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Book Review: I Am Margaret Moore by Hannah Capin

I Am Margaret Moore by Hannah Capin

Wednesday Books, 2022

ISBN-13: 9781250239570

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition ( Bookshop.org  )

 

 

In comparison to the other two books I’ve read by Capin (Foul is Fair, retitled Golden Boys Beware, and The Dead Queens Club) I Am Margaret Moore is more experimental, slower- moving, and more pessimistic. Margaret Moore has attended the same naval-themed summer camp with her friends Flor, Nisreen, and Rose for nine years, and what happens at camp is supposed to stay at camp. Margaret breaks that rule when she falls in love with a boy from a wealthy family, resulting in an inconvenient pregnancy. Now there are stories that she drowned in the lake from heartbreak.

 

Her friends have uncovered most of the story, including the name of the boy responsible, who has faced no consequences and is admired in the camp. They decide to tell what they know but it backfires on them. Flor and Nasreen, who are in love, are separated, and the names of all four girls are stricken from the camp records.

 

Margaret’s ghost narrates most of the story and isn’t great at keeping track of time or stringing events together coherently. It is unclear through most of the book how much time is passing until the end (62 years). Figuring out what actually happened is complicated by the changing stories about Margaret the campers tell as time passes as well as the jumping around in time and Margaret’s unreliable memories and interpretations of events.

 

This was not an easy book to read, not just because the characters felt ephemeral, the stream-of-consciousness style of writing or because the topic was difficult and heartbreaking but because it took time to piece together what actually happened and how. In many ways this book is as much about the way we tell stories and how they change as anything. Those readers looking for a fast-paced, straightforward narrative aren’t going to find it here.

 

Margaret and her friends are made to feel small, worthless, erased for the convenience of the entitled white guys in this timely book. The story at the center of the book takes place in 1957. That abortion wasn’t an option for Margaret Moore leads to tragedy. It could not be more timely, with today’s Supreme Court decision at hand.

 

Recommended, for readers willing to take their time.

 

 

 

Posted on June 24, 2022 by , Reply

Book Review: Poesy the Monster Slayer by Cory Doctorow, illustrated by Matt Rockefeller

Poesy the Monster Slayer by Cory Doctorow, illustrated by Matt Rockefeller.

Every page of this book made me laugh.

Cory Doctorow is the author of Pirate Cinema, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and Little Brother, three books I love, among many others. He’s also an activist for the EFF. This is totally different from his previous work that I am familiar with. It is a sweet picture book about a little girl who has done her research into how to defeat monsters and waits until bedtime to take action. Poesy is not afraid of the monster under the bed and doesn’t want to befriend it– she has creative plans to use what she has at hand to defeat them, and puts them into action, much to her exhausted parents’ dismay. It is short, funny, sweet, and easy to understand, with colorful, slightly cartoony illustrations. Poesy is determined to save the day, tiara in place, armed with bubblegum perfume and a butterfly net.

For early educators, here’s an opportunity to define parts of a book near the beginning of the book as Poesy and her dad debate the beginning, middle, and title page of the monster book he is reading her.

A side note, both Poesy and her mother are Black, adding a little diversity to children’s book illustration.

Highly recommended for children of all ages.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on June 21, 2022 by , Reply

Book Review: Welcome to the Splatter Club, Vol. 2 edited by K. Trap Jones

Welcome to the Splatter Club, Vol. 2, by various authors, edited by K. Trap Jones

 

Blood Bound Publishing, 2021

 

ISBN: 9781718170278

 

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition ( Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com)

 

If you are tired of the “same old, same old” with horror stories and are craving something original,  Welcome to the Splatter Club vol.2 is your passport to madness and mayhem of the highest order.  Want a good dose of blood and pain, such as someone getting their balls smashed with a hammer?  You got it.  How about really weird erotica, straight out of freaky-deaky sex land?  It’s in here.  Best of all, if you want truly original stories that are so off the wall they make mind-bending substances seem like a good idea, then you need this book.  It’s the best, wildest collection I’ve come across in a couple of years.  Kudos to editor K. Trap Jones: he clearly knows how to pick ’em.

 

The overall story quality is exceptionally strong: there’s only one dud out of thirteen stories.  The rest graded an average of B+/A-, with one C+ and five solid A’s.  About the only unifying themes are taking an ordinary situation and making it beyond strange, and there are a few revenge stories of sorts.  

 

In “War of the Wildflowers”,  two apartment neighbors are squabbling.  Sounds standard, but one of them has a fishbowl for a head, and the two fish inside provide eyesight for the human. The story has real sadness built into it, and is the closest you get to a tearjerker in the book.  

In “The Sack Cutter”,  a young lady has the guy who used her and tossed her aside captive in a deserted cabin.  Contrary to the story title, this is NOT the usual “physical torture for revenge” plot.  The lady has a much more clever and less physically painful idea in mind to make him pay.  The story also does a nice job blurring the lines between vengeance and a desire to help improve people.

 

Take the opening scene from the movie Natural Born Killers, and substitute in crazed vegetarians who want to make a statement and get their 15 minutes of fame, and you have the basic story of “Hell Comes to Burger Hut”,  a cautionary tale about how far people will stoop to become social media darlings.

 

“Igloo Made of Flesh” is possibly the strangest two pages ever written.  A city apartment with an Eskimo who grinds up people to make igloo blocks?  Yes, you read that correctly.

 

In “The Long Winter Ahead”, two buddies on a cross-country trip run into the world’s weirdest cult in a hicktown bar.  How many stories feature guys having forced sex with trees animated by spirits?  This is a very unusual take on the Gaia mythos.

 

If that isn’t enough, there are also lycanthropes, undead pizza parlor owners, and flesh-chomping gators hopped up on meth.  Need I say more?  Bottom line: for horror fans, this collection is a can’t miss.

 

 Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

Posted on June 14, 2022 by , 1 comment
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