Tuesday Intros… The Madman’s Daughter

The Madman’s Daughter

by Megan Shepherd

The basement hallways in King’s College of Medical Research were dark, even in the daytime.

At night they were like a grave.

Rats crawled through corridors that dripped with cold perspiration.  The chill in the sunken rooms kept the specimens from rotting and numbed my own flesh, too, through the worn layers of my dress.  When I cleaned those rooms, late at night after the medical students had gone home to their warm beds, the sound of my hard-bristle brush echoed in the operating theater, down the twisting halls, into the storage spaces where they kept the things of nightmares.  Other people’s nightmares, that is.  Dead flesh and sharpened scalpels didn’t bother me.  I was my father’s daughter, after all.  My nightmares were made of darker things.

Would you keep reading?  Let me know in the comments below…

I have just finished reading and reviewing this book.

If anybody wishes to read my review of The Madman’s Daughter, please click here.

Every Tuesday Bibliophile By the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros… where bloggers can share the first paragraph or (a few) of a book they are reading or thinking about reading soon. Care to join us?

The Madman’s Daughter

BOOK REVIEW

The Madman’s Daughter

by Megan Shepherd

My Rating:  3.5 stars

My Review

It isn’t often that I will read a book that falls under the Young Adult or New Adult genre but the synopsis caught my interest and I decided to give it a try.  I was pleasantly surprised.

The main character of the book is Juliet Moreau, 16 years old, living in London England, working as a maid, after her family fell from high society because of a scandal caused by her father.  Her father had been rumoured to be carrying on gruesome scientific experiments and soon after the scandal broke, he had disappeared.   Everyone shunned Juliet and her mother, all their friends closed their doors to them.  Her mother dies shortly after of consumption.  Juliet believes herself to be an orphan.

Juliet learns that her father is alive and continuing his work on a remote tropical island.  Juliet needs to find out if the accusations against her father are true.  Is her father a genius or a madman?  She travels to the remote island and discovers her father is experimenting on animals so that they resemble, speak, and behave as humans.  Juliet is curious and torn between the horror of his experiments and her own scientific curiosity.

There is also romance – a love triangle… between a prior servant named Montgomery whom Juliet has known and adored since her childhood and Edward, a Prince, who is rescued from the sea by the boat Juliet travels to the island on.  Juliet is attracted and drawn to both of them.  Montgomery and Edward are both drawn to Juliet and both claim to love her, but in very different ways.

This book is 420 pages but goes quickly!  It is fast paced and will keep you up reading into the night.  The ending is unexpected and I love that, especially when it comes to romantic plot lines.  It is well worth reading.

Favourite Quotes From The Madman’s Daughter

I’d come all this way to find out which man he was – the madman or the misunderstood genius – but already I could see that it wouldn’t be so simple.  This was a living person, not some theory I’d decided to test.  (pg. 106)

I realized that he had charmed me, just like he charmed everyone.  I’d thought I was so clever.  I thought I could see past his manipulations.  But I’d heard only what I wanted to.  (pg. 170)

 

 

The Sound of Loneliness – Official Book Review – WIN PRIZES!

Check out my Book Review of The Sound of Loneliness. Remember to enter the contest to WIN some great PRIZES!

Growing Up Little

 

The Sound of Loneliness – Book Review
By Craig Wallwork

My Rating:  Four Stars ****

My Review

The main character of this book is Daniel Crabtree.  He is in his early 20’s and has recently moved out from his mother’s house, his father having died when he was 13 years old.  He is now living on his own, considers himself a struggling writer and living from some sort of government welfare.  He thinks that in order to become the great writer he believes himself to be, he must be subjected to great suffering.  In this way, he will obtain the tools needed to write his great masterpiece.  Suffering he seems to be willing to do but the actually writing… not so much.

Daniel Crabtree drives me crazy, which is why I ended up having a love/hate relationship with this book! 

Let me explain.

First the love.

I adored the way the author described things.  The imagery used in…

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Stranger Will – Book Review – Prizes*

Stranger Will

by Caleb J. Ross

My Rating:  Five Stars *****

My Review

If I could use just a few words to attempt to describe Stranger Will, I would choose:

• UNIQUE
• DARK
• PHILOSOPHICAL
• A-MUST-READ

Stranger Will was truly one of the best books I have read, in quite some time.  I don’t re-read books very often but this is one book in which I plan to do just that.  Why? Because there are SO many layers contained within this story, so many meanings, and so many things to think more about.  A second read, would be an opportunity to pull back some additional layers… layers you can’t help but to have missed the first read through and even then… I think it is quite likely that you would still not reach the ultimate core of Stranger Will.

The author Caleb J. Ross, is definitely unique with his style, yet at the same time, his writing reminds me of other great authors such as:

• Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club, Survivor, and Choke)
• Augusten Burroughs (author of Running With Scissors, Possible Side Effects, and Magical Thinking)
• George Orwell (author of Animal Farm and 1984)

Caleb J. Ross has a way of telling an edgy, odd story, with a serious dark side.  He creates and brings to life, characters who you’d be afraid to know.

Stranger Will makes you think about those frustrating types of questions, those questions that don’t seem to have the black and white answers you so desperately crave for them to have.

The main character William, is an insecure, depressed and cynical character, whose job as a human remains removal specialist has contributed to his lack of enthusiasm he is exhibiting for his unborn child.  According to William…

He cleans the dead from the world and what’s one more child?  Just another body that someone will one day have to clean from the road.

and

“Just a parasite, Julie,” he takes a sip of coffee, cold but he keeps his face straight.  “Tapeworms, children, we could all use fewer of them.”

His fiancée Julie, seems to deal with William’s resistance to their fetus, which is already very well-established within her, by continuing to cross-stitch, shop for baby clothes, pick out names (one for a boy, one for a girl), sing lullabies and stay calm.  Julie clearly feels she is already a mother.  William on the other hand, continues to search for any solution in which they will not be the ones expected to give this child what little he believes that they can offer it.  Those that feel desperate for solutions, often come to their solutions in dangerous and immoral ways.

There were so many things that intrigued me about this novel, including…

• William’s employment as a human remains removal specialist.  His job is to remove the ‘stains’ that human lives leave behind.
• The personality contrast between William and his co-worker, Philip.   “Philip believes people deserve chances.  William believes that people are the exact reason chances don’t work.”  The dynamic between the two is riveting.
• Mrs. Rose, the elementary school principal and the bizarre lessons she is teaching to not only her students but to many adults as well, including William.  Even more astounding, is her philosophy behind these lessons.  “Mrs. Rose has taught William many things, one of which is that the world is not worth fighting against.  The world knows what it is doing.”   and  “Mrs. Rose taught William that children are a second chance and that second chances are exactly what keep us from believing that we need only one.” 
• Messenger pigeons and messages that are intercepted and how they can form their own story.
• The different meaning, purpose and value that the individual characters have for life and where that ultimately brings each of them in the end.
• The ability and need that some have to control and what that means.  How is that accomplished?  What is lost by those who are controlled?  What may be gained and what may be lost by a group that is under a method of organized control?  What is lost be the one doing the controlling?

If you are one who likes to ponder the meaning behind things – you will enjoy this book.

If you like dark, twisted, bizarre and sick characters – you will enjoy this book.

If you enjoy the writing style of Chuck Palahniuk, Augusten Burroughs or George Orwell – you will enjoy this book.

If you like a book that makes you think and then makes you think again – you will love this book.

I highly recommend Stranger Will to all adult readers.

I am very much looking forward to following Caleb  J. Ross’s writing career, for he is a noteworthy, significant and truly brilliant writer of our times. 

 

Some of My Favourite Quotes

William admires her will power, though he could do without her drive to use it against him.

When two strangers meet in the woods, they don’t pass by with a nod.  They don’t pretend something greater lies just ahead.  They smile at company and make room for a few words.

A body, a simple lump of blue skin, black hair, and features, sits molded to the corner.  Not a stain, not a mess, but a real human being.  Her eyes roll toward the light.  In a final stretch for good news, William turns to Philip and shrugs.  “At least most of her blood is still in her body.”

I’ve seen the desert our world has become, shredded with bullet holes in apartment buildings where nothing but filth exists.  I’ve cleaned it from walls with a toothbrush stolen from the deceased’s bathroom.  I’ve believed in a world with good intentions for too long.

“She also told William that people who use the word fascinating, usually aren’t.”

“Keep an animal locked up with nothing to do and eventually it will realize it is imprisoned.”

Though he’s known for days that these games teach survival, he sees now that these skills are not the school’s primary motive.  Where once he saw a small tiff, children being as children will be, he sees now a gang initiation, or extermination of the weak, not for survival but to prove dedication.  Where once a group of children might play rhyming games, clapping hands, smiles and chants, they now share blood via severed fingers and cut palms.

“What, I ask you, is less pleasurable to endure than permanence?”

“It might be years from now that these kids look back and realize that they’ve been controlled their entire lives, but it will happen.  They might hate me, you, and all the others, but they will understand control — they will realize their life.  It might take therapy, it might happen behind a giant oak desk in a corner office, but it will hit them, and they will have an entire childhood of proof.”

We live above defeated generations and search for all the ideas they must have missed.

William looks again, before the sun disappears, across his home, his life with Julie, and fits everything into graves.

She had been enduring his rants for months, staying strong to her familial ideal, and here was the end to what he had wanted all along:  his weak fiancée fighting up hills of dirt dug in search of her child.

…he has the power to steer outcome.  The trick is to keep anyone else from believing it.

***********************************************************************************************

Please note:  I received a review copy of Stranger Will courtesy of Novel Publicity, in exchange for a written review with my honest thoughts, comments and opinions regarding this book.

 

IN ORDER TO ENTER A CONTEST IN RELATION TO THIS REVIEW PLEASE CHECK OUT MY ORIGINAL POST AT:

http://growinguplittle.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/stranger-will-book-review-contest-win-prizes/

Thanks!

 

Musing Monday – The Visible Man

 

Musing Mondays – April 1st (no joke)

Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…

• Describe one of your reading habits. • Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s). • What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it!  • Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it. • Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us! • Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then!    Hosted By:  Should Be Reading

 

I have chosen to muse about: 

Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it so far; why you chose it; what you are (or aren’t) enjoying about it.

I have almost finished reading The Visible Man by Chuck Klosterman.

It has been an interesting read but as I am nearing the end, so very close to the very end… I am worried that I will ultimately be disappointed by it.  I am hopeful that the ending will ‘save’ this book for me and the next eleven pages will be the deciding factor!

I purchased this book from Chapters.  It was from their ‘bargain books’ section, I think I paid $7.99 (the original price, $28.99).  What sold me on it originally was the synopsis…

Austin, Texas, therapist Victoria Vick is contacted by a cryptic, unlikable man who insists his situation is unique and unfathomable.  As he slowly reveals himself, Vick becomes convinced that he suffers from a complex set of delusions:  Y___, as she refers to him, claims to be a scientist who has stolen cloaking technology from an aborted government project in order to render himself nearly invisible.  He says he uses this ability to observe random individuals within their daily lives, usually when they are alone and vulnerable.  Unsure of his motives or honesty, Vick becomes obsessed with her patient and the disclosure of his increasingly bizarre and disturbing tales.  Over time, it threatens her career, her marriage, and her own identity.

Interspersed with notes, correspondence, and transcriptions that catalog a relationship based on curiosity and fear, The Visible Man touches on all of Chuck Klosterman’s favorite themes–the consequence of culture, the influence of media, the complexity of voyeurism, and the existential contradiction of normalcy.  Is this comedy, criticism, or horror?  Not even Y___ seems to know for sure.

For me… the fact that there was a therapist as a main character, who was treating a patient for delusions and the fact that his delusions involved him being able to observe people in their daily lives, essentially being a voyeur, was enough for me to risk spending the $7.99.

I have always been fascinated about what it might be like, to have the ability to be invisible.  Imagine being able to watch and view human behaviour in its purest form.  It would be interesting to see the contrast between how a person behaves and presents oneself in public or even with one person in private and how that person actually is when they believe nobody is observing them and they are completely alone.

While the book did describe Y___’s experiences with viewing individuals without their knowledge, I still craved more.  He would sneak in to the person’s home, position himself where it would be unlikely he would be bumped into by the person he was observing (after all, he was invisible but still physically there) and he would simply watch, for varying amounts of time.  He would then, report these observations to his therapist, Vicky.  Vicky of course, does not believe he is actually making himself invisible and entering strangers homes, she believes it is a delusion, one she can of course help him with and treat.  Although, very strangely, Vicky allows Y___ to dictate the rules and boundaries of therapy in an unprofessional and ultimately unhealthy way.

I am very curious to see how this novel concludes.  It is quite possible, once I do, I will end up doing a review of the book, so be sure to check back later if you’re interested.  These last eleven pages will truly make or break this novel for me.  Time will tell!

Author: Chuck Klosterman