I Am Not Myself These Days

Josh Kilmer-Purcell
Harper Perennial
Reviewed by: Nancy
5 out of 5 stars

Summary

I Am Not Myself These Days follows a glittering journey through Manhattan's dark underbelly -- a shocking and surreal world where alter egos reign and subsist (barely) on dark wit and chemicals...a tragic romantic comedy where one begins by rooting for the survival of the relationship and ends by hoping someone simply survives.

My Review

I’m not much of a TV person and have never seen The Fabulous Beekman Boys or heard of Josh Kilmer-Purcell, retired drag queen. Still, I’m glad I found this little gem about two misfits in love. By day, Josh works for an advertising agency. At night, he lovingly and painstakingly transforms himself into Aqua, a 7-foot blonde beauty who carries goldfish around in her plastic boobs. His boyfriend, Jack, is a very well-paid escort known as “Aidan” to his clients, and lives in a posh apartment building guarded by doormen. The two guys enjoy a routine life of reading the paper together and ordering lunch from the deli, while listening to Jack’s beeper go off and occasionally running into his unusual clients.

“The truth is, there’s no movie of the week about a drunk drag queen and a crackhead hooker in love. There never has been. It’s not the kind of thing people would care about. People would flip right by the channel, either unbelieving or uncaring. Who’s the good guy? Who’s the bad guy? Aren’t they both bad? If they didn’t get what they deserved by the first commercial, it’d be on to the breast cancer movie.”

You’re so wrong, Josh. Right from the first page, I cared. I loved reading about your transformation to Aqua. You reminded me of my little brother, who got a kick out of trying on my mom’s dresses and heels. Your work hours and lack of sleep exhausted me, reminding me of my own hectic days working full-time, part-time, taking classes, and still finding time to party. You also reminded me of a close friend who appeared to be the happiest person in the world to everyone else, but drowned his pain in vodka. I loved your crazy and dysfunctional relationship with Jack in a city that has no mercy, yet is a haven for those who are different, and I loved your friendship with Laura and your relationship with your supportive mom who didn’t know the difference between transsexuals and drag queens.

“You know that if you want to have an operation that’s something you can talk about with your dad and me.”

Your story was beautiful, honest, and hilarious. If it wasn’t so darn funny, I would have cried.

Also posted at Goodreads.

Before Leonora Wakes

Lee Thompson
Bloodberry Market
Reviewed by: Nancy
5 out of 5 stars

Summary

In the first Division Mythos novel Red Piccirilli is a runt, a dreamer, a naive boy with an imaginary friend and little else. But right before summer vacation starts he finds an albino girl trapped in a shed behind a local house. After Red frees her, the world he knew quickly unravels into something more mysterious—an unsteady reality where a man with silver teeth and buzz saw voice points him toward the true meaning of sacrifice.

My Review

Lee Thompson has written an online serial novel, The Collected Songs of Sonnelion, which was available at DarkFuse.

I started reading and it looked really good, but I wanted to get to know Red Piccirilli as a little boy first and then see him grow up.  So I started with the first novella in the Division Mythos which takes place during the 1960’s in a small town in Michigan.  

Red is 13 years old and looking forward to his summer vacation.  He has an imaginary friend named Pig who doesn’t disappear as such friends are supposed to; instead, he becomes a close friend who wants to prove to Red just how real he is.  Red is a kind and sensitive boy, but the bullies who torment him think he’s weird. 

Their adventures begin when they encounter a scary looking guy who lives on the wrong side of the tracks and a girl who needs rescuing in a big way.   When Pig starts to act differently because of Leonora, and Red’s friend Amy goes missing, Red has some serious choices to make.  

This is a horror story, but it is also a coming-of-age tale.   I love the relationship Red has with his sister, Maggie, and his parents.  Unlike other stories where parents are undeveloped, flat, unrealistic or unlikable, Red’s parents are very real and sympathetic characters.

Red’s conversation with his dad after he caught him smoking a joint in the garage was very touching.   There was an undercurrent of sadness, hurt, a sharing of secrets and quiet understanding.  

 

“Just because someone believes something doesn’t make it true, and all of our opinions are colored by things that have hurt us.  She’s not always right, about what she says or believes.  Neither am I.  Sometimes we think we have all the answers, but we don’t.  We’re lucky if we even have partial answers.”

Poor Red...if only life was so simple and people didn’t change and good friends were forever.   

The sweet ending warmed my heart and brought a little tear to my eye.  I know this is only the beginning and Red’s story is far from over.  I just hope that his inner strength and determination is enough to keep battling the dark forces that surround him. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this story and look forward to the rest of the series.

Also posted at Goodreads.

The Help

Kathryn Stockett
Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam
Reviewed by: Nancy
5 out of 5 stars

Summary

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. 

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women - mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends - view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't..

My Review

One of my co-workers, a guy who isn’t much of a reader, borrowed The Help from the library based on his English professor’s recommendation.  The guy just couldn’t stop talking about the story, so I decided to borrow the audio book.  It’s not very often I get to discuss books with people in real life and I wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip by.  Audio books are good for me.  I was so engrossed in the story and characters that I drove the speed limit on the highway and took the scenic route while running errands.   Sometimes I went out at lunch and needlessly drove in circles, or sat in the parking lot at work, waiting for a good place to stop.  

It is 1962 in Jackson, Mississippi.  Twenty-two year-old Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan has returned home after graduating college to find that Constantine, her family’s maid and the woman who raised her, has mysteriously disappeared.  Aibileen is a black maid in her 50’s who works for the Leefolt family and cares deeply for their daughter, Mae Mobley.  She is still grieving for her young son, who died in a workplace accident.  Minny is Aibileen’s closest friend and a wonderful cook, but her mouth keeps getting her into trouble and no one wants to hire her, until Aibileen helps secure her a position with Celia Foote, a young woman who is new in town and unaware of Minny’s reputation.  

The story jumps back and forth between the three characters, all of them providing their version of life in the South, the dinner parties, the fund-raising events, the social and racial boundaries, family relationships, friendships, working relationships, poverty, hardship, violence, and fear.  Skeeter’s mother wants her to find a nice man and get married, but she’s more interested in changing the world.  Her plans to anonymously compile a candid collection of stories about the maids’ jobs and the people they work for will risk her social standing in town, her friendships, and the lives of the maids who tell their stories. 

I loved this story!  The characters really came alive for me, and the author did a good job acknowledging actual historical events which lent richness and authenticity to the story.  I laughed and cried, felt despair and hope.  This is an important story that is a painful reminder of past cruelty and injustice.  It shows how far we have progressed and how much more we still have to accomplish.   

Also posted at Goodreads.

Introducing a horror trilogy the right way

BROTHER'S KEEPER
Glen R. Krisch
Stray King Publishing
$2.99 Kindle only, available now

Reviewed by Richard, 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Growing up, Jason and Marcus Grant were close as only brothers can be. As they reached adolescence, they started to drift apart, taking opposite paths into adulthood. Jason went to college before getting a job at for the local newspaper. Marcus chose a path littered with drugs, violence, and self-destruction.

Now adults, Jason has cut Marcus from his life and considers himself an only child.

Clean and sober, Marcus finds his true calling when he joins the Arkadium, a secret society dating back millennia. They plan on setting history back ten thousand years by unleashing a world-wide calamity that will destroy modern man's domination of the planet. As the Arkadium set their plan in motion, Marcus reaches out to his brother, wanting him by his side to record the new prehistoric era. Jason is forced to make a choice, join his brother in the time of humanity's descent, or die like so many others.

A 16,000-word novella that introduces the forthcoming Brother's Keeper trilogy of novels. Book 1 is due Winter 2012.

My Review: Jason and Marcus are dysfunctional brothers from a dysfunctional family. Mom's a cold fish, borderline sociopath; dad's a dishrag, cries easily, and clearly dissociates from his life with a cold woman whose affections he simply can't engage. Neither "parent" spares much time for their sons, and Jason, the elder and the family fixer/achiever, tries to make it all work...until the day Marcus basically kills himself with a heroin overdose the same time as Jason's full scholarship to Washington University is announced.

So Marcus sinks into a self-destructive spiral, Jason struggles with his emotional scars, and the story opens with Jason reconnecting with one of Marcus's few good efforts: His girlfriend Delaney, an ex-goth chick and cutie who convinces Jason to go with her in a search for a new, improved Marcus, who has found God.

Boy howdy, has he found God. God has told Marcus what to do, and he's setting out to do it: End the world, one dam at a time. Jason is unwillingly roped into Marcus's millennarian plans, with a secret and unorthodox role to play in the Brave New World that Marcus is calling into being. Whether he wants to play that role or not.

This novella is a very quick read, and it's far more assured and well-made than much of its competition. It's clearly only a small piece of a larger mythos, which the author's promotional materials suggest will be coming online soon.

The pace is brisk; the characters are quickly and efficiently limned; the plot is firmly and boldly erected.

This is a solid effort from a writer to watch. Get your Kindle edition and pass a pleasant hour in the company of Krisch's creation.


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