So, I finished that White City book, which would have been much better being two books both more fleshed out, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t spend the whole ride home telling the Butcher about the Ferris Wheel and how The White City influenced our culture in ways we don’t even realize now–Hello Disneyland! Which reminds me, Coble, if you haven’t read it and would like to, I’m happy to share my copy.
But that left me part of my layover in Charlotte and then my flight back to Nashville with no reading materials and so I picked up The Monsters of Templeton which was the only book in the bookstore that didn’t look either terrible or like I needed to have read the whole series before i picked that one up.
I then stayed up all night to finish it. I can’t remember the last time I stayed up all night to read a book.
Anyway, it’s loosely based on Cooperstown, NY, which is instead called Templeton and it’s the story of a woman who is a direct descendent of the town founder and his famous writer son who returns to her hometown to deal with her pregnancy and find out who her realy father is and learn about her family. Also, there’s a lake monster. And ghosts, and psychics and women who can start fires with their minds. And the author has this weird hang-up of telling you all the time about whether her characters are fat or thin or getting fatter (and thus unattractive) or getting thinner (and thus more attractive).
It contains one of the biggest cop-outs in literary history, which goes far past the cliched “teenage girl gets pregnant, abortion seems like only reasonable course of action, but luckily she has a miscarriage” scenario straight into something that, for me, at least, was, if it is possible, even more offensive and what-the-fuck inducing.
And then, there’s this postcard scene which makes laughably little sense.
So, I guess the thing is that any time the book strays away from the magical and literary, it’s really problematic, to put it mildly, but I did devour the whole thing and am glad I did.
Tiny Cat Pants 
Aha! Read it years ago. Having read about 10 dozen books on Holmes already I much more enjoyed the White City part. The “devil” part seemed like the sugar he had to pack the “medicine” in for the publisher to market the book.
I admit that I sought it out because of the serial killer thing—I have a mad love for serial killers which is why I am disgruntled that they’ve been replaced in genre lit popularity with all these gd vampires.
But the White City part–that was the part the author cared about AND that was the part that was engaging.
It contains one of the biggest cop-outs in literary history, which goes far past the cliched “teenage girl gets pregnant, abortion seems like only reasonable course of action, but luckily she has a miscarriage” scenario straight into something that, for me, at least, was, if it is possible, even more offensive and what-the-fuck inducing.
Since I’m not going to read the other book (most likely) and even if I do I love to be spoiled before I read something, what pray tell is said cliche?
Phantom pregnancy. See, she was so crazy she only thought she was pregnant but once it became “obvious” (though, even as a staunchly pro-choice person, I thought it was actually far less than obvious) that she needed to have an abortion, her period miraculously came a flooding out in what she thought was the convenient miscarriage, but was actually not.
So, she didn’t have to make any decision about having an abortion and she didn’t even have to be sad about a miscarriage! It still boggles my mind. I would imagine that, if you thought you were pregnant, and it turned out that you weren’t, you’d have some emotional reaction to it.
But, instead, we’re supposed to be placated by the fact that she will, of course, have kids some day.
I’m banging my head against the edge of my desk.
Was the book written by a man? Because, really. Phantom Pregnancy?
Wha?
that’s so unbelievably rare as to be unbelievable. Yeah, sure, Mary Queen of Scots, blah blah blahbittycakes. But when it happens it never happens to someone who doesn’t want to be pregnant and is even at all considering abortion.
Good lord. Research something before using it as a plot device, published assholes.
Remind me why I’m not published yet?
Oh yah. I haven’t finished any of the books I’m working on. Like Garp’s neighbour.
I think that was Mary Tudor. It also happened to Bonnie Prince Charlie’s mother before she actually had some real pregnancies.
Oh, and this: I have a mad love for serial killers — B, I think you need to tag Kat to tell us things about herself.
Coble, the most shocking thing to me, at least in terms of the themes of the book is that the book is all about discovering her real family and her real place in it and coming to terms with that. I just found it shocking and unbelievable that a woman all caught up in family would be so nonchalant about “Oh, and I never was really pregnant!” Like she wouldn’t at least have mixed feelings about it?
It’s like that moment in “A Map of the World” at the beginning where we’re supposed to believe that there’s any woman in the whole Midwest who, when watching someone else’s kids, doesn’t automatically lock the screen door after someone leaves. It just throws me completely out of the book.
This happens late enough in this book that I finished it anyway, but it did throw me out of it completely.