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Guest Post by Kristín M Hreinsdóttir

The End of the Ocean is a novel by Maja Lunde who is a Norwegian author. I started to read this book because it was due to be the next book to read in my book club. When I started reading, I was not sure what I was going to find. I had not at that point read something written by Maja Lunde and was not sure I was going to like it—before my reading, I was told it was about some environmental tragedy and also set in the future. Maybe it is my inner fear or some underlying knowledge about a tragedy like that which makes me dislike the subject, as well as my long-lasting dislike for books or stories set in the future. Why don’t I like stories like that? It is because I think it can be so often overdramatic and superficial and not real. Maja Lunde does the opposite and did hold my attention from beginning to almost the end.

Yes, it is about an environmental tragedy in the future, but it can also be in our time when the water is beginning to be the most important thing, though most of us are not willing to accept that. The novel is also about how the individual handles crises and difficult times, and is a protest against our greedy action against nature. Greed is something we have seriously to think about.

I liked how the book is written but sometimes it lacked flow, but it did not spoil the story so much. The characters are interesting and so well set up that you start to have some strong opinion on them, growing to like or dislike them very much. The weakest part of the story is the end; it almost ended so suddenly that the reader gets the feeling that there is something missing. You are left wanting to know what happens next. But that is maybe a plus that you start to wonder about the end and make your own.

The End of the Ocean by Maja Lunde. HarperVia, January 2020.

Reviewer bio: My name is Kristín M Hreinsdóttir. I live in Iceland and have always like books and literature. I hold B.Ed. in information technology and media and an MA in museum study.

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Guest Post by Nick D’Onofrio

The whole Covid-19 pandemic got me into reading World War Z by Max Brooks. Published in 2007, the novel follows characters around the world as they struggle to survive a zombie outbreak that overtakes the globe. It takes place before, during, and after the zombie outbreak.

The narrator interviews a new survivor from a different part of the world for each chapter. Some chapters can be two pages long, while others can be twenty pages depending on what is being covered. From clearing the catacombs beneath Paris to managing satellites in space, the novel describes interesting scenarios that I would have never thought of when dealing with the undead.

All this being said, it does have a fair share of gore, which is expected in the zombie genre. So it is not for the faint of heart. What really drew me into picking up World War Z were the parallels people online were pointing out between the book and what has happened with the coronavirus. In the novel, the zombie outbreak starts in China and the government there tries to cover it up but it spreads. The United States is overconfident in its ability to contain the threat and promotes a fake drug, Phalanx, which supposedly cures the new disease. I could go on, but I don’t want to spoil too much.

I bought both the book itself and the audiobook. I follow along as it is being read, because that is how I absorb the information best due to my dyslexia. Even the audiobook has a different voice actor for each chapter. There were even some voices I recognized such as Nathan Fillion, Mark Hamill, Simon Pegg, and Martin Scorsese. However, I noticed the audiobook did have a few paragraphs and chapters missing in the beginning but that didn’t bother me that much.

World War Z by Max Brooks. Penguin Random House, October 2007.

Reviewer bio: I grew up in South Carolina but have lived in Switzerland. My traveling experiences have sparked my creativity and inspired me to write.

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Guest Post by Gerty Haas

In my several decades of reading, I have never encountered the likes of Zero Mirrors.

The narrator is a sentient dress worn by the main character, a woman living in a city of boredom. Her companion is a kidult: an adult who had his body modified so he’s the size of a child, because that’s the only time of his life when he was truly happy. The dress is a WAD (Wearable Assistive Data-integrator) worn by Melony, who is a Sashayer in EasyLiving City (not a dancer, because dancing is illegal). Her dearest friend is Robben, the original pilot of the Tree, the area’s greatest building and a grounded spaceship.

Abetted by her companions, Melony’s goal is to sashay through time to save her land from a Plant Plague arriving from the future. Along with being thoughtful and hilarious, this time travel story deals with gender identity, ageism, and family leadership. A key theme is the nature of human movement, from dancing to fleeing to slipping through time.

I’m not going to delineate the story except to say it has three endings: past, present, and future. I’m not able to tell you how often I had to stop reading because the book was making my brain rattle from astonishment or my stomach churn from hilarity or my eyes tear from a poignancy beyond the reality we’re stuck with. A word I hate to see in the description of any artwork is “visionary,” but the word is appropriate here. H. C. Turk has a vision of the future that makes our present seem insubstantial and ignorant, a timeframe that should be left behind. With this book, the reader can abandon that mediocrity for an enthralling experience beyond the norm, exactly equal to the book’s unique, stylish energy.

“You can’t imagine how heartsick you can be when you don’t have a heart.”

Zero Mirrors by H. C. Turk. September 2020.

Reviewer bio: Recently retired from the construction industry, Gerty Haas is an avid reader and art lover living in Florida, which thankfully is not part of The South.

Guest Post by Judith Pratt

Susanna Clarke’s new novel is much shorter than her wonderful Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but even more challenging to read. It’s completely worth the trouble. Some novels I give away, but some are keepers. This is a keeper.

The man writing the story lives in a huge House of Halls, Vestibules, and Staircases. The House provides him with everything he needs—fish from the Tides that sweep the House, seaweed for food and fuel, and the Kindness of the many Statues that fill the House.

He writes daily journals in these capital letters, and creates directories of the entries. He feels blessed by the beauty of the House. The man knows only one human, whom he calls The Other. The Other has named him Piranesi, but the man knows that is not his name.

Once you have these basics, things begin to seem strange. Piranesi lives like an early tribal person, but analyzes things like a scholar. How would this Piranesi know that some statues are minotaurs? Why does he know what a crisp packet is? The book wasn’t making sense. For a chapter or two, I found that intriguing, but frustrating.

Don’t give up. The answers are more fantastical than the questions. And the answers create more questions. Would you rather be along in a world of mysterious beauty, or live an ordinary life with family and friends? How can we learn to see the beauty and magic in the world? What does it mean to be lost?

In retrospect, I’m glad that I knew nothing about this novel when I began to read it. I suggest you ignore the reviews—some of which are beautifully written—and go on the adventure as alone as Piranesi.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Bloomsbury Publishing, September 2020.

Reviewer bio: Judith Pratt has acted, directed, and taught theatre. Her plays have been produced internationally. Her novel, Siljeea Magic, was published in 2019. She lives in Ithaca, NY with a husband and three cockatiels.

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Guest Post by Claudia Gollini

The Shunned House falls into the supernatural and folk genres. It is a horror fiction novelette by American author H. P. Lovecraft, written in October 1924 and first published in the October 1937 issue of Weird Tales.

Lovecraft links, at the story’s beginning, the tale to his idol Edgar Allan Poe. The unnamed narrator finds it ironic that during Edgar Allan Poe’s Providence sojourn, the master of the macabre many times passed a certain house on Benefit Street without recognizing the site of real horrors.

The Shunned House is a house on Benefit Street where a large number of people passed away. With the amount of fungus present in the house, it was declared to simply have “unhealthy” conditions. At worst, the house was deemed “unlucky.” No one suspected anything supernatural was going on.

However, the narrator’s uncle, physician and antiquarian Elihu Whipple, has a shivery fascination for the house. The house was built in 1763 by William Harris. Shortly after the Harrises moved in, his wife Rhoby delivered a stillborn son. For the next 150 years, no child would be born alive in the house. Once the narrator learns of his uncle’s suspicions, they decide to investigate the house.

The story’s narrator suspects that the family is connected to Jacques Roulet of Caude, who was condemned to death for lycanthropy in 1598 before being confined to an asylum.

Jacques Roulet was a real person, whom Lovecraft had read about in John Fiske’s Myths and Myth-Makers. “The family of Roulet had possessed an abnormal affinity for outer circles of entity—dark spheres which for normal folk hold only repulsion and terror.”

The Shunned House of the title is based on an actual house in Providence, Rhode Island, still standing at 135 Benefit Street and the novelette carries the perfect Halloween mood.

The Shunned House by H.P. Lovecraft.

Reviewer bio: Claudia Gollini is a makeup artist, fashion/beauty blogger and journalist, editor and writer, and body painter of events and TV shows.