Book Review: The Horror of the Heights & Other Strange Tales, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

My best attempts to read and review one book a week are fairly fragile, at least in the sense that the idea works as long as I can get through one book each week. If a book slows me down, I can kiss that plan goodbye.

This book slowed me down. No, let me amend that comment: this book brought my reading to a screeching halt. I just couldn't finish it. I couldn't motivate myself to pick it up and keep reading. Every time I saw it, I heaved a sigh and thought, "Maybe I'll take some time to read this evening." And every evening I found a good reason not to. It took me something like four weeks just to get halfway through, and then I gave up. I skimmed a bit more and decided it wasn't worth the effort. I want to point out for the record that I'm not a slow reader. I read Lord of the Rings in 18 days. I read Anna Karenina in 8 days. I read Moby Dick in one week. I can pack in a well-written book in good time. It just has to be interesting.

This book is not interesting.

I would have liked to enjoy it. The title is pretty fun. The book is actually a collection of short stories by Conan Doyle, and the title of the entire book is taken from the title of one of the stories. What is more, I like Conan Doyle. I read feverishly through Sherlock Holmes in my teens and still appreciate the quality of the stories. These just...aren't the same. For one, the writing has too much of that "stodgy Victorian" sound to it. It could be argued that the writing in the Sherlock Holmes stories is similar, but the characterization of Holmes and the warmth of Dr Watson's voice make the stories highly readable. These are just mediocre short stories that have little to set them apart.

What is more, these stories embrace the mysticism and spiritualism toward which Conan Doyle leaned in his later years. Where Sherlock Holmes used practicality and logic to find tangible explanations to the crimes that confronted him, the characters in The Horror of the Heights all face unnatural, intangible problems for which there are no practical solutions. Yeah, it's a collection of Victorian horror stories, so I should have figured that out. Yeah, horror leans toward the supernatural, for which reason I usually avoid it. I'm not a fan of non-living, beyond-the-dead crap coming after people. I'm not one to be content with a solution that requires magical elixirs or mysterious incantations. These things make for unsatisfying mysteries, as far as I'm concerned.

On a slightly unnecessary tangent, I also want to point out that the most distinguishing feature of this book (for me, at least) is that everyone had three names. It seemed like in almost every story I read, the characters were saddled with this ridiculous collection of names. It wasn't just John Cowles. It was John Barrington Cowles. It was John Vansittart Smith. It was William Monkhouse Lee. It was John McAlister Ray. I'm being halfway facetious here, but it got to be a little silly after a while. Then again, this is a collection of short stories written by a man named Arthur Conan Doyle, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. My point, however, is that in a group of stories that aren't very good it's hard enough to keep up with the characters (because it's hard enough to care about any of the characters). Add to the mix longer-than-average names, and you have a recipe for confusion.

It's entirely possible that I'll pick this up at some point in the future -- since I bought the book without bothering to consider its contents -- and enjoy some of these stories. Faced with the pressure of reading cheesy 19th-century horror stories in one week, however, I just couldn't make it through. As noted above, I couldn't make it through it four weeks. I won't dismiss it entirely as a bad book. I'll just note that you should know what you're getting into before reading (or buying) it. If you want Sherlock Holmes, fling this away from yourself in a hurry; you'll receive nothing but disappointment from it. If you want a bit of nonsensical Victorian horror, though, this might be more your thing.

Year of publication: [latest publication, from Fall River Press -- yeah, that Fall River...] 2010
Number of pages: 334

Fact of the Day: How Many Babies Could You Have?

Apparently, between 1725 and 1765, the wife of Feodor Vassilyev (of Shuya, Russia) gave birth to 69 children.

Hang on. I think I just hallucinated.

Nope. It appears to be accurate. She was pregnant 27 times and had 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets. Of these pregnancies, 67 of the babies survived infancy. Even more surprising, Feodor Vassilyev is described as having been a "peasant." What do you want to bet he spent most of his time expanding his hut? (We certainly know how he spent the rest of his time.) And that's one serious backyard garden to maintain.

Somewhat sadly, this woman's name was never recorded, so we can only give her an historical pat on the back vicariously through her husband (who may or may not deserve one).

So here's my question: how on earth do you choose names for all of them? After number 20 or so rolls around, I think I'd just start saying, "Geez, who cares. Flip open the phone book and see what you come up with."

Book Review: Tatiana and Alexander, by Paullina Simons

For me, this is the sort of book you read because you read the first one and feel like finding out what happens next. In fact, I was a little irritated to get all the way through 800+ pages of The Bronze Horseman and find out the story didn't wrap up. Give me an ending. Even an unhappy one. Just don't ask me to read another book, for goodness' sake.

But of course I did. Because I needed to know what would happen.

And of course, the ending was fairly predictable. This is a romance novel, so I shouldn't have expect anything too shocking. (I'll admit that part of me wanted Simons to surprise me in the end.) It certainly took Simons to get to that happy ending, however. This one isn't 800 pages -- thankfully -- but it clocks in close to 600. Let me point out now that's 600 pages of the hero and the heroine trying to get back to each other. Over and over again. What The Bronze Horseman offered in love scenes, Tatiana and Alexander provides in missed opportunities for escape and reunion. By the end of the story, I had lost track of just how many prison camps poor Alexander had been incarcerated in.

For a quick synopsis:

At the end of The Bronze Horseman, Tatiana has been told that Alexander is dead. She is 18 years old, pregnant, and has just managed to escape the Soviet Union and make her way to America. She tries starting a new life, but she is always haunted by the sense that her husband might still be alive. His death just didn't quite make sense to her, but then there's that pesky death certificate that she was given. She makes something of a home for herself working as a nurse in Ellis Island, always looking for a familiar face among the soldiers that pass through there. She also begins making friends in America and connecting with Alexander's family, as well as those who can assist her in finding any word about him.

Tatiana goes so far as to contact someone in the State Department (or some other confusing government agency) who takes the time to do a little digging. It turns out that the Soviet Union hasn't exactly given her up. They strongly believe that the man calling himself Alexander Belov is, in fact, the Alexander Barrington who hurled himself off a train many years before, and they also believe that Tatiana plans to request asylum in the United States. Fortunately, she had the presence of mind to use a different name when entering the U.S., so her presence hasn't registered officially. And the government agent who tells her all of this points out (off the record, of course) that she would be wise to stick with this new identity.

There is no word on Alexander, and Tatiana finally accepts that he must really be dead. Meanwhile in the Soviet Union, he isn't. (But of course...) He's not exactly in the best situation, however. The Soviets cannot prove that he's Alexander Barrington, but they're unwilling to allow him to continue as an honored Red Army officer. They put him in charge of a penal battalion -- meaning that he leads former prisoners into battle to take the brunt of the charge and leave the "real soldiers" to follow them -- and he ends up in Germany. And then he ends up in a German prison camp. And then he ends up in another German prison camp, I think. And then he ends up in a Soviet prison camp. In Germany. Confused yet? All of this moving around took some of the edge off the experience, because I was so befuddled by the details. Yes, life in a post-war prison camp was horrendous, but by the last one I almost started rolling my eyes. How much more could the man take? How much more could the reader take, for that matter?

Eventually, Tatiana receives word that Alexander might be alive. And this is enough to galvanize her into action. She leaves her young child with a friend in America and joins the Red Cross as it heads into Germany. Not surprisingly, she finds Alexander, and there is quite an escape scene. Make that several escape scenes. Even this gets dragged out a bit. I just wanted it to end, because by the time it need I already knew what was going to happen. It's like listening to some obnoxious foghorn tell a story and wanting to snap, "Just get to the point already! I could see the ending from the beginning!"

With all of that being said, I want to give Simons a little credit for one thing. To me, this book has (marginally) better writing. There's far more exposition in it, and we get a more extensive back story regarding Alexander's history and what it was like when his family moved to the Soviet Union. We understand him and his motivations more. To me, the reader needs this. There's some repetition from The Bronze Horseman, but it didn't irritate me too much. Some of the scenes managed to reveal another element about the characters, so as far as I'm concerned this is a good reason. I can't help but wonder if some of the information in Tatiana and Alexander wasn't included to counter questions leveled at Simons after the publication of the first book. There's a lot in there that raises questions, and I suspect she felt like she needed to explain some things better. Or maybe not. But all in all, there's stronger writing in this story, and I enjoyed the chance to see Alexander from a better angle.

I only recommend this one if you've read the first story and need to find out more about what happens to the characters. Apparently, there's a third book, not yet available in the U.S. I haven't yet decided if I'll read it. Reviews on Amazon don't excite me yet, and the story wraps up pretty well with Tatiana and Alexander. I've heard that there are talks for making a movie (or more than one movie). I really hope the film(s) end(s) after book two. That's where the story ends.

As a quick final note, the book Tatiana and Alexander was apparently published as The Road to Holy Cross outside the U.S. Much better title, in my opinion.


Year of publication: 2003
Number of pages: 576

Movie Review: Sherlock

I'm reviewing this series because I love it. Because I think it's brilliant. Because I ordered the DVDs last week, and I've already watched the three episodes on it twice since then.

If you don't like modern remakes, go ahead and stop here: that's what this is. If you're open to the idea of very good story telling from writers who love the original and want to make it relevant for modern audiences while still being true in substance, read on.

The premise of this series is simple: the writers have taken the original stories and set them in modern London instead of Victorian London. Watching the "Special Features" section of the disc, I discovered that they originally shot a 60-minute pilot but that BBC liked it so much they had to go back and make three 90-minute episodes. Each one is excellent in itself (with the second of the three being good, although not quite great, and the other two being exceptional).

Benedict Cumberbatch (his real name) plays Sherlock Holmes, and I can only imagine the thrill that the writers felt the first time they heard him reading the lines. He is Sherlock Holmes for the modern era: young, vibrant, brilliant, and utterly captivating. Martin Freeman plays Dr Watson, and while some have been a little unsure of this casting I love it. Freeman brings the empathy to the story; he's gentle but not a pushover and makes for a perfect foil for Holmes. Like the original Watson, he's a former Army doctor, wounded in Afghanistan, and recently arrived back in London to start his post-Army life when the story begins.

The other characters are performed with equal excellence: Lestrade (pronounced here as "Les-trahd" instead of "Les-trayed") manages to express his need for Holmes's brilliance without looking like a total idiot. And I particularly love Mark Gatiss's rendering of Mycroft Holmes, since it is just a little more dangerous than any other interpretation that I've seen.

There are three episodes in the first season (and here's hopes for many more to come!), and they are A Study in Pink, The Blind Banker, and The Great Game. I saw the last of these first when it played on PBS, but I was glad to go back and see the others. A Study in Pink, in particular, just might be my favorite of them. The writers really do successfully bring the modern world into the stories, rather than the other way around. It's as though Holmes and Watson are the anchor points, and the writers alter what is around them instead of altering them. When Holmes affixes the nicotine patches to his arm in A Study in Pink and announces that this is a "three-patch problem," I wanted to do a fist-pump in excitement. (Then it occurred to me that the last time I attempted such a thing I pulled a muscle, so I limited myself to a mental fist-pump.)

For a quick synopsis of each story:

A Study in Pink is ostensibly a play on the title of A Study in Scarlet. It's not really the same story, but it brings in elements from the original stories (several of them) quite well. In the beginning, a series of unusual suicides have rocked London. Three people were found in "places they shouldn't have been," having taken poison -- clearly by their own hand. The key is that the poison is the same in all of the cases, so the police know that there is a connection. But since these appear to be suicides, there is no reason to assume murder. Then there's a fourth death, but this one is different: the dead woman leaves a note (of sorts) by scratching into the wood floor just before she died. Sherlock notes immediately that there is at least one enormous problem with this death (I won't spoil it :), and he is on the case. Watson joins him to decipher the mystery, and the two work together to bring it to a close. After watching this the first time, it occurred to me that the solution was rather obvious, but I'll give the writers credit by saying that it only seemed this way upon second viewing.

The Blind Banker is perhaps the weakest of the three, but I enjoyed it all the same. As the story opens, Sherlock receives an email from a university friend at a large London bank. The night before, there was a break-in at the bank, but the burglar did not take anything. Instead he/she spray-painted a painting and the wall with some unusual symbols. As there was no clear way for the intruder to get in without triggering the alarm system -- which he/she didn't -- so Sherlock is called in. The mystery takes him and Watson deep into the world of international smuggling, and things become far more serious than either anticipate.

The Great Game is a great way to wrap up the season, and it's one of the more complex episodes. The distant Moriarty rears his head, and an unexpected clue leads Sherlock to realize that this mysterious figure has decided to challenge Sherlock to a game: Moriarty presents his adversary with a series of mysteries that Sherlock has several hours to solve. The catch is that each mystery is driven by a victim attached to an explosive; if Sherlock fails, the victim will die. The episode ends with a cliff-hanger, sure to keep viewers wondering what is next.

In short, great remake, thoroughly interesting, a little predictable (perhaps) in retrospect, but all in all very satisfying for viewers who want to see a modern Sherlock.

A clip from the DVD, discussing the development of the series:

Book Review: The Bronze Horseman, by Paullina Simons

I really didn't plan to read this. The name had popped up a couple of times online, but I didn't pay much attention. I finally went to Amazon to read the summary of it and decided that it sounded vaguely interesting, so I downloaded it to the Kindle software on my computer. Of course, I did that without bothering to note that this is an 800-page book (over 800 actually). As a result, I ended up punching my way through it by hitting the down arrow on my computer repeatedly. Let's just say my poor down arrow got a lot of exercise.

I have really mixed feelings about this book, and to sort through them I'm going to start by explaining the problems within it. I might as well just let you know what's wrong with it up front, because I'm ultimately going to recommend it. But my English major background is poking at me and making me feel guilty, so I don't think I can get away with not explaining that there are some serious problems with the story.

I've made a list in my head, so I'm going to present these things in a list:

1) The writing is pretty poor. It's sad to say that someone could write a novel of more than 800 pages and only string a few really good sentences together, but that's the case. This is the ultimate in the dreaded telling instead of showing, and the author has an obnoxious way of indicating things to the reader that should be a little more subtle. The in-your-face descriptions in some cases suggest a very weak writing style.

2) The overall character development is weak. I finally decided that the problem with this is the author's reliance on dialogue for much of the character development. She's a much better writer of exposition, and it is in the exposition and the occasional strong metaphor that she succeeds. In dialogue, though, it fell very flat much of the time. The characters seldom say things effectively enough to show us their characters. And the author tends to rely on fairly familiar follow-up descriptions to the dialogue that don't do enough to reveal the characters fully. Those common expressions that always come after a comment from the characters: he said grimly; she said coolly; they sighed. I don't have a problem with these in theory, but I do have a problem when they're all I'm getting. I made it all the way through this book, and I felt like I knew the main female character only through the way that other characters kept describing her. It was more like hearsay; the clear shaping of her character just wasn't there as well as it should have been -- especially for a character that has the potential to be exceptional.

3) The repetition of events is almost appalling in places. I wanted to dial 1-800-EDITOR-PLEASE. Honestly. In the beginning of the story, the characters take a number of walks together. It kind of feels like the same walk over and over again. I get that the author is attempting to reveal different elements about the growing relationship in their walks, but she's not a good enough writer to get away with this. When writers do this, they have to make each description count or offer something new. There wasn't enough of either, so it got really repetitive really quickly. In the middle of the story, the characters make love. Again. And again. And yet again. I checked over the Amazon reviews, and someone actually took the time to count. There are 33 love scenes in this part of the book. Let me type that again: 33. That's a whole lot of lovin', and we get all the details. How did this even make it to print? In all reality, a stronger writer could have presented the first scene and used nuanced descriptions to carry the reader through the rest of this part of the story, turning it into an opportunity to develop the characters a little more effectively. This, uh, doesn't really happen as well as it should.

So why am I recommending this? In spite of its flaws, this is the kind of story that is still interesting, still moving, still touching. It got into my head and stuck there, and I couldn't help but accept that there's something good in it regardless of the weaknesses. After 800+ pages, even weak writing can make a point. After 800+ pages, even flat characters start to feel a little multi-dimensional. (I don't have any good explanation for the repetition, however.)

In terms of summary, let me give it a shot. The story opens in Leningrad as the Soviet Union enters World War II to fight Germany. The German army is on its borders, and the Soviet government is preparing for the massacre that will follow. It's still early days, however, so the residents of Leningrad believe that they will be safe, that the Germans will be repelled quickly and that the war will be over well before winter. (The story opens in June.) In the midst of all this, Tatiana Metanova is turning 17 and is on the cusp of womanhood. She is the youngest of three, with a twin brother named Pasha who is a few minutes older and a twenty-four-year-old sister named Dasha. The family is protective of Tatiana, and she is seen as the baby of the family, naive, silly, unreliable. A dreamer. A reader who keeps her head in Tolstoy and Pushkin instead of spending the evenings meeting boys like her big sister.

Recognizing vaguely that the declaration of war is a bad sign, Tatiana's father gives her some money and sends her out to buy food. There is a line in front of every market, and after spending several hours standing in line at several grocery stores, Tatiana thinks she will have to give up and go home. She knows that this will make her family angry, however, so she hesitates. In the midst of her hesitation, she spots an ice cream vendor and decides to give herself a treat. She plops herself on a nearby bench and eats her ice cream while singing a popular song of the day. And then she looks up and realizes that she is being watched. A tall soldier is staring at her from across the street, and there is something about his stare that leaves Tatiana staring. Call it love at first sight, the two are fixated on one another: she is tiny, blonde, and extremely pretty; he is tall, dark, and (as Simons keeps telling us) beyond handsome. They meet, and she learns that he is Alexander Belov, an officer in the Red Army. And this is where everything begins -- and, in some way, ends -- for both of them. It is a moment that they cannot go back and erase, and once their paths cross their fates are joined. It's definitely a twinge of "star-crossed lovers," but it's not necessarily a bad motif. It certainly makes for a great premise to shape a romance novel.

Tatiana and Alexander could not have found a worse time to fall in love. The war has begun for the Soviet Union, and in only a matter of months these two will find themselves struggling through the Siege of Leningrad. But that's the way the cards are played for them, and they have to work through this. Besides the prospect of horrific war, things are not so good at home for Tatiana. It turns out that Alexander is actually her sister Dasha's lover. Dasha is one of the "fancy women" (a nice name for "cheap tart" apparently) who frequents the soldiers' bar. For his part, Alexander has not been unwilling to spend time with Dasha, but he is certainly not in love with her. Dasha, however, is in love with him, and Tatiana is unwilling to get in the way since she feels too loyal to Dasha. But Tatiana and Alexander cannot get away from how they feel about one another and how their feelings continue to grow, even when they try to back off and stop spending any time together. Their time together remains perfectly chaste, if you're wondering, but that only makes things more difficult in some ways.

Alexander does what he can to get the Metanov family through the siege, but things don't go well. It's not a huge spoiler to mention that everyone but Tatiana dies. (Well, of course, you know.) He gets her out of Leningrad and sends her off to relatives in a small village in the countryside. When he has the chance, six months later, in fact, he takes several weeks of leave and heads that direction without having heard a word from her. He doesn't know if she's alive; he doesn't know anything. He just knows that he needs to find out. It turns out that Tatiana is alive (again: well, of course, you know), and they try to sort through the past and see if they can embrace some kind of future. Lying to everyone has taken a toll on the relationship, and both realize that they aren't completely sure of their feelings. After all, Tatiana lied to the very end to her sister -- to avoid breaking her heart -- and Alexander's parting words to Dasha were that he never loved Tatiana (with Tatiana in hearing range). Naturally, they get through this, and the inevitable follows. See item #3 above. For what it's worth, they do get married.

Eventually, Alexander has to accept that this is an impossible situation. He's a Red Army soldier on leave, and he cannot take her back to the besieged Leningrad where she is sure to die. There's also another problem that is revealed earlier in the story and that continues to complicate things for them. Alexander isn't Russian. He was born Alexander Barrington in Massachusetts to American parents who were also devout Communists. They chose to deny their American citizenship and move to the Soviet Union when Alexander was a child. The decision -- not surprisingly -- was a spectacularly bad one. Regardless of their intentions, the Soviets never trusted them. When Alexander's mother attempted to get him back to the United States, the Soviet government arrested her for treason. Both of Alexander's parents were ultimately executed, and he was sentenced to time in a labor camp. He managed to escape, but I won't go into all the details of what happens. Suffice it to say, he's in the position of creating a new identify, lying about his past to save his life, and doing what he can to get out of the Soviet Union. And now he's married. If he leaves Tatiana behind, she will be penalized as the wife of a traitor, deserter, and potential spy. If he tries to take her, he runs the risk of creating too many complications. He attempts the former but realizes that he cannot bring himself to do it. Eventually, he decides that the goal should be to get her out and accept whatever fate is left for him in the Soviet Union.

And this is where I'll leave the summary hanging. The rest of the story is the two of them dealing with the challenges of war, the dangers of politics, and the hope of a better future. Alexander has to realize how much he needs Tatiana and her quiet strength, and Tatiana has to realize that Alexander understands the gravity of their situation and the impossibility that they have created for themselves. There's not as much of a resolution as one might like, but for those who need more there's a sequel! I read that as well, but that's a review for next week :)

So...there are problems in this story. There is weak writing and poor character development. There is too much repetition and not enough substance where there should be. And yet, in spite of all this, there is enough heart to make the story worth reading. I don't recommend it for everyone, of course. This is historical fiction and a true romance novel (and I don't necessarily mean that in a glowing way). I enjoy historical fiction, especially historical fiction that covers a period in history not well represented in literature (like the Russian perspective during WWII). I can accept a romance novel as long as there is enough in it that keeps me interested, and that's the case here. It's sweet at times; it's agonizing at others. It's full of life at unexpected moments; it's uncomfortable where it should be. Best of all (for me, at least), it doesn't have an impossibly perfect ending. Overall, it works.

Year of publication: 2000
Number of pages: 832