice McDonald! A forensic psychologist with a list of neuroses, she’s hilarious! She also has the amazing talent of getting into the minds of psychopaths, but she has to get really drunk before she can do it. A superhero with a tragic flaw! She also gets on the nerves of Ash and everyone she works with because she’s such a chatterbox. Possibly, if I had to work with her, I’d be annoyed too. As it is, I love reading about her. MacBride’s writing shifts effortlessly between hilarious and horrific throughout the novel, even with non-comic characters, but seeing Alice appear on the scene elicits an immediate grin. In the words of Ash Henderson: “Complete. And utter. Freakshow.” Love, love, love her!

Birthdays was the first Stuart MacBride book I’ve read, and I’m definitely reading more. (So far, I’ve also read Cold Granite, the first in the Logan McRae series, and loved it too!) MacBride isn’t afraid to delve into the darkest reaches of a murderer’s mind, nor is he afraid to have his hero get just as dark and twisty as the monster he’s tracking. You are sucked right into the story, and all you can do is hang on for the ride. Best part is that the irreverent humour that makes MacBride so wonderfully entertaining at author events electrifies his writing as well. Imagine Ricky Gervais writing Val McDermid. Birthdays is brilliant, psychological thriller writing at its best. Rarely have I wanted the villain in a mystery taken down more, and the fact that I got so invested in the outcome of this case is a testament to MacBride’s writing. If you’re a fan of Val McDermid or Jo Nesbo, you’ll love Stuart MacBride.

The blurb on the back cover of my ARC says it all:

Bloody. Brilliant. MacBride.

Stuart MacBride also has a totally “bookular” website and is friendly and funny on Twitter.

Anne Rice at the Toronto Library Appel Salon

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Anne Rice was such a major figure in my teenage years that I could hardly believe I would get to see her in person. I loved her Vampire books, with their tortured, Old World, non-sparkly anti-heroes. I remember once being home sick from school once and just spending the day reading Interview with the Vampire. Seriously, forget the Cullens — if you want to fall in love with a vampire, Lestat and Louis are so much more seductive. I stopped reading Rice when she started writing books about Jesus, just because those didn’t interest me, and, like many of her fans, I was thrilled to find out she’d returned to the supernatural with Wolf Gift.

As I expected, tickets to the Appel Salon event were sold out almost immediately. I planned to show up an hour early to get a good seat, but saw on Twitter that a line was already forming three hours before the event! Crazy, eh? Yet that’s the kind of devotion Anne Rice inspires in her fans. Standing in line to get my books signed after the interview, I looked around to see what books others brought. While almost everyone in line had the shiny gold and white Wolf Gift (sold just for us, one day before it hit bookstores!) and one man had a leather-bound edition still in its shrink wrap, many people had somewhat battered, dog-eared copies with yellowing pages. I love that! I saw a book with a cancelled library stamp, and I could only imagine the reader discovering that title at a library’s used book sale. I saw books with creased spines, bent covers, pages that opened naturally to a middle chapter. I also saw books that still looked new, of course, but it was those obviously much-loved copies that caught my eye. How many times have these stories been read? Where have they been read, and how have they touched each person’s life? One woman I met in line told me she had all the available editions of Interview with the Vampire. The story means that much to her. I love that. I love seeing so many people who love Anne Rice’s writing as much, or even more, than I do.

I also loved meeting up with fellow bloggers Jen and Jenn at the event! And Jen – thanks for the cookies! I was enjoying them too much to take a photo, but Random House tweeter Lindsey did!

I was very impressed by Rice’s interview. She is so articulate and intelligent, which I expected from her writing. I didn’t expect, however, how soft-spoken, almost serene, she is. Asked the inevitable Twilight question, she couldn’t barely stop laughing long enough to give her response: Lestat and Louis would be envious of vampires who could walk in sunlight; they’d love to be able to do that. They’d say, “If you can sparkle, go to it!” She admits she never thought of putting her vampires in high school, but hey, sure they’d want to go back to high school, for twenty minutes, maybe. (Yeah, that’s actually more realistic than wanting to spend a century in high school, right?) She also admits Meyer is a genius, because Meyer figured out what her audience wanted — the idea that the guy sitting beside you in biology is really a vampire! Again, Rice raises an interesting point. I was attracted to Louis and Lestat because I love the idea that there are gentlemen with Old World manners still around, who could look good in a top hat and lace collar and who could whisk me away from the ordinariness of homework and traffic jams. So, facetious though Rice may have been, why not have a classmate in a boring biology class have a fascinating secret?

I was also impressed by the depth of reflection she had on her faith. She very famously returned to Christianity only to break from it again, and, on her Facebook page years ago, she announced her decision to leave the Church brilliantly, in my opinion:

I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

Her decision had much more of an impact than she realized. She received an email from someone who worked for a church, and that person told Rice that due to her job in the church, she couldn’t say what Rice said, but she was grateful to Rice for saying it. Rice also said that a priest gave her the key to his church’s rectory, along with an open invitation to come and worship the Blessed Sacrament any time she wanted. I found that especially moving, because even though Rice quit the institution of the church, she is still clearly very spiritual. In fact, the epigraph to Wolf Gift is something Rice wrote herself, and she says it’s her personal prayer. I think it’s just lovely:

Say what you will to the force that governs the universe. Perhaps we’ll call it into being, and it will yet love us as we love it.

If you missed the event, the Toronto Library videotaped the whole interview:

Other bloggers’ posts on this event:

Rayments Readings Rants and Ramblings
Reeder Reads

Review | The Wolf Gift, Anne Rice

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I devoured Interview with a Vampire in high school. The movie version was notable for a truly nightmare-inducing scene where the child vampire played by Kirsten Dunst pretended to cry and, when a kind elderly lady hugged her to comfort her, Dunst immediately sank her fangs into the woman’s neck. That, and hotties Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Antonio Banderas, of course, but seriously, it was the Kirsten Dunst scene that made me cringe away from any hug for months afterward. The movie is great, but the book is amazing. Rice created such an enthralling, tragic, and yes, seductive mythology around vampires.

So when I heard Rice was coming out with a werewolf novel, I looked forward to seeing the mythology she’d create for werewolves. The Wolf Gift is a solid novel. It didn’t transport me like her vampire novels did, but it did entertain me, and Rice did introduce a fascinating twist to the werewolf mythology.

Reuben, a handsome young reporter, is bitten by a werewolf, and receives what he calls the “Wolf Gift.” Whenever he transforms into the Wolf Man, he can hear cries of distress and can smell evil. Wolf Gift reminds me of the standard superhero origin story — Reuben as the Wolf Man follows his wolfish super-instincts to track down evil and save the innocent, all the while yearning to find out more about the origin of his condition. In an ironic twist out of Spiderman and Superman, Reuben is assigned to cover the Wolf Man stories for his newspaper, and dryly wonders where Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen are. The public views Wolf Man as a hero — who wouldn’t want rapists and killers to be ripped apart? — but, as with all superhero stories, I kept waiting for the part where the public turns on the hero.

Some members of the public do turn against the Wolf Man, but mostly it is Reuben himself who is attacked by his conscience. His brother, a priest, points out that by killing evil people, Reuben is taking away from them their chance at redemption. A strong thread of Catholicism runs through Wolf Gift — Reuben only tells his brother about his Gift under the seal of Catholic confession, some of the characters debate Gerald Manley Hopkins and a book by a Catholic theologian, and Reuben himself, while unmoved by his brother’s point about redemption, is highly philosophical about his Gift. His articles for the paper, while sympathetic towards his Wolf side, also caution the public that the Wolf Man isn’t a straight up hero — what right does any one have to be judge, jury and executioner? To be honest, I found myself missing Lestat’s utter amorality, or even Louis’ pathos. Reuben’s approach to his moral dilemma felt very cerebral, and I didn’t really feel that he was torn at all. At least until he commits a major mistake later on and feels truly, horribly guilty about it, then I could truly see how he might view his Gift as a Curse.

I do like the idea of werewolf as superhero. Most werewolf stories I read focus on the primitive, animal side of the werewolf, and the joy and freedom in giving in to pure animal instinct. I like how Rice turns that on its head and turns the animal instincts almost metaphysical — werewolves retain their human intellect, but can smell evil. They, quite literally, are compelled to destroy evil and protect the innocent. In one scene, Reuben observes how another werewolf, about to kill an innocent, felt compelled to confess to this innocent first, and practically beg forgiveness — almost at a biological level, they are unable to harm good people. It’s an interesting idea, and while I personally cringed at the possibility that werewolves are actually some creatures from heaven, I like the more scientific and historical explanation eventually provided.

Rice’s vampires always struck me as incredibly sensual, and I figured the more animalistic werewolf would be even more erotic. Rice’s depiction of the initial transformation:

There was a limitless reservoir of heat inside of him, and now it broke out on the surface of his skin as if every hair follicle on his body was expanding. He’d never felt such exquisite throbbing pleasure, such raw, divine pleasure.

“Yes!” he whispered… What mattered was the wave after wave of ecstasy passing through him.

Every particle of his body was defined in these waves, the skin covering his face, his head, his hands, the muscles of his arms and legs. With every particle of himself he was breathing, breathing as he’d never breathed in his life, his whole being expanding, hardening, growing stronger and stronger by the second…

Confession: I laughed. I felt like a thirteen year old schoolgirl giggling at this passage, but I really couldn’t help it. The rest of his transformations weren’t quite so graphic, mostly limited to it just happening, or him going off alone to induce it to come. There is a love story as well, where the woman is turned on by his wolf form. Yet other than a couple of sex scenes, the romance was surprisingly less erotic than I expected. She was mostly like Mary Jane watching her superhero man go off to fight evil.

Wolf Gift offers an interesting twist to the mythos, and provides an interesting origin story, but I wish Rice had gone deeper and darker with the characters. Reuben was somewhat afraid of scientists experimenting on him, but other than a couple of scenes, I didn’t really feel the urgency. Neither did I feel that there was an actual danger of society turning against the Wolf Man, nor did I really feel Reuben’s internal moral conflict over his dual nature. I like the character of Stuart, near the end, but I really dislike the nickname Reuben gave him. Wolf Gift is entertaining, and there are hints at a richer mythology than what is in the book, which I assume Rice may well explore in a future novel. Wolf Gift mostly struck me as a superhero story, with Catholicism and a bit of sex. Not bad, but not amazing either.