Review of Dracula by Bram Stoker

1897 (Penguin Classic)
454 pgs
Horror
Rating: (Very Good)

First Sentence: 3 May. Bistritz – Left Munich at 8.35 p.m. on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6.46, but train was an hour late.

Synopsis from Amazon.com: “The vampire novel that started it all, Bram Stoker's Dracula probes deeply into human identity, sanity, and the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire. When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house, he makes horrifying discoveries about his client. Soon afterward, disturbing incidents unfold in England-an unmanned ship is wrecked at Whitby, strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck, and a lunatic asylum inmate raves about the imminent arrival of his ‘Master’-culminating in a battle of wits between the sinister Count and a determined group of adversaries.”

Comments: Dracula has long been a character of myth, both in literature and in the movies. With the continuing and in some ways resurgent popularity of vampires today, I thought it was time I went to the one of the most famous accounts of the infamous vampire, starting with Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I had the added motivation of wanting to read a novel that more recently came out called The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, and starting off with Dracula seemed the a wise course after seeing reviews of Ms. Kostova’s book.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula was subtle in terror, and yet quite suspenseful and alluring all the same. The novel is made up of journal entries, phonograph records, telegrams and missives, all offering the different perspectives of the many characters as the story unfolds. There is the young and courageous Jonathan Harker, his clever and perceptive wife Mina, the gentle and beautiful Lucy, the quiet but strong American Quincey Morris, the wealthy and gentlemanly Arthur Godalming, the intelligent Dr. John Seward, the lunatic Renfield, Professor Van Helsing whose knowledge and skill lead the group on their quest, and, of course, the most famous character of all, Count Dracula, who is most mysterious and horrifying throughout. Their experiences made for an intriguing story, which had me eagerly wanting to return to visit them each time I had to set the book down.

As with many classic novels, Dracula has been taken apart, piece by piece, every bit of it analyzed and philosophized about. There are many theories as to the author’s intent and its representation of Victorian society at the times. I did not read Dracula with any of this in mind, nor did I seek it out. I read the novel for purely entertainment value and was well rewarded. It is no wonder the novel has earned the status of a classic, and there is no doubt that it will continue to do so.

Favorite Part: I loved the character of Mina right from the start. She was not only intelligent and courageous, but also had a good heart. My favorite portion of the book by far was the beginning sections where Jonathan Harker is in Transylvania visiting the Count. There was eeriness about it that carried over into my dreams that first night after I started reading the novel.

Miscellaneous: From the late shift to the early shift. I am not sure how I feel about waking up extra early in the morning to get ready for work, but I don’t mind getting off at an earlier hour, that’s for sure!

On the movie front, my husband and I recently enjoyed watching Fried Green Tomatoes, a movie I had seen years ago, but after having just read the book was inspired to do so again. There were quite a few differences between the book and the movie, although that in now way took away from either. I enjoyed them both immensely. We also recently saw The Lake House movie starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. Although slow at times and trying to ignore the paradox that often comes with time travel of any kind (this time through letters), we both enjoyed the movie quite a bit.

Review of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

1987, McGraw-Hill
403 pgs
Fiction
Rating: (Very Good)

First Sentence: The Whistle Stop Café opened up last week, right next door to me at the post office, and owners Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison said business has been good ever since.

Reason for Reading: Years ago, I had seen the movie and after hearing nothing but good comments about Fannie Flagg and this particular novel, I decided to take a chance on it. I found a copy being circulated by bookring through BookCrossing and thought it would be a good time as any to read it.

Comments: There comes a time in life when every person examines where they are and where they’ve been. Evelyn Couch is not happy with her life. She tries to be the perfect wife and the expected gentle and polite woman, but has found that it is not enough. Escaping a weekly visit between her husband and his mother, Evelyn finds herself the listening board for an elderly woman whose “old timey” tales enchant her, stories of the Whistle Stop Café, Troutville, Idgie and Ruth, Big George and Smokey, among a few whose lives were full of hardship, laughter, courage, and strength. The elderly Ninny Threadgoode and Evelyn become fast friends and Evelyn finds herself taking more of an interest in life itself.

Fannie Flagg has written a beautiful novel that had me laughing out loud with almost every other chapter, crying at times and feeling like I was right there in Whistle Stop. Idgie’s humor and toughness was balanced out by Ruth’s gentleness and strength. Fannie Flagg captured the prejudices of the times between the blacks and the whites, as readers followed the stories of Artis, Big George, Willie Boy, Naughty Bird and several other characters that are sure to become favorites once met. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café just about has it all: a murder mystery, a love story, the Great Depression, the Ku Klux Klan, a robin hood of the trains, and plenty of family and friends. This is a novel that reaches into the heart and stays there.

Favorite Part: It’s hard to choose! One of my favorite scenes is when Idgie takes Stump to visit Eva’s dog. It was such a meaningful move on her part. Another favorite part of mine was the trial when the reverend takes the stand.

Miscellaneous: The author, Fannie Flagg, played Nurse Wilkins in one of my favorite movie musicals, Grease.

Take a look at Puss Reboots review of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.

Review of Baked Alaskan by William Scarborough

2006, iUniverse
276 pgs
Suspense/Thriller
Rating: (Good +)

First Sentence: It was way early, like 5:30 in the a.m., when Billy Ray Dent eased his metallic blue pickup and bass boat into the parking lot at Vera’s Largemouth Café.

Reason for Reading: I was asked to review this book for Front Street Reviews.

Comments: William Scarborough’s Baked Alaskan is one of those thrill ride novels you pick up and read for a good time. It is a fun and entertaining book, jam packed with action and a touch of wit added in for good measure. A healthy suspension of disbelief is required.

Former Texas Ranger, Billy Ray Dent took early retirement from his security job with Tech Instruments and has settled into life as a fishing guide on an east Texas lake. When one of his former bosses, Cole Parker, comes for a visit and a bit of fishing, Billy Ray suspects there is more on Cole’s mind than he at first indicated. His suspicion proves true when Cole Parker ends up dead, shot while on Billy Ray’s bass boat in the middle of the lake, reeling in a 10-pounder. Taking his friend to safety after dodging bullets himself, Billy Ray promises his dying friend that he will warn Cole’s spitfire girlfriend, Darian Tonelli, that the killers are after the chip. Cole gave his word that Billy Ray would receive two million dollars for his trouble.

Cole Parker created a chip that will revolutionize television viewing, and the CEO of Tech Instruments will stop at nothing to get his hands on it. Likewise, a German company has taken an interest in the new technology and is working with the Russian Mafia to collect on that chip. With mob hit men and corporate goons hot on their trail, Billy Ray and Darian go on the run, fleeing for their lives.

Billy Ray Dent is one tough cookie that any woman would want on her side in a race for her life. He is quick on his feet and in bringing a plan together. He’s rough around the edges, but has a kind heart. Darian proves to be his match, an independent woman who has had to prove she’s more than just a pretty face by learning to do for herself—and there is not much she cannot do.

The corporate goons and mafia hit men are a bundle of bumbles as they try to rein in their prey. Their actions are not always pretty, although author William Scarborough humanizes them, making it impossible not to sympathize with them even if just a little.

Baked Alaskan is an action packed novel that takes readers from the lazy life on a Texas lake to the wilds of Alaska and then onto the busy streets of New York City. William Scarborough’s book is just plain fun and entertaining. It’s almost as good as the dessert by the same name.

Favorite Part: Ray Dent is quite a character! He is an upstanding sort of guy. And I sure would like to get to know Vera a bit more. She seems like a neat character.

Review of The Devil of Nanking by Mo Hayder

2006, Penguin
471 pgs
Suspense/Thriller
Rating: (Outstanding)

First Sentence: To those who fight and rage against superstition, I say only this: why?

Reason for Reading: I selected to review The Devil of Nanking for curledup.com. The book sounded interesting and a couple of fellow booklovers from one of my book groups mentioned what a great thriller writer Mo Hayder is. I knew I had to give her a try.

Comments: I am finding that I really enjoy thrillers that have substance to them, the way this novel did and Minette Walters’ The Devil’s Feathers. Both were about more than just the story, delving deeply into the character development and their own self-discovery.

In The Devil of Nanking, Mo Hayder has taken a historical event that was suppressed for many years and that only recently has been brought to the forefront. Although the details and numbers of the Chinese civilians murdered by the Japanese soldiers during the Massacre of Nanking are still debated, it is no longer a secret lost in denial. Weaving fiction with fact, Mo Hayder has created a compelling and at times intense novel that was next to impossible to put down.

Shi Chongming kept his family from fleeing Nanking, China when word first got out that there was a possibility that the Japanese would march into the city. The year was 1937. He held out hope that his leader would see them through until it was too late. He witnessed the destruction of his city and the people in what would become known as the Massacre of Nanking. Decades later, Shi Chongming is a professor of sociology at Japan’s Todai University in Tokyo, where he teaches and lives a relatively quiet life, the past of Nanking seemingly buried.

One summer day a young British woman who calls herself Grey appears on Chongming’s doorstep at the university. She wants only one thing from him: to see the film footage he’s protected for so many years of a singular event during the Nanking Massacre of 1937 that has haunted her for “nine years, seven months, and eighteen days.” She searched long and hard for evidence that the event had occurred, despite those around her calling her crazy and of having an overactive imagination. Proving if only to herself that one sentence she read in an orange book she had found in her mother’s house all those years ago was true, has become her life’s mission.

Tokyo is not what Grey expected. The city is much more modern and built up than she anticipated. Her expectation was to find a city that still showed signs of being war torn after the Second World War. In a culture that is believed to be of one mind, where conformity is key, she also was able to see an unexpected individualism in the people. Grey takes a room in a mansion, her landlord an American to whom she finds herself drawn despite the warnings of their Russian roommates. She finds a job as a hostess in a sophisticated club where she entertains and caters to well to do men. Grey, having grown up completely isolated and never truly believing in herself, suddenly finds a confidence she never knew she had.

It is at the club that Grey meets Junzo Fuyuki, a crippled gangster, one of the most feared men in Tokyo. Chongming takes an interest in Grey once he learns of her connection to Fuyuki and they agree to a trade, Chongming will show Grey the film she has spent years trying to find, if she does him one small favor.

Chongming and Grey are much alike, their paths very similar. They both struggle with guilt from the past and the parts they played in the tragedies that haunt them. Furthermore, the two have built walls around themselves, remaining withdrawn and not letting anyone in so easily.

With Grey’s present day narrative and excerpts from Chongming’s journal from the time of the massacre running parallel to each other, a very disturbing and intriguing story emerges in The Devil of Nanking. The two stories deftly come together into a haunting and powerful tale that the reader won’t soon forget. Mo Hayder’s characters are complex and have many layers. As the story unfolds, each layer is peeled away revealing deeper, often unexpected layers. The author can be harsh and raw in her descriptions, which only add to the intensity of the novel.

The Devil of Nanking is not a novel for the faint of heart. Mo Hayder was not afraid to put down on paper the grim realities of the atrocities committed during wartime. She takes readers deep into China during a very dark moment in history as well as flirts with the deadliest of the Tokyo gangsters. The Devil of Nanking is definitely worth taking the time to read. Originally published on Curled Up With A Good Book at www.curledup.com. © Wendy Runyon, 2006

Favorite Part: My favorite character was Mama Strawberry, who liked to dress up like Marilyn Monroe each night. I think her story is one worth pursuing if ever a person were caught up in Mo Hayder’s fictional world.

Review of Red Sky Lament by Edward Wright

2006, Orion
278 pgs
Mystery
Rating: (Good)

First Sentence: Spotted over late-night scrambled eggs and onions at Schwab’s Drugstore on the fabled Sunset Strip, none other than Clark Gable, one of our favorite leading men.

Reason for Reading: I had the opportunity to review this book for Front Street Reviews. Being a mystery lover, I thought it was worth a try.

Comments: Red is often a color associated with anger, passion, and represents fire as well as, at one time, communism. A lament is a cry of sorrow or grief. Red Sky Lament is a fitting title for a novel wrought with all of those characteristics.

During the late 1940's and into the 1950's, J. Parnell Thomas, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee opened an investigation into the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry, searching out people who were associated with the Communist Party or showed signs of communist sympathies. Hearings were held condemning Hollywood personalities, ruining their lives and careers with little regard for truth and justice. It was a witch-hunt of sorts, and unless a person subscribed to the popular beliefs at the time, that person could easily be labeled as a communist sympathizer and an outcast.

It is in this environment, with the looming danger of a brush fire that could change course with a shift in the winds and the unsettling threat of the upcoming hearings, that Edward Wright’s novel is set. When screenwriter Owen Bruder is accused of being a communist, Maggie O'Dare turns to her old lover, the former cowboy actor and ex-felon John Ray Horn. Despite his misgivings and doubts about the screenwriter, John Ray agrees to take on the case to uncover the identity of the person who lied about Owen Bruder's communist affiliation. As betrayal gives way to murder and the lives of his friends are threatened, John Ray's determination to get to the truth only grows stronger.

There could not be a more perfect main character for a novel like this. John Ray Horn is a man of his time, loyal, a cowboy who will stand up to his convictions and for those he loves, and a man of decent character. He isn't without his flaws, however. His temper and jealously sometimes get in his way. His lack of interest in politics allows a glimpse into just how uncertain things were during that time period, with the strong sense of patriotism but also a sense of fairness, which seemed to get lost in the fear of communism, however real or imagined.

Edward Wright has taken a piece of American history and made it his own in Red Sky Lament. The novel is well researched and captures the heart of the controversy, including the patriotism, the bigotry and the fear of the era. He adeptly weaves fact with fiction, bringing the story to life. The reader is transported to Los Angeles of the 1940's from the very first pages and the characters were well drawn. Red Sky Lament is a mystery novel worth reading whether you are new to the series or a continuing fan.

Favorite Part: The Woody Guthrie bits were fun. I really did like the main character, John Ray Horn; he seems like someone I would want on my side in any sort of fight. He’s loyal, if sometimes misguided at times, but overall wants to do the right thing. Maggie O’Dare is probably my favorite character though. She’s gutsy and intelligent.