Saturday, September 28, 2013

The Innkeepers



The Innkeepers
starring Sara Paxton, Pat Healy, and Kelly McGillis
Written and directed by Ti West
2011
101 minutes
Rated R

Here is another "haunted hotel" movie for you fans of The Shining. There are a few elements that seem similar to the Stephen King story: empty hotel (it is closing after one last weekend), few main characters, and of course, ghosts covered in blood, but there are plenty of differences to make this an entertainingly spooky ghost story in its own right.

This movie takes place at a real inn in Torrington, Connecticut called the Yankee Pedlar Inn. It was built by Frank and Alice Conley and opened in 1891. There are 55 individual rooms and 5 suites. The inn boasts period furnishings and a tavern. Here is a link to their History page.

The Yankee Pedlar Inn Today

Alice and Frank Conley

Because the Inn is old, many people believe or assume that paranormal activity has occurred there. The most "haunted" room is Room 353 where Alice Conley died, and Alice supposedly still roams the halls, checking on guests. She sounds like a nice comforting ghost, one that the hotel guests wouldn't mind seeing, doesn't she? Despite investigations by the Northwest Connecticut Paranormal Society, however, there have been no confirmed manifestations of Alice, Frank, or anyone else at the Yankee Pedlar.

But just because there have been no positive sightings doesn't mean that the Yankee Pedlar Inn can't make a good backdrop for a paranormal horror movie.

Our story takes place at the Yankee Pedlar Inn, a once-grand hotel that is about to close (this part is fictional and the Inn is still open today). We meet the two remaining employees, Luke (Pat Healy) and Claire (Sara Paxton). There are few guests this weekend, a mother and son who leave during the beginning part of the movie; Leanne Rease-Jones (Kellie McGillis), a movie star turned new age counselor who is attending a convention; and an older man who wants to stay in the room in which he spent his honeymoon.

Madeline O'Malley
Luke dabbles in ghost hunting and runs a website about the Inn's supposed hauntings. He has been conducting investigations on his own and has equipment to record EVPs, but he hasn't really found much. Claire, who has just left college, has become Luke's ghost-hunting acolyte. She is fascinated with Luke's stories, especially the one about Madeline O'Malley, the bride who hanged herself after her fiance abandoned her on her wedding day. Madeline is said to be buried in the basement of the Yankee Pedlar, hidden there by the owners who didn't want the bad publicity her death would bring, I suppose. Claire really is impressed with Luke's website and wants to help him with the research.

Claire's naive intrigue with the ghost hunting process is the best part of the movie, and Sara Paxton's character and acting is the most convincing to me. Claire uses Luke's equipment to try EVP sessions around the hotel, searching for any response from Madeline O'Malley. Tension builds as Claire hears music coming from the unattended piano, sees Madeline's bloody face around the hotel, and other disembodied voices speak to her in the basement. Luke cannot handle this activity and freaks out, confessing that he has never actually experienced any paranormal occurrences at the Inn before, and leaves Claire in the hotel to deal with the situation herself.

By the end of the movie, though, I was not sure how much of the paranormal activity was really happening or if it were actually only in Claire's impressionable and receptive mind. Although we see all of the characters in action, I think this story takes place through Claire's point of view and we "see" what Claire sees without looking through her eyes via the camera. I don't think Luke really sees or hears anything in the basement but only reacts to Claire's seeing and hearing--"She's right behind you!" Leanne tries to help Claire with her crystal pendulum but urges Claire to leave the hotel because it isn't safe for her, but Leanne doesn't specify the source of the danger. Nobody else sees the ghosts of Madeline or the old man, who has committed suicide in his former honeymoon suite and is discovered by Claire in all of the bloody horror.

With Luke's interview by the police at the end come more doubts about the hauntings. Luke has come back after Claire discovered the old man's death. He agrees to find Leanne to tell her to leave the hotel with them, but Claire, left alone, hears noises in the basement. Thinking it might be Leanne, Claire goes down the stairs to check it out (we are all shouting, NO! DON'T GO DOWN THERE! at this point). She falls, hits her head, and starts seeing the ghosts everywhere. She locks herself in a room at the end of the basement hallway and cannot escape. The ghosts bang on the door, over and over. Already having established previously that Claire is asthmatic, we know what is going to happen and it does. But after the fact, Luke tells the police that it is he banging on the door and calling Claire to let him in. Where were the ghosts? Did he not see them?!

This movie is appealing for many reasons. I like the location of the empty, shabby chic hotel. The minimal cast also brings strength to the tightness of the story--not too many characters to confuse things. The ghost hunting by amateurs is also very believable to me and appealing, and yes, it can be dangerous. The bloodiest scene, the discovery of the old gentleman in the bathroom, is gory but we don't see it happen to him. The tension is built slowly with small noises, shadows, glimpses out of the corner of our eye. Then we feel all of the terror that Claire is feeling, from the panic of being left by Luke to finding the dead body and finally, the hysterical panicked run through the labyrinthine basement.

This movie is Rated R for bloody images and language. Here is the trailer for you. Don't get too scared!



Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Ashes


Ashes
by Ilsa J. Bick
Grand Haven, MI: Brilliance Audio
2011
Performed by Katherine Kellgren
10 sound discs (11.3 hours)

At first I didn't know if I was going to be able to listen to this audio book or if I would have to read it myself. The narrator, Katherine Kellgren, has a very dramatic narration style that was distracting at first, with lots of loud shouting (there is a lot of shouting in this story), to lend some verisimilitude to the story's dialogue. After awhile, however, I got used to her style and became engrossed in the story.

Alex has gone on a pilgrimage to the fictional Waucamaw Wilderness of the Michigan Upper Peninsula to scatter her parents' ashes from Mirror Point on Lake Superior. Besides losing her parents too soon, Alex has her own "monster" to deal with, a brain tumor in her head for which there is nothing that can be done. By visiting the wilderness that meant so much to her family, Alex hopes to find some closure and make some plans to what future she has left. It's scary for her to be alone in the wilderness, but Alex's father taught her well and she feels capable of surviving for the few weeks she will be there.

Wilderness in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
That is, until the strange electromagnetic pulse swept the sky. Alex, who has been visiting with a grandfather and granddaughter in their campsite, is knocked to the ground and begins to bleed from her nose. Jack, the grandfather, dies immediately, probably because of his pacemaker. Ellie, the 8-year-old granddaughter, also has survived.  Being in the wilderness, Alex doesn't know the immensity of the disaster at first, but she and Ellie find out that none of their electronics work. Without Jack, Ellie is left alone, and Alex feels she should protect the little girl as best she can, but Ellie is scared and does not want to go with a stranger. Eventually they begin the hike down the mountain to the ranger station, but along the way, they encounter some of the "Changed," teens who have changed into cannibalistic violent zombie creatures and attack any living thing they can find. Some adults have survived, but only older, 65+ year olds. Besides being in the wilderness away from help, Alex and Ellie don't know how they will get home.

Eventually, Alex and Ellie meet Tom, a soldier from Afghanistan who has not changed either. The three of them, with Ellie's dog, Mina, find the ranger station and are fortunate to find food, water, and good shelter. But they can't stay there forever. They must find out what has happened and how to get help for themselves.

Most of the story is full of danger and separation. All three get separated from each other, and unfortunately, you won't find out any answers about what happens to Tom and Ellie by the end of this book. Alex is the main focus of Ashes, and we see her struggle to keep the group together, how they are parted through violence, and how Alex finds refuge in the strange town of Rule, an isolated place run by a religious "cult" who are trying to find as many unchanged, or "spared", teens as they can. Once you are allowed in to Rule, it is very difficult to leave unless the Reverend, the leader of the council, decides that you are no longer useful and then you are banished completely.

Alex also finds that along with the brain zap, she now has a super sense of smell and can smell what people are feeling and thinking. She can smell the Changed before she sees them. Another unexplained effect is the reaction of the dogs to Alex. They absolutely adore and trust her, and I think we will see Alex learn to use this to her advantage eventually.

1987 movie starring Michael Rubin,Steven McCoy, and George Seminara
With these sorts of zombie stories, I am often struck by the unexplained fact that these kids, the Changed, are able to eat other people without getting sick and dying from it. You would think that the effect of raw human blood and flesh on a digestive system unused to it would be rather disastrous, if not fatal. The author doesn't explain (yet) how the brains of these teens have been changed, we just see the results, but does it also change their other body systems? I have this problem with other zombie stories, too, so I'm not blaming Ms. Bick for failing to explain it sufficiently.

This story also reminds me of a Stephen King book, Cell, which I will review at a later time. In Cell, there is also a zap which comes through the cell phones. It turns people into mindless killing machines, too, who attack and eat each other. There is eventually more structure to those Changed, as they begin to group together and are held together through telepathy.

I recommend this story, which is Book 1 in a trilogy, to older teens, 15 and up. There is a lot of gore. The story is interesting and I am connected strongly to Alex, Tom, and Ellie, but I would rather not hear quite so many details about how the Changed rip apart their victims. And since I am left with Alex in the midst of five hungry Changed, I will have to listen to the next installment in Shadows (Book 2 in the Ashes Trilogy). I just hope I can stand all of the bloodshed!

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Spirit and Dust

New Hardback Cover
Old Cover


Spirit and Dust
by Rosemary Clement-Moore
New York: Delacorte Press
2013
387 pages

Which cover do you like better?

I used to watch the television series Medium and have in fact been watching it again on Netflix. When I read the blurb about this book, I thought immediately of that program. This is a teen version of that basic premise, the psychic who helps law enforcement solve crimes. It is also book two, following Texas Gothic, about the Goodnight Clan. I didn't know this when I started reading, but Spirit and Dust is a good stand-alone book, so it won't matter so much if you read this one first, as I did.

Daisy Goodnight is a very modern teenager in many ways. She has dyed red hair, likes Goth clothing, and has an "kick-ass" attitude. But she is also very connected with the past. She is from a long family line of psychics who can talk to spirits, or remnants. These are not the souls of the dearly departed, but leftover fragments of the dead, associated with places they had been or where they died, or things they had touched. Daisy is asked by FBI Agent Taylor to assist with the murder of the driver of a kidnapped teen. Another wrinkle to the problem is that the teen is the daughter of a mobster, Devlin Maguire. Daisy is able to talk to the remnant of the driver but all she learns that there was something unusual and disturbing about this death.

Anubis, Egyptian God
of the Afterlife
Soon afterwards, Daisy is herself kidnapped and taken to the home of the crime boss dad. He wants Daisy to get busy and find his daughter. He offers the service of Carson, a young man who knows a lot about Alexis Maguire's habits, and a witch named Lauren. Lauren puts a binding spell on Daisy so she can't just hightail it out of there at the first opportunity. With Carson's help, Daisy and Carson escape and follow up a lead provided by Alexis's dead grandmother to the cemetery where they find a mysterious flash drive. Daisy now finds herself on the run with Carson, but the binding spell is still activated and Daisy must continue searching for Alexis.

All is not as it seems in this quick-moving, intense horror thriller. In searching for clues to the Alexis' disappearance, we encounter many dead people including archaeologists, Cleopatra, and the Egyptian God Anubis. Carson and Daisy's adventures lead them to several interesting places in the Midwest, including the St. Louis Art Museum, the Oriental Institute, and my favorite, the Field Museum. I was surprised to find out the truth about the Maguires and the part they play in Daisy's misadventures. Daisy is a likeable character, but I don't think her talent is thoroughly explored or explained very well. Perhaps if I had read the first book, I would understand her better. She has an "attitude" and is rather mouthy, or "kick-ass" as she puts it, which is somewhat explained by her age. I guess I myself sympathize with Agent Gerard, the agent who doesn't want to put up with the teen medium's smart aleck opinions on everything, since teen attitudes like this can get tiresome after awhile, at least to this mother of teenagers.

Sue the T-Rex, Field Museum, Chicago
My favorite part of this book, however, was not the spooky ghost bits with the spirits or the Jackal, but the descriptions of Sue, the Tyrannosaurus and the Field Museum. I love Sue, as most visitors do, and have marvelled at how large she is and how sharp her teeth look. And when Daisy reanimates Sue's bones so that she can chase down the bad guys, I can't help but think of the final scenes of the movie Jurassic Park, in which the T-Rex is running around inside the Park's welcome center. That would be a truly horrifying experience!

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

The Awakening



The Awakening
starring Rebecca Hall, Dominic West, 
and Imelda Staunton
2011
107 minutes
Rated R

This weekend was a good movie-watching one for me. Besides The Picture of Dorian Gray, a classic movie based on a classic book, I watched a "haunted house" film, my favorite type of horror movie. This one, called The Awakening, was filmed at Lyme Park, a beautiful yet eerie National Trust house in the Peak District in England. There are very few satisfying haunted house movies, especially recently, and the English seem to do it so much better than anyone else. This movie is no exception. It may have its flaws, but I found it quite satisfying and suitably spine-tingling.

The time is 1921. England is still recovering from the massive loss of life in World War I, and everywhere people are searching for comfort from spiritualists. Rebecca Hall plays Florence Cathcart, a ghost hunter who specializes in exposing phony mediums. She has written a book on the subject and is known for her expertise and intelligence.

Directly after a successful and exhausting hunt, Florence is visited by Robert Mallory (Dominic West), a teacher at a boys' boarding school where a child ghost has been seen by many of the boys. The ghost has appeared in the class photographs over the years, and the headmistress of the school (Imelda Staunton), a devotee of Cathcart's book, would like her to come and investigate.The catalyst of the request, however, is a recent death of student and the other boys are convinced that the ghost had something to do with it. Despite Florence's exhaustion from her last hunt, she is intrigued by the case and agrees to go with Mallory to the boarding house.

Once at the boarding house, we learn that it used to be a private home and a young boy had died there. Using the latest ghost-hunting apparatus, Florence quickly discovers the non-ghostly cause of the student's death. The case is closed and she packs up and prepares to leave. The school is shut down for half-term and all of the boys depart, all but one. 

Strange things begin to happen directly to Florence. She sees someone in the lake and falls in. She sees scary little dolls in a dollhouse version of the boarding school that look like people in the school, set in scenes from her activities.She sees a boy where none should be, and flashes of other people appear. Things like this aren't supposed to be happening to a realist like Florence. Add a budding romance between Florence and Robert Mallory, a rather odd headmistress, and a psychotic groundskeeper and you have the makings of a really satisfying old-fashioned ghost story.

Here is a trailer for the movie. The R rating is for scariness, nudity and sexual content.


After watching movie, I was interested to learn more about the location of the boarding school. Lyme Park is a National Trust home and you can visit. Here is a website to learn more. Fans of Jane Austen movies will recognize it as Pemberly, the estate of Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice (1995, Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle).

Lyme Park, Disley, Cheshire, England


Since I am also interested in art, I was interested to see another spooky painting in this movie. "It came with the building, it's the boys' favorite." Mallory thinks it is a painting of the beheading of John the Baptist, but erudite Florence corrects him and identifies it as Judith Slaying Holofernes, taken from the biblical story of Judith in which she kills the Assyrian general after he has fallen asleep drunk, thus delivering the Kingdom of Israel. Many painters have dealt with this bloodthirsty topic, including Titian, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Donatello, and others but the painting shown in the movie is by the Italian early Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi (1611-12) and is especially gory with blood. It doesn't refer to any other part of the movie's story but is just another interesting fact, perhaps to illustrate Florence's intelligence.

You might also be interested in listening to the entire hymn,  Be Still My Soul, which is sung in the movie and uses the beautiful theme from Finlandia by Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ivan Albright, 1945
The Art Institute of Chicago
This past week I went to one of my favorite places, the Art Institute in Chicago, and saw this painting by Ivan Albright, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). It was painted for the movie based on Oscar Wilde's only novel with the same title, directed by Albert Lewin and starring George Sanders, Hurd Hatfield, Donna Reed, and Angela Lansbury. On its own, this painting portrays an unreal and disturbing monster of a person, his clothes are slashed, stained, and decayed. The colors of the painting are strangely muted, not as bright as one might think blood and gore should be, but they are also more organic looking as a result. And this is a painting that developed organically.

In the movie, filmed in black and white, there are a few moments of color. The first comes when we get to see the painting of Dorian that his friend, Basil Hallward, had just completed. It shows a young gentleman who is self-assured, talented, wealthy, upper-class, and flawless.

Portrait of Dorian Gray, painted by Henrique Medina
 for the movie The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
In the story, Dorian Gray meets and befriends another friend of Basil's, Lord Henry Wotton, whose world view is based on hedonism and the fulfillment of the senses. All experiences are worth having, good and bad, without considering  the consequences to others. I am not quite sure how this works into his other opinion that seeking Youth and Beauty are of the highest value in life, since I do not associate bad or evil experiences as a way  to finding Youth or Beauty. Dorian likes his portrait and wishes that he could always be young and beautiful while his portrait would change. Lucky for him (or unfortunate for him, as the case may be), there just happens to be a little statue of Bastet, the Egyptian cat-goddess nearby. She appears in the portrait to Dorian's right. Perhaps we are meant to think that Bastet is sympathetic to the search for Youth and Beauty and wishes to give Dorian what he wants, or perhaps she might feel that he is foolish to wish for something like this and wants to teach him a lesson.

Dorian's infatuation with Sibyl Vane is a good example of his incorporating Lord Henry's philosophy into his own life. His infatuation with Sibyl and then his rejection of her at the advice of Lord Henry, in the guise of a test, shows that Dorian doesn't comprehend, although he might still care at this point, what he represented to Sibyl. She is desperate for a way to leave her life of singing in the little club, and her mother seems to constantly tell her that she deserves better. When "better" finds her and Dorian offers her a way out, she snatches it eagerly despite the inequality of their situations. But Sibyl is not willing to go against her moral standards to be with Basil and certainly does not expect to be rejected so utterly.

The next shocking flash of color comes when we again see the portrait. Absorbing all of the vices of the model, the painting has become gross, decayed, and terrifying. We haven't seen Dorian commit many crimes during the story and movie; we only know that 18 years have passed since Sibyl's death. We can only imagine the atrocities he has committed over the years. Of course, the horror of his murdering his friend Basil on top of the seduction of young innocent Gladys Hallward, who naively things that just because Dorian is so good looking, the things people say about him can't be true, are only a small sample of Dorian's vices. But the ending of the story proves that there can be redemption after all but at what price? This painting has come to represent his soul, what he has become deep inside and hides from the world. Can anyone this ugly and horrifying inside be capable of caring for anyone but himself? Will Gladys end up like poor Sibyl?

I thought Hurd Hatfield was a good choice for Dorian. I was particularly struck by how mask-like his face is throughout the movie, so smooth and wrinkle-free. But to have a face like this, it would imply that this person also doesn't show any emotion. Smiles cause wrinkles, too, and Hurd as Dorian doesn't ever seem to smile or laugh. Does he enjoy his life? Perhaps he is not capable of it.

If you haven't seen this movie, I recommend it but not as a substitute for the novel by Oscar Wilde. That is a classic of literary horror and shouldn't be missed.

The Albright painting was painted with the Medina portrait as the base. I wish the Art Institute had both of them side by side to show the contrast. Without the other, Albright's painting is a ghoulish painting that exemplifies a life spent in evil pursuits, or maybe it is just another zombie picture. Nasty but interesting. We don't understand the message of the book without the "original" to compare to it.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

The Graveyard Book



The Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman
New York: Harper Children's Audio
2008
7 sound discs (ca. 7.5 hours)



First of all, let me tell you that I think I have given up reading Neil Gaiman books myself. If I can find a sound recording with Neil Gaiman reading his own story, I will choose that EVERY time! What a great reader! I always love a good audiobook for my long car rides back and forth to work, but when the author himself (or herself) performs it so well, that is better than anything! We could go into how pleasing the deeper male voice (with British accent) is to female ears, but that doesn't matter here. Others I know who are male also think Neil Gaiman is just a great teller of his own stories. It is definitely worth hearing them in his own voice, if you want to try one of his books.

Spookily titled The Graveyard Book, this is not the scariest book you will ever read. It is, after all, for ages 10 and up and has received the Newbery Award for good reason. It is well-written, interesting, sometimes funny, with interesting characters, both alive and dead, and just plain entertaining. I like it for all of those reasons. It also has some horror elements which I want to discuss here in this blog, since we are talking about scary books. This author is very adept at adding the scary factor to children's books without getting too heavy handed, yet as an older reader (or listener), I can appreciate that there is more to make us afraid than the children might know.

This story, which Gaiman admits is loosely based on The Jungle Book, is about a small boy. One evening a stranger enters his home and killed--yes, in a children's book--the mother, father, and older sister of this small boy. The boy, who is only about two or three at the time, somehow manages to climb out of his crib, go down the long flight of stairs, out the open door, up the street, and into the old graveyard at the top of the hill. This small boy is then taken in and protected by the inhabitants of the graveyard, especially Mister and Mistress Owens who become his parents, and also a gentleman named Silas, about whom we learn more later. The toddler is named "Nobody Owens," and has the run of the graveyard  and he is safe from the man who is still looking for him.

Highgate Cemetery, London (wikimedia commons)

Most of the story is a bildungsroman about the boy Nobody, or Bod for short, and his growing up as the only living boy in the graveyard. His life isn't unhappy, just different. He has friends, tutors, and skills that most living people never learn such as fading, haunting, passing through solid objects, etc. Silas, his guardian and only person who can leave the graveyard, finds food and clothing in the outside world for him. We watch him grow and learn and change as time passes.

One day, Nobody finds a living friend, a little girl named Scarlett who visits the graveyard. Her parents think she is playing with an imaginary friend, and Scarlet isn't sure herself if Nobody is real. Scarlett eventually moves away and Bod is left without another living friend for a time. Scarlett is Bod's only live friend throughout this story, but even she cannot really understand him and his situation.

Behind all that happens is the knowledge that we haven't seen the last of Jack, the man who assassinated Bod's family. We don't know why he did it either, but since Silas and the ghosts are so adamant that Bod never leave the graveyard because this man is still after him, we are on edge, too. There is a close call concerning Jack, when 8-year-old Bod sneaks out of the graveyard to go into the town to sell an ancient brooch recovered from a barrow for a headstone for his witch friend, Lizzie Hempstock, buried outside of the graveyard in unconsecrated ground. The shopkeeper locks up the strange boy in his storeroom, and remembers someone who was looking for a boy like that, a man named Jack. Luckily for Bod and us, Lizzie came to the rescue and Bod gets away.

The true horror of the book takes place near the end of the story. Scarlett returns to the town and discovers that her friend, Nobody, isn't imaginary after all. She encounters him again while assisting another new friend, a Mr. Frost, with some grave rubbings. The two friends are glad to see each other, and Bod is happy to tell somebody his story. Scarlett takes it upon herself to find out more about the murder of his family and asks her friend Mr. Frost for help. Well, it just so happens that Mr. Frost is actually living in the house where this took place! Coincidence, you might ask? Probably not!

The Egyptian Avenue at Highgate Cemetery, London
taken by John Armagh, 12 August 2007 (wikimedia commons)

I don't want to give away all of the story because I really hope you will read this book. Let me just say that Bod is very fortunate to have the friends he does who have taught him the unusual skills he uses to defeat the bad guys in the end. We also learn about other strange and scary creatures in this book, including ghouls, sleers, Hounds of God (otherwise known as werewolves), and vampires. The ghosts are actually the least scary creatures in the story, since the living people Nobody encounters are, for the most part, rather terrifying.

I know the ending is meant to be happy when Bod is finally able to leave the cemetery (you have to read how that comes about), but he is only 15. He hasn't been to a modern school for more than a month or two, and lacks any live family or connections. He hasn't spent any significant time with living people and lacks social skills from modern times, since most of those skills were formed by the long-dead graveyard inhabitants. Silas has given him money, but will he know how to get on? As a mother myself, I'm as worried about him as Mistress Owens now. But Nobody Owens has proven himself to be resourceful, so we can only hope that he will be okay.

Another wonderful part about listening to this story rather than just reading it are the musical interludes on each cd. Béla Fleck, "banjo renegade," has contributed a marvelous rendition of Camille Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre, with Ben Sollee on cello. The banjo is actually a very nice choice for this, duplicating some of the traditional violin sounds, but it also capable of sounding like the "bones," usually played by a xylophone or marimba. Below is a link to part of this recording, which is available on itunes. If you would like to hear the original orchestral Danse Macabre, try this recording. Any afficionado of horror should be familiar with this musical story of Death playing for skeletons in a graveyard until cock crow. It's a magnificent piece of music that is perfect for this story, made even more perfect with Fleck's unusual instrumentation.



Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Monument 14






Monument 14
by Emmy Laybourne
New York: Feiwel and Friends
2013
296 pages





Monument 14, on the YALSA Teens' Top Ten Nomination List, is a disaster book. The disaster happens in the first chapter, and two busloads of children, ages kindergarten through high school, find themselves in dire straits. This future society which offers many technological advances, including a nationwide computer network that keeps everyone informed and connected, does not hold up very long in the face of major natural disasters. Add some unnatural disasters, too, and we looking at the "end of the world as we know it."

We hear this story through Dean Grieder, a high school junior. He began his day as usual, catching the school bus, but little did he know, this day would be not be ordinary. Soon after the bus started its route to school, a hail storm unlike any other caused the bus to skid out of control and eventually turn over. Dean's younger brother was on his own bus ahead of Dean's, but that bus driver was fortunate enough to keep her bus upright, ramming it into a large superstore, Greenway. Dean's bus rolled over and kids were injured or not moving, and the bus driver was pinned under the steering wheel and appeared to be bleeding profusely. We see the that the bus is on fire, the bus driver is dying, and giant hail is pounding the bus--how will the kids get off the bus to safety?

This book takes place over the course of two weeks and the children's lives are changed dramatically. Mrs. Wooly, the brave bus driver and only adult on the premises, decided to leave to seek help at the nearby hospital and to find out what is happening. She instructed the children to remain in the store and stay together. This is the last they see her. Jake, a high school senior, is left in charge of the kids at the store, and most of the high schoolers are conscious of the needs of the small children, who are pedictably freaking out. There is a mini restaurant in the store and they are able to cook pizzas for everyone who is able to eat. Then another disaster hits--earthquake!

The entrance to the
 Cheyenne Mountain Complex, NORAD
One of the unnatural factors that contributes to this disaster is the chemical cloud that appears on the horizon. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is located near Monument and apparently they have been experimenting with dangerous chemicals. These have an immediate effect on everyone.  The news report the kids are able to get on the old television in the media section of the store reveals that the chemicals in the air affect people according to blood type:

  • Type A: severe blisters on all exposed skin. With prolonged exposure, internal organs will hemorrhage.
  • Type AB: paranoid delusions and hallucinations.
  • Type B: long-term reproductive problems, but no immediate problems.
  • Type O: dangerous, deranged, and violent behavior.

The kids realize that they need to seal up the store as well as they can, so they put up coverings over any exposed vents and doorways. Luckily the heavy metal security gates have been activated, which keeps the violent people out, but also they keep the kids from leaving.

Overall, this was an exciting story with plenty of action. I admired several of the characters and their reactions to the situation, including Dean, who takes on the cooking despite not really wanting to be tied to the kitchen; Alex, his brother, who is smart and innovative; Niko, the Boy Scout who shows his capability to deal with problems despite the dislike shown him by two of the high school boys; and Josie who, once she recovers from her shock, proves to be a welcome calming influence over the little kids.

Other characters behave in ways that I suspect would be typical of kids suddenly with no adult supervision. Brayden and Jake quickly discover the alcohol and pharmacy, choosing to get high rather than provide stable support for the smaller children. Sahalia, an 8th grade girl, becomes pouty that she isn't treated like a "big" kid, but then she doesn't contribute anything to show that she can act maturely. Her way of showing maturity is to flirt with the older boys in inappropriate ways and becoming a huge problem for the others.

One thing I did wonder about, though, was why there were no people in the superstore, Greenway. The kids were going to school before 8:00am, but the store was not open and there were no employees inside preparing for the day. If this store is similar to Walmart or Target, it would be open 24 hours, but this store is obviously not open until later in the morning. Extra people would have distracted us from the action of the story, but I doubt the realism here.

I recommend this book to all who enjoy a good end-of-the-world disaster story, but I would advise that it is more for teens 15 and older due to sexual content. Book Two Monument 14: Sky on Fire is out and I am excited to read it to find out what happens next.