My October 2021 Halloween post, Baby Teeth, about the very disturbed, homicidal 7-year-old Hanna, who tried on more than one occasion to kill her mother, is now 25 years old in the novel Dear Hanna by Zoje Stage. This sequel puts us in the passenger seat of Hanna’s disturbed mind as a grown-up trying to keep the family that she’s built.
The novel is told through Hanna’s narrative and her thoughts. She actually still blames her parents for sending her to the institute for disturbed children and blames her mother for her father turning away from her. The few years at the institute has taught Hanna how to hide her violent urges from people better, and she still has them. She doesn’t believe anything she’s done is wrong and still believes her mother is the main problem, not her. Surprisingly, Hanna still lived with her parents, although estranged, until she moved out to live with and then marry her husband, Jacob.
One positive person in Hanna’s life seems to be her younger 13-year-old brother, Goose, who is away at a boarding school. They write letters to each other, where they disclose their inner thoughts and work out their daily life problems. Several short chapters are devoted to these letters, which offers a good look into the mind of Hanna and you realize she hasn’t really changed at all.
BG’s Copy First Published 1872, Published by Pushkin Press 2020
It’s Halloween month and I recently went to see the play Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors, a spoof of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that was first published in 1897. The production was very entertaining and extremely funny. They even had Bram Stoker’s book on sale. But was anyone aware that there was a vampire story published by another Irish author in 1872? I wasn’t, until I found this title while browsing in the Posman Books store in Chelsea Market. Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu was published more than 25 years before Stoker’s novel.
I found these titles while browsing in a Book Warehouse outlet in Atlanta, GA recently. I mean, you can buy 2-3 books for under ten dollars – nice! I bought three titles, and below are two.
Feb 2017 BG’s Copy
In Things We Lost In The Fire, Argentinian author, Mariana Enriquez, uses her country’s history of violence and political conflict, mixed with the supernatural, to speak of remnants and consequences of murder and brutality in her short stories.
In these short stories, the presence of the police and soldiers contribute to the uneasiness and the threat of violence. Their cruelties are an implied consequence of the strange, supernatural happenings – the ghosts or silent apparitions in the forests, old jails, homes and graveyards in these stories.
The first story, The Dirty Kid, involves the relationship between an upper-class graphic designer and a homeless boy. The graphic designer, a young woman, is the narrator and lives in an old stone house in a formally aristocratic neighborhood that is now a poor, run down, dangerous place, with suspicion and rumors of ‘witch-narcos’ who perform deadly rites in order to ask for protection. People disappear and are found disfigured, partially decapitated on the streets.
The narrator befriends this homeless child when he comes to her door because he is hungry. Later, when a murdered beheaded boy is found in the neighborhood, she is convinced it is this child. She feels guilty that she didn’t do more to help the hungry boy. Guilt-ridden and tormented by nightmares, she confronts the boy’s pregnant mother and demands to know what happened to the child. The mother snarls that she gave the child to a witch-narcos and has promised her unborn child as well. The narrator is shaken and upset by this, but can still return to the safety and sanctuary of her home. There is a clear line between what goes on in the street and within the narrator’s upper-class home and life.
The author gives vivid descriptions and history of Argentinian and Buenos Aires neighborhoods. In the fourth story titled Adela’s House, a young girl is jealous of her older brother’s relationship with his friend Adela, their neighbor. Adela’s parents are wealthy, she has the best toys, the best parties, but she also has a birth defect – one missing arm. Adele and the young girl’s brother are a bit older and are allowed watch horror movies, while she can’t. Adela and the brother become obsessed with an abandoned house in the neighborhood that has a sketchy history. They don’t include the young girl in their fanciful games until they decide to actually enter this house.
As they enter, the house is alive with lighting and furnishings. Here the story takes a bad turn. The house begins to buzz and they see shelves filled with teeth and fingernails. They hear Adela’s screams in the dark, but can’t find her. They never see her again. Now, the question is why did the house draw in and take Adela and not her friends? Was it because she was different and was somehow vulnerable?
There are ten other short stories within this title, Things We Lost In The Fire, by the author Mariana Enriquez. Her stories go from the normal-everyday to ghost-haunting terror to self-inflicted violence of protest and to the unexplained. Her characters range from husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, and friends who are cast in these situations. These stories do what a good story is supposed to do – keep you engaged, not knowing what to expect, while asking questions afterward. Hope you check it out.
May 2017 BG’s Copy
This second title is published by Hogarth’s Shakespeare project, Shakespeare’s works retold by talented, best-selling authors of today, a series of seven novels. This is book five in the series – the author of Girl With A Pearl Earing, Tracey Cavalier, writes New Boy, a twist on Shakespeare’s Othello, which takes place in a Washington D.C, 1970’s all-white elementary school. The new boy, a diplomat’s son from Nigeria, is the school’s only black student – hence the drama is set. It takes place over the course of one school day, in five parts – before school, morning recess, lunch, afternoon recess, and after school.
Sixth graders Osei Kokote, called O, and Daniella Benedetti, called Dee, meet on the playground before school. Dee is assigned to look after O for the day and show him around school. They feel a connection and become close, to the alarm and disgust of some of the teachers and most of the students, especially Ian, a student and manipulating bully.
Ian doesn’t like the shift in balance that has taken place since O has arrived at school. Before O, everyone knew their place, within certain groups with followers and leaders. O is confident and displays on the playground that he has skills – he can stand alone and not follow anyone. Even though O was different, the students respected him. Ian decides to take action – he will drive O and Dee apart.
This novel, New Boy, by the author, Tracey Chavalier, is well paced, and it’s not clear until the very last page if this will be a true tragedy of O. These are sixth graders after all, but the author brings love, friendship, loyalty, racism, jealousy and betrayal effectively to the playground and classroom of this elementary school. Really good read. I will be checking out other books in this Shakespeare project series, hope you will too.
My last installment featured cute, innocent baby animals, with some being endangered and in need of protection. This book, however, is about a little girl that isn’t innocent at all and may be a danger to others. So, I thought I’d review this one for Halloween month. Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage is a psychological thriller and horror. It is really chilling, dark and creepy to read mainly because it focuses on a young child’s disturbing, dark thoughts and behavior. This pick from BookBub is the author’s first novel.
Ok, so it starts off with 7-year old Hanna not speaking and her mother, Suzette, worrying what is wrong with her child. She takes her to several specialists, to find out that there is nothing physically wrong with Hanna. The doctor recommends seeing a psychologist. But, through Hanna’s narrative, it’s like, she enjoys tormenting her mother and doesn’t care to speak. The first time Hanna finally does says something, she freaks her mother out entirely. Question – does the child need a psychologist or an exorcist?
What drew me to this book? The author, Kiersten White, in an interview on WNYC, talked about publishing this retelling of Frankenstein on the 200th anniversary of the original publication. She also talked about the time period that Mary Shelley lived; being an author was basically an all-male profession as well as the protagonists in their stories. In the introduction of the original book, Shelley’s husband downplays her contribution thinking that people would prefer to read the book if it was written jointly with himself and Lord Byron – Even Mary Shelley herself shifts focus from herself, complimenting her husband encouraging her to write the story.
So Kiersten White decided to pay tribute to Mary Shelley by bringing the women to the forefront of this story. While asking the questions, “How much of who we are is shaped by those around us?” and “What happens when everything we are depends on someone else?”, White says she found the her story in Elizabeth Lavenza – a little girl gifted to a little boy, that feels this boy is the center of her life and, unwittingly, helps create a monster.
