And did I mention I finished Sherlock Holmes? No? Oh. Well then.
Sherlock is awesome. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is awesome. Look into it.
Book no. 1: The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman.
Suffice it to say that my initial response to The Graveyard Book was:
"The Graveyard Book is over and done -
one of the best I've ever read -
and now that day is long past gone
I'm ready to sleep like the dead."
Reading fiction, especially children's-to-young-adult fiction, doesn't usually inspire me to write poetry, let alone rhyming lines, let alone at three o'clock in the morning.
Get thee to a bookstore. NOW.
Especially if you have a love of ghost stories. Gaiman is a wizard, I swear.
However, the volume that currently consumes my thoughts is none other than
Book no. 2, Brom's latest work: The Child Thief.
Do you, dear reader, recall how the 2003 film version of Peter Pan, starring Jeremy Sumpter (Peter) and Jason Isaacs (Hook), sought to re-inject some of the darkness of faery back into the tale which had been inevitably candy-coated through mediums like Disney? Brom's retelling of J.M. Barrie's classic novel gives that film a cold, back-handed, lip-splitting slap to the face.
This overhaul begins in modern New York, in Brooklyn, steeped in its drugs, thug violence, and urban brutality and desperation. Cue Peter, the Child Thief, ready to tempt his newly-found runaways into the Mist and out of this world, into one which is different in every way and yet equally cruel. Welcome to Avalon.
Do you, dear reader, recall how the 2003 film version of Peter Pan, starring Jeremy Sumpter (Peter) and Jason Isaacs (Hook), sought to re-inject some of the darkness of faery back into the tale which had been inevitably candy-coated through mediums like Disney? Brom's retelling of J.M. Barrie's classic novel gives that film a cold, back-handed, lip-splitting slap to the face.
This overhaul begins in modern New York, in Brooklyn, steeped in its drugs, thug violence, and urban brutality and desperation. Cue Peter, the Child Thief, ready to tempt his newly-found runaways into the Mist and out of this world, into one which is different in every way and yet equally cruel. Welcome to Avalon.
Like Brom's other works, The Child Thief is impossibly dark. In a way, rightfully so. Brom invites his audience to re-examine J.M. Barrie's own Peter, the first Peter, the true Peter. Brom quotes Barrie's novel, “The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out; but at this time there were six of them, counting the twins as two.” And if that was't enough, he found another gem: ""I forget them after I kill them," he (Peter) replied carelessly.”
Personally, I had forgotten those lines. In light of them, the world of The Child Thief seems a logical, even a natural, inference to make. And while Brom's Peter occasionally shows the flippancy and the childishness that might excuse his predecessor - for surely a child would not understand death, not really, not the way an adult would - he has no excuses. He asks for none. He kills and has been killing all his long, ageless life.
Which brings me to a word of caution: this book is graphic. Terribly graphic. The kind of graphic that should never be translated into visual representations of any kind. If you can't take the thought of glistening entrails being anywhere other than inside one's body, close the book, put it back on the shelf, this one's not for you. (For the record, the language is also vulgar as hell.) Furthermore, whether or not your are opposed to the language, the portrayal, the violence, anything, this is the kind of book that once you're hooked, you're sunk, it's over, goodnight. The novel is 480 pages long. I read more than half of it today and forgot to eat. That hasn't happened to me before.
Personally, I had forgotten those lines. In light of them, the world of The Child Thief seems a logical, even a natural, inference to make. And while Brom's Peter occasionally shows the flippancy and the childishness that might excuse his predecessor - for surely a child would not understand death, not really, not the way an adult would - he has no excuses. He asks for none. He kills and has been killing all his long, ageless life.
Which brings me to a word of caution: this book is graphic. Terribly graphic. The kind of graphic that should never be translated into visual representations of any kind. If you can't take the thought of glistening entrails being anywhere other than inside one's body, close the book, put it back on the shelf, this one's not for you. (For the record, the language is also vulgar as hell.) Furthermore, whether or not your are opposed to the language, the portrayal, the violence, anything, this is the kind of book that once you're hooked, you're sunk, it's over, goodnight. The novel is 480 pages long. I read more than half of it today and forgot to eat. That hasn't happened to me before.
And yet, as much as it - as he - is terrifying, Brom's words and Peter's winning nature are enchanting. I found myself hoping, wishing for a reason for all the brutality, for the battles and the senselessness, and at first I thought there was. But Brom has a way of bringing out the painfully human in things which are portrayed as superhuman: of tearing away all artifice and illusion, of standing the most charismatic leader beside the most corrupt tyrant and stripping them both down to nothing more than greed, and lust, and grit, and pain. Identical. And, for some reason, it's impossible not to watch.
As harsh as I am toward Brom's Peterbird, I have to admit, he did a marvelous job in crafting him. The only spoiler I will give is a phrase used throughout the book: "...because Peter's smile is a most contagious thing." Sociopath or not, kidnapper or not, Peter is charismatic as hell. I fought with the concept of his faults all through the novel, wanting to make him into the simple hero minds like Disney's made him into, to make him into a person who was good, and only good. It wasn't possible. And that's okay. If I'd been a runaway, I'd only have had one answer, and it was the same, beginning of the novel to its end:
"I go willingly."
So if you have a mind, and a strong stomach, and perhaps even a touch of dark humor about you, pick up The Child Thief. But beware: it's not like you remember it.
So if you have a mind, and a strong stomach, and perhaps even a touch of dark humor about you, pick up The Child Thief. But beware: it's not like you remember it.
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