fogbound.net




Sat, 9 Oct 2004

Beasts and Super-Beasts

— SjG @ 4:56 pm

Saki (H. H. Munro), 1914, read as an e-book from BlackMask.com

This collection of thirty-some short stories uses Beasts as the unifying theme. Whether it’s literal Beasts, as in the tale of upper class women stymied in their attempt to sneak into a exclusive party (to which they should have been invited) by a large boar, or figurative Beasts, as in the majority of the others, each story has a Beastly tie-in. We see a lot of Beastly behavior on the part of the Elite. Many of the stories feature twists; some of these twists can be seen approaching from a great distance. I don’t know if it’s because the stories have been widely imitated, or whether the plots were old even when published, but some of these stories felt like old chestnuts decorated up in a new retelling.

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Mon, 4 Oct 2004

Little Scarlet

— SjG @ 4:56 pm

Walter Mosley, 2004, Little Brown and Company.

Another Easy Rawlins mystery. This time, Easy is called on by the police to help defuse a complicated situation emerging right after the Watts Riots of 1965. Of the series, Little Scarlet is perhaps the most intense, direct, and linear. There are fewer twists and turns, and things are much more what they appear to be — which is to say that they are a subtle, complex pattern of race relations in post-riot Los Angeles. Sure, things are less deceptive. Mosley deftly tells us a story, while revealing an evolving and fluid situation with regards to how people of different races — and classes — coexist in Los Angeles.

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