Jet Silver
2.5 stars, rounding down.
The concept that drives this book is so cool: film as a method of haunting, film as doorway, and some pretty awesome mythology that was new to me. Lady Midday is a Slavic noontime demon/goddess, and I'm completely delighted to be introduced to her.
Despite some truly beautiful lines that just shimmer off the page, this one did not work at all for me in the execution. Maybe you need to be a film person to really resonate with it.
The story centres on Lois, an out of work Canadian film critic and former film studies teacher who wants to write a book that will make a mark. She's also a chronic pain sufferer, and the mother of a young son who is autistic.
She recognises some found footage as matching the imagery she remembers from a grade school textbook, and thinks she can prove that a woman who disappeared from a moving train in 1918 - at that time already a local legend of eccentricity and tragedy - was the first female Canadian filmmaker.
So, great framework.
But. It suffers from ‘expert syndrome': the writer is writing about her own field, and has fallen into the trap of including way, way too much explaining/complaining about one's job. Too much Canadian film history, technical detail, and talk of the politics of the Canadian film scene. This is supposed to be a horror novel, and while I do understand that grant applications are a thing of horror in their own way... they're not particularly horrifying to read about. This kind of thing really got in the way of the story, and there are ways for it not to. Elizabeth Hand's Cass Neary series, for example, geeks the hell out about everything to do with photography, but as technical as it gets, it never feels like it's extraneous to the story. It feels fascinating. In this book, all the detail just feels boring, and the POV character doesn't have the necessary humour or verve to rescue it.
Aside from that problem, the characters and pacing fall flat for me. There was so much potential here for a truly creepy, thrilling story, but the way the story is told transmits about as much emotion as a report about a school excursion. The POV character just does not seem to be all that worried about the supernatural, and is even less worried about the (pretty ruthless) non-supernatural enemies she has. At one point someone breaks into her flat, and her only reaction is to laugh and brush off her husband's alarm, because she knows that what they took is worthless to them.
The supporting characters don't feel real or fleshed out, more like foils who do what they need to do to move the plot forward.
My other problem was with relating to Lois. She is pretty unlikable, and that's fine, there are plenty of unlikable characters out that who I do in fact like quite a bit. I'm okay with her grumpiness and rudeness, and I can see where her snappishness comes from. The portrait of living with chronic pain and insomnia while caring for her son rings true to me, and as unsympathetic as she might come across in this context she felt real and relatable there. What I couldn't get past was how cold and driven she was. In the course of the story, several people she's been working with die, and some of them quite horribly. All of the deaths are related to their involvement in her project. And she feels nothing about any of them, not a single thought of grief or regret, remorse or acknowledgement of responsibility. She's only concerned with how each person's... well, I'll say unavailability, because that really seems to be her concern... is going to impact her project. At no stage does she worry for anyone else she's working with, or try to convince them to back away now. The sole exception is to try to prevent her husband from dying by dying herself, and even that is framed as choosing which parent would be better for her son to retain - it's still not shown as her actually worrying about her husband.
So all in all, pretty disappointed because goddamn that is a cool concept to start with.
2.5 stars, rounding down.
The concept that drives this book is so cool: film as a method of haunting, film as doorway, and some pretty awesome mythology that was new to me. Lady Midday is a Slavic noontime demon/goddess, and I'm completely delighted to be introduced to her.
Despite some truly beautiful lines that just shimmer off the page, this one did not work at all for me in the execution. Maybe you need to be a film person to really resonate with it.
The story centres on Lois, an out of work Canadian film critic and former film studies teacher who wants to write a book that will make a mark. She's also a chronic pain sufferer, and the mother of a young son who is autistic.
She recognises some found footage as matching the imagery she remembers from a grade school textbook, and thinks she can prove that a woman who disappeared from a moving train in 1918 - at that time already a local legend of eccentricity and tragedy - was the first female Canadian filmmaker.
So, great framework.
But. It suffers from ‘expert syndrome': the writer is writing about her own field, and has fallen into the trap of including way, way too much explaining/complaining about one's job. Too much Canadian film history, technical detail, and talk of the politics of the Canadian film scene. This is supposed to be a horror novel, and while I do understand that grant applications are a thing of horror in their own way... they're not particularly horrifying to read about. This kind of thing really got in the way of the story, and there are ways for it not to. Elizabeth Hand's Cass Neary series, for example, geeks the hell out about everything to do with photography, but as technical as it gets, it never feels like it's extraneous to the story. It feels fascinating. In this book, all the detail just feels boring, and the POV character doesn't have the necessary humour or verve to rescue it.
Aside from that problem, the characters and pacing fall flat for me. There was so much potential here for a truly creepy, thrilling story, but the way the story is told transmits about as much emotion as a report about a school excursion. The POV character just does not seem to be all that worried about the supernatural, and is even less worried about the (pretty ruthless) non-supernatural enemies she has. At one point someone breaks into her flat, and her only reaction is to laugh and brush off her husband's alarm, because she knows that what they took is worthless to them.
The supporting characters don't feel real or fleshed out, more like foils who do what they need to do to move the plot forward.
My other problem was with relating to Lois. She is pretty unlikable, and that's fine, there are plenty of unlikable characters out that who I do in fact like quite a bit. I'm okay with her grumpiness and rudeness, and I can see where her snappishness comes from. The portrait of living with chronic pain and insomnia while caring for her son rings true to me, and as unsympathetic as she might come across in this context she felt real and relatable there. What I couldn't get past was how cold and driven she was. In the course of the story, several people she's been working with die, and some of them quite horribly. All of the deaths are related to their involvement in her project. And she feels nothing about any of them, not a single thought of grief or regret, remorse or acknowledgement of responsibility. She's only concerned with how each person's... well, I'll say unavailability, because that really seems to be her concern... is going to impact her project. At no stage does she worry for anyone else she's working with, or try to convince them to back away now. The sole exception is to try to prevent her husband from dying by dying herself, and even that is framed as choosing which parent would be better for her son to retain - it's still not shown as her actually worrying about her husband.
So all in all, pretty disappointed because goddamn that is a cool concept to start with.