The Bone Mother | David Demchuk

The Bone Mother is the first novel I’m reading for the project I’m currently working on: reading the nominees for the Shirley Jackson Award. The Bone Mother has already hit a very good spot with me and I enjoyed it immensely. I think in many ways it’s like Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children for adults, and has a resemblance to Lore. As I mentioned before I’m from Romania, but I have been educated and raised in Canada. This book is written by Canadian author David Demchuk and it draws its inspiration from photographs made by Romanian photographer Costică Acsinte between 1935-1945, and Eastern European folklore, so in many ways it felt very familiar and close to home. This novel was also long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, which is very impressive as it is his debut novel.

This ‘novel’ isn’t quite a novel in the traditional sense. It is a series of stories, each prefaced by a black and white photograph from Acsinte’s collection, with a new name in the title. The names are both Romanian and Ukrainian/Russian. The tales focus on three villages on the border of Ukraine and Romania, neighbouring “The Thimble Factory.” Images of thimbles are present throughout the book, and we quickly learn that those who inhabit these villages must work five years at the thimble factory. There are narratives surrounding those working in the thimble factory which are more snippets of daily life, interspersed with fables and folkloric anecdotes featuring the supernatural like Strigoi (Romanian myth, troubled spirits of the dead rising from the grave, sometimes similar to vampire folklore) and Rusalkas (Russian myth, water spirit). At the center of it all is the fear of the Night Police who take people in the dead of night, and the  most frightening figure at the center of the forest, not belonging to any village: the Bone Mother—she cooks and eats people who fail the tasks she gives them.

There are some phenomenal features to this work. The first is its juxtaposition of ‘regular’ folk next to these ‘supernatural’ beings as co-existing in the same spaces, while narrating it in a simplified, casual tone. The Bone Mother is never trying to scare you, but presents some narratives side by side of a history that may or may not have been. The way Demchuk also incorporates queer narratives gives the reader the impression that he is trying to look at various angles on the story of marginalized groups contrasting historical superstitions with contemporary oppression. There is also the juxtaposition of post-industrialism influence: the thimble factory, existing as a machine in the garden of folklore. The Bone Mother reminded me very much of a branch of literary theory contrasting naturalism with technology in literature. A work that comes to mind is the academic book by Leo Marx called The Machine in the Garden which explores the ways North America started out with such promise on untouched land with possibility, yet entered it with full industrial, assembly-line force, and how this is reflected in literature when the pastoral ideal clashes with technological advance. The way Demchuk presents these ideas in fiction is subtle but ever-present. Overall The Bone Mother very well written and had an innovative take on Eastern European folklore.

My only “problem” with this novel is that it’s not a novel. I thought the stories would combine as one, or that we would be introduced to some characters and then it would merge in novel-form. It maintained its short anecdote format, separated by images, that it was a little frustrating at times not knowing if it will merge or not. The short story format worked for what it is, however I’m wondering how it will rank against the other four nominees, and if this format would hold it back. What helped me a lot with this was getting the audiobook from Audible and following along in the text because they had different voice actors for each character and it brought them to life as diverse voices, with heavy Eastern European accents. Considering this is also a debut work, I think we can look forward to more from Demchuk and the book has done quite well so far making it on the list of two literary prizes already. This was a strong start!

Lore by Aaron Mahnke | Review

I’ve been trying to find ways to bring LORE into conversation, and on this blog several times without deviating from my main topic, unsure how, and then the book came out!  For anyone who doesn’t know the exact content of this “LORE” I will go into detail in the Book Review section. But first, I want to introduce you to all the formats LORE comes in. I’ve officially consumed LORE in every format.

1. The Podcast

For the month of October I binge-listened to the entire LORE Podcast (still ongoing) and caught up to the latest one. My new job allows for the listening of podcasts and audio books, so Aaron Mahnke has been my “coworker” for the last two months. Needless to say, I loved it. Every episode features a different macabre topic in which Mahnke weaves together several narratives that have been historically recorded and fit the topic. He does an excellent job, and the literary allusions, and pop-culture references are on point. One of the many reasons I adore this project is that it’s highly inter-textual.

The podcast won best history podcast last year. The podcast is accompanied by music throughout and occasional commercials. New episodes are released every two weeks on Mondays. If you’re like me and late to the party just be happy. It’s a GOOD party, and you get to binge, which is awesome! The musical accompaniment is by Chad Lawson, who will soon release an album featuring the songs from LORE called A Grave Mistake. 

2. The TV Show

Just as I was deep mid-podcast, on October 15, Amazon Prime Video released Season 1 of LORE which features six of the most chilling episodes. It was so much scarier seeing these tales performed with live people and seeing the settings (most are set in times different from our own). The costumes and settings really gave another dimension to these little histories. The direction of this season was excellent. The music, mixed with live demonstrations of some of these horrific things, made me far more afraid than I thought I would be (especially since I knew from the podcast how they end). Although I found some criticisms online where people dislike that Mahnke’s voice narrates throughout the show, I found his voice to be comforting when things got scary. He was the familiar constant, and I needed that.

3. The Audiobook

This was actually my favourite format of the four, which I’ll explain at length below. It maintains the ‘cleanliness’ of the book, but it also has Mahnke’s voice and some musical effects which I loved from the Podcast. I got this from Audible. Although I completely understand why in the podcasts people often take requests for placing ads throughout, it can be a little annoying while listening, but with the audio-book, it was commercial-free and the transitions between topics were so smooth. This audio-book is a reading of the book below.

 

4. LORE: Monstrous Creatures | Book Review

This book is made of the transcripts from the LORE Podcast mentioned above and edited in such a way that results in a very smooth transition from one tale to the next. The book itself is a mere fraction of what is to be a longer series, published by Del Rey. The second book Wicked Mortals is set for release in May of 2018 and the third book has been announced, but the cover has not been revealed.

The book cover and the accompanying illustrations are made by M.S. Corley whose contribution to this work gives LORE yet another layer of talent and atmosphere. His illustrations are so morbid and simultaneously whimsical. I think the two choices for colors: the red and black, relate to the section in the book “Doing Tricks, Shifting Shapes” where Mahnke writes:

“Black and red, for a very long time, were considered bad colors, so if you wanted to describe something as evil, of course it was black or red or both.” (Mahnke, 76)

The content of LORE is made up of vignettes and separate accounts of mysterious sightings, happenings, or experiments done by humans. The range is anywhere from the supernatural to the scientific. All of them are rooted in real recordings and stories, even if at times humans just ‘claimed’ to have seen or done something. Mahnke reminds us with this work, that not too long ago oral testimony is all we really had, and that a lot of people were highly superstitious.

The way he captures these stories is in the same spirit of the Grimm Brothers. He collected and compiled tales of the macabre, but roots each firmly in historical context. I found it very useful to understand why and how certain practices were done in a particular time period. Mahnke references historical figures, other works of literature, and the sources from which one can find the details of each of these records. What I found most exciting is that he brings together stories from all over the world. We are globally united in our  fear of the unknown, death, and the unexplained and Mahnke forces readers (and listeners) to look at that aspect of our human nature. He writes:

“We fear death because it means the loss of control, the loss of purpose and freedom. Death, in the eyes of many people, robs us of our identity and replaces it with finality.”

Mahnke drawn by Corley

At the 200-year-anniversary of the Brothers Grimm, Harvard professor Maria Tatar—expert on folklore and fairy tales— mentioned that the reason fairy tales are so deeply ingrained in our society and why we love them so much is because they’ve been told and retold so many times that all the boring bits have been left out. What we get now is the final product of a story that has been edited through generations. I think Mahnke’s work captures the same effect through the refining of folklore, and the editing process that these tales have experienced simply by being tested in the format of a Podcast prior to being committed to text. Of course the stories and their content prior to Mahnke’s work on them were refined through oral storytelling. Mahnke sometimes even extends the use of ‘lore’ or ‘folklore’ and appropriates it to other unifying communal activities like sports and how we all share a common language like the “Curse of the Bambino” in baseball folklore for example. Mahnke constantly reminds us of the power of stories:

“no realm holds more explanation for the unexplainable than folklore” (65)

“Given enough time, story–like water–will leave its mark and transform a place.” (127)

I don’t know if I’ve convinced you to give LORE a try if you haven’t, or to experience it in at least one of its formats, but clearly I love it! No one asked me to write a review, this is just me writing about my love for this whole production, because in trying to explain what I love about it, I understand myself better, and what I enjoy about this kind of storytelling. An additional Lore-related video I strongly enjoyed was Aaron Mahnke’s speech here, on how he started out, and what brought LORE to the phenomenon it is today. If you have enjoyed LORE and want to try Mahnke’s other works, here are some of this other works:

Also, this is the official link to all things LORE.

October Wrap-Up

October has been quite the month for me! I started a new job, which allows for the listening of Podcasts whilst working–which is perhaps the greatest job perk ever! I wanted to fully immerse myself in the spirit of October, Halloween, and the eerie supernatural forces of Victober.

I spent most of my month listening to Lore by Aaron Mehnke. I realize, that like with Night Vale, I am a little late to the party. I get happy when I’m late to a good party though, because I have the opportunity to binge-hear, binge-watch, and binge-read–fully immersing myself in the experience. The podcast features in each episode a mysterious occurrence in history and traces what we know of it from reliable sources. Unsolved mysteries, murders, or the history of mythical and folkloric creatures and stories. The podcast has just been turned into a mini-series on Amazon Prime Video (on Friday the 13th in October), and into a book deal. The first one: The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures by Aaron Mehnke has already been released on October 10th, and the second one The World of Lore: Wicked Humans has been announced for release for May of next year. The podcast was given the award for the “Best History Podcast” in 2016.

Caitlin Doughty’s Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and From Here to Eternity 

Like with Lore, I recently discovered Caitlin Doughty in a different format: on YouTube. Her channel, Ask a Mortician is absolutely wonderful and I binge-watched five years of uploads in under 10 days. She is a mortician, founder of The Order of the Good Death, writer of two books, and leader in the natural burial community. I had my first author spotlight featuring Caitlin Doughty and I went into more details on all the places one can find her, all the formats, and brief summaries of her two books on death. Link HERE. 

The strangest part, with both Lore and Doughty’s works, is that one common theme runs through both: the scariest stories are true and most often  done by people…which makes for a very thematic October.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

This was a re-read for me but I picked it up for Victober as my “Scottish Writer” entry. The first time I was shocked at how small it was. It’s currently in the public domain and accessible via Project Gutenberg if you want to read it in a sitting. This tale begins with a Mr. Utterson who is trying to figure out a ‘mystery’ –word in town is that a Mr.Hyde is behind it all. He calls upon one close friend Dr. Jekyll to help with the case. I think I enjoyed this the first time a little more than now. It’s atmospheric, and certainly a treat for October, but the execution of it could have been better. I think Stevenson tapped into something incredible with the dual personality, and the term in itself is so prevalent now that ‘the spoiler’ is already known before one can sit down with the novella properly. I did come across a very well-written article from Tor.com on “What Everybody Gets Wrong about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” where Steven Padnick states that not only should Hollywood understand that Hyde is not a separate entity, but:

Jekyll did not create a potion to remove the evil parts of his nature. He made a potion that allowed him express his urges without feeling guilty and without any consequences besmirching his good name. That’s also why he names his alter ego “Hyde,” because Hyde is a disguise, to be worn and discarded like a thick cloak. He might as well have called Edward “Mr. Second Skin,” or “Mr. Mask.”

Another explanation is that Stevenson was tapping into what we now know to be Dissociative Identity Disorder (Borderline Personality Disorder) a little ahead of his time–seeing it as a different manifestation than other kinds of illness.

Poetry (Everyman’s Pocket Library) by Emily Brontë

Emily is my favourite of the Brontes and I always wished there were more novels written by her in addition to Wuthering Heights. Emily Bronte’s poetry was published in her lifetime under the pseudonym of ‘Ellis Bell.’ She often wrote poems located in fictional Gondal (similar to Tolkien’s Middle Earth verses). Gondal was a shared fiction between Anne and Emily, but Emily dedicated more of her time and poems to it. This collection incorporates some of  the Gondal poems, but also her works more philosophical in nature.”The Old Stoic,” or “Death” touch on important themes like wisdom, and grief with such elegant usage of the English language. Her verses are like a maze the reader must navigate, and ready to be fragmented and dissected, branching off like Plath’s fig tree vision. I found her poem “Hope” very reminiscent of the more famously known (yet later written) Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers” Here’s an excerpt from Bronte’s:

Hope was but a timid friend;
She sat without the grated den,
Watching how my fate would tend,
Even as selfish-hearted men.

I created a “Hope Poems”  PDF with both poems on it, if you would like to see them side by side. I also linked them all above if you click on the titles. Two contemporary, single, strong Emilys separated by an ocean, writing poems about hope. Beautiful. This was also a Victober choice. This was chosen for a work with few reviews on Goodreads. It had 170 when I selected it.

The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon

I didn’t plan to read this book, but someone told me it would be scary or spooky so I took a chance on it. I read parts of it in the text, and most of it via audiobook at work. It was good company. For the synopsis I had to copy/paste the one from Goodreads because it’s told really well:

“West Hall, Vermont, has always been a town of strange disappearances and old legends. The most mysterious is that of Sara Harrison Shea, who, in 1908, was found dead in the field behind her house just months after the tragic death of her daughter, Gertie. Now, in present day, nineteen-year-old Ruthie lives in Sara’s farmhouse with her mother, Alice, and her younger sister, Fawn. Alice has always insisted that they live off the grid, a decision that suddenly proves perilous when Ruthie wakes up one morning to find that Alice has vanished without a trace. Searching for clues, she is startled to find a copy of Sara Harrison Shea’s diary hidden beneath the floorboards of her mother’s bedroom. As Ruthie gets sucked deeper into the mystery of Sara’s fate, she discovers that she’s not the only person who’s desperately looking for someone that they’ve lost. But she may be the only one who can stop history from repeating itself.”

It was okay, but it really wasn’t for me. I thought it would be a lot spookier (because you know…Halloween) but it wasn’t all that scary or spooky. The dialogue was a bit off too. I’m not sure what else to elaborate on because I would spoil it.

Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire

This is one of my favourite plays of all time, and I wanted to revisit it this October and find out what it is that I love about it so much. I took my time, and ended up writing a very spoiler-filled review in more detail. HERE is a link to it if you’d like to read more about it.

Long story shortened: a glimpse into the life of a young couple currently mourning the loss of their four year old son. Becca and Howie are both grieving in different ways and have a hard time understanding the other. Family members and friends are waling on eggshells around them. Lastly, the teenage driver who accidentally killed their son tries to reach out and communicate with them. He is an equally complex character.

Books I’m currently in the middle of but will not finish by the 31st 

1. I’ve been reading The Light Between Oceans as a buddy-read so we are only doing about 5 chapters per week.
2. I watched the HBO show and I have a few unanswered questions, so I am reading Big Little Lies. Really enjoying the book and finding many differences between the two formats. I will try to read more of Moriarty.
3. My non-fiction October-themed book is The Witches (Salem, 1692). It’s taking a bit longer than i anticipated it would. I may actually finish this by Halloween. We will see.
4. I recently discovered Geza Tatrallyay, an author who is incredibly gifted. I’m reading his collection of poems Cello’s Tears. A full review of this work will follow.