Review: ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, Seth Graham-Smith

When I first come across this novel as I hunted around the sales tables at Waterstones, the thing that struck me was how ridiculous the notion of the President of the United States during the Civil War, who was assassinated by a die-hard Confederate and actor, John Wilkes Booth, was a sort of Buffy vampire killer. I   knew that it couldn't be a serious piece of work. Indeed, the writer Seth Graham-Smith has also published other odd titles that people who frequent books shops will doubtless recognise: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The parody novel of Jane Austen's classic surpassed all expectations and became a surprise bestseller.

Yet if I have one major issue with this novel it is the question of whether I was supposed to take it seriously or as a joke. Considering the author's track record, the first assumption must be that it is a parody. The reason why it is so easy to be thrown one way or the other is because that the manner in which Graham-Smith presents this novel is very subtle. Posing it as an historical analysis of Abraham Lincoln's lost diaries, this is used to present the ridiculous story. Accompanied with mocked up photographs of Lincoln, posing with his "famed" ax with which he slayed the vampires, the book is not only written like a historian but has the feel of one also.

The problem isn't this but the fact that at times the author seems to find it hard to maintain the aura of a historian, and instead falls into the trap of simply talking through AL's diary entries rather than just 'picking out' sections and then summarising them in his own words. Moreover the manner in which the 'writer' comes across the 'lost diaries' is a rather cliche manner of a mysterious man passing them over. While this cover story only takes up about the first 20-pages, it still takes a long time to actually get into the book or become the amusing story that Vanity Fair boasts it to be.

Another issue I had was with the pace - it is often too quick, speeding through Lincoln's life like a runaway train. The depth of research that has gone into the novel is quite remarkable but at times it felt like reading a mixed cocktail of different types of writing: the diary, the historian and the novel writer. While this is not necessarily an issue when the three methods are employed effectively, I can't help but feel that more could have been done with this concept of Lincoln as a Vampire Hunter.

Overall this is undoubtedly a well-researched novel that has put a lot of attention into detail, especially in regards to the American Civil War. While the author's style of writing fails him now and then, this is a very easy novel to read and does not require much thinking about. It by no means keeps you wondering, not because it assumes the writer knows anything about Lincoln but because when the connection between vampires and the slave-owners of the American South is made, it feels too obvious a way to bring the book-sucking creatures into the Civil War environment. 

To people who might wish to avoid this novel because it is 'yet another vampire novel', they needn't fear as the vampire aspect at times does not really affect the overall presentations of Lincoln's life. The author finds a fair balance between portraying a human side to "Abe" as well as his eccentric vampire-hunter side, even if he doesn't quite manage to insert vampires comfortably into Lincoln's life. 

If I could say one thing about this book, it is that it is too short. I say this not because I enjoyed it so exceptionally that I wished I could read more, but because once I got to the end I felt it should have been longer. There is a lot that the author could have done and failed to do.

6/10

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Review: THE EMPRESS OF ROME, Matthew Dennison

People who are familiar with the Roman Empress Livia will likely think first and foremost of Robert Graves's I, Claudius, in which she systematically moves to annihilate all the troublesome members of the Imperial family who stand between her son Tiberius and the succession to her husband Augustus's new dynasty. Matthew Dennison's book attempts to absolve Livia, to prove that she did not murder her stepdaughter's husbands, Marcellus and Agrippa, and children, Gaius, Lucius and Postumus, and all manner of wicked deeds that the character contrives and relishes within the hallowed texts of Graves's classic.

Yet there are two major flaws in this history that let it down completely. First is its cherry-picking of the ancient historical accounts, only accepting the ones that favour Livia and coldly beating down the accounts of those that do not favour her - the most obvious being Tacitus, upon whose accounts that Graves based his Livia. Second, is that while the book is very readable and pleasant to read, it says very little and is based primarily on assumptions rather than facts. Most annoying of all, and this is a problem with many non-fiction books, is that the writer attempts to use pointless sources that bear no resemblance to their topic matter to justify their arguments.

It is true that Dennison is faced with the problem that his subject matter is one that we know very little about. Women were rarely written about unless they were famed for murder or incest (or indeed both),  as with the infamous Clodia (who is mentioned several times by Dennison). Trying to get to the bare-knuckled truth about a woman in Rome is an impossible task and, credit to Dennison, he does his best to piece together an impression of what Livia's life would have entailed. However it is his constant attempts to examine Livia's 'psychology' that undermines all this hard work as textually it is assumptions, not facts, that takes up the whole book.

Ultimately, the book would have done better to be much shorter. Most of it feels more like a PhD student's final thesis, using quotations such as Tennyson's poem, 'He chopped down the family tree...' which is the most references of a backlog of irrelevant passages that prelude each chapter. I found myself reading ahead to avoid them as they bore little importance to understanding his arguments about Livia.

As already stated in making his arguments about Livia, he pushes away any negative statements about her and basks in the positive - what little there actually is. While Livia may or may not have poisoned half her second husband's relatives, his arguments are once again let down by the fact that he only cherry-picks with Livia and not with the other imperial women, such as Octavia and Julia. He repeatedly remarks upon Octavia's blind hatred of mothers, 'especially Livia', and his presumed jealousy of her, despite it having no point in his argument past the death of Marcellus. Probably more unfair is his judgement on Julia: at one point he questions the absurd statement that she prostituted herself in the Roman forum (considering her renown for being fairly haughty), but later states the account by Seneca as if it were fact.

The overall narrative is jumbled, darting back and forth in time only to repeat itself. I was especially disappointed by how little time he spent on the later years of her life, in which Livia was emboiled in several scandals. These are mentioned, but include none of the assumptions or hypotheses that are said and repeated over and over in defense of Livia. They are just mentioned and forgotten, as if Dennison either lost interest in the book as he got to the end. Finally, concludes his argument in one line in the manner of, once again, a student's essay. When questioning whether there is any evidence that Livia was responsible for the crimes for which Graves's novel accesses her, he states 'the answer, insofar as trustworthy evidence survives, is no and no again.' This statement is uninspired, yes, but it is also utterly denying Tactius who, while not alive at the time of Livia, is closer to her era than Mr. Dennison is. Moreover he himself points out that one of Tacitus's sources was from the writings of Agrippina, Claudius's Empress. 'If we are to assume', to use the author's favourite phrase, that Tacitus got these stories of Livia from this (and there is nothing to say either way he didn't), then she was close enough to the time to know it to be fact.

Whether Livia killed these people or not, this book is a nice read despite its faults. It is not the work of a trustworthy historian but is a nicely researched account of Livia's life that makes the best it can with the little information it has. It is only a pity that Dennison felt to strongly about denying the work of Tacitus. After all, far from the vilified figure he believes her to be cast as a murderer, it does make her more interesting.

5/10

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Review: THE UNDERSTUDY, David Nicholls

Following the success of his 2010 novel One Day, which was then adapted into a (truly terrible) film starring Anne Hathaway (and her truly terrible fake British accent), a lot of David Nicholls’s previous novels have been re-published with the same types of front covers. One of these said novels is The Understudy, a comical look on the life of an unsuccessful actor still waiting for his “Big Break”. The Daily Mail called it, as the front cover boasts, ‘a laugh-out-loud’ novel and it is – to an extent.

Chronicling the misfortunes the ironically named Stephen C. McQueen, employing the C. so that there would be “no misunderstandings”, the book is an easy read while doesn’t require much of an attention span to get through. The characters have only a medium depth to them, but this is not really an issue considering that the aim is clearly to get laughs. Moreover, it is not the characters that a reader will pick up this book for, but the language, which is very cleverly employed. While there were some points that I thought would be better if it was done x, y and z way, David Nicholls ultimately knows best and ultimately holds the reader’s attention.

The plot is reasonably straightforward, if not a little predictable. Stephen is the anti-protagonist who spends most of his working days playing corpses in TV detective dramas or playing a squirrel in a children’s programme which enjoys more success aboard than at home. The most impressive gig that Stephen actually has is his job as the understudy to the lead in a five-star rated West End show about Lord Byron, unimaginatively named “Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know”. The title role itself is being played by a top-British actor named Josh Harper, a name which immediately inspires the image of a posh, mindless, coke-stuffing playboy actor whose success is truly owed to his looks rather than his talent. Much like Stephen, the readers are left to cringe at an imagined gushing interview done with this fictional actor in a Sunday paper by a stereotypically brainless female interviewer (It embarrasses me and most of woman kind I think to realise that some interviews with vaguely good looking actors do follow this stereotype), and roll their eyes at his selfish and self-centred actions throughout the novel.

Stephen is an unusual character in the sense that on the one hand he is easy to sympathise with, especially when he is duped several times by Josh into several compromising situations. The first of many comes when Stephenn, thinking (and hoping) that he might have his chance to go on stage, is pimped to the post at the last minute when Josh turns up at just as he's getting into costume. This leads to a humiliating misunderstanding when he “invites” Stephen to his showbiz party, only for Stephen realise that he is actually being hired to waiter!

It is at this party that Stephen meets to object of his affections, Josh’s unremarkable American wife Nora. Although in the blurb she is characterised as being ‘clever’ and ‘funny’,  the words ‘blunt’ and ‘boring’ were my own words to describe her. While she does have her moments in the novel, or rather a few funny quips, she is ultimately not a very inspiring character. If anything she is a little bit too much of a stereotypical bolshie American girl from New York. Despite Stephen’s obsession with her, it is difficult to really find any sympathy in their relationship or really maintain any interest with it.

I feel this might come from the fact that when it comes to Nora, Stephen ceases to be sympathetic. When he happens upon Josh having sex with the show’s ‘exciting new talent’ Maxine Cole in his dressing room, the big-headed sex god talks Stephen into keeping his mouth shut by promising him to pull a sickie for two nights so that he can play the lead role in the show and, presumably, get his big break. Naturally, Stephen agrees, and thus goes through the book continuously lying to Nora in a bid to keep the deal with Josh. He fools himself into thinking it’s all right while Josh repeatedly finds himself falling into every woman who proves herself willing to let him in, and there are apparently plenty. Much like a bigoted husband trying to justify his philandering to his angry wife, Josh’s defence is that he has a ‘sickness’ – that he is a sex addict. This is bollocks, of course, and Stephen knows it. Yet he accepts it. Josh, needless to say, is not a very exciting or even compelling antagonist.

The trouble is that it is hard to really ‘feel’ for Stephen’s relationship with Nora and it’s hard to tell whether it’s because of him, her or both of them. It might even be because the reader agrees with Nora that acting is a ‘pointless’ job, not least because Stephen’s ex-wife and daughter feel this way. Of all the few females who appear in this novel, it is the ex-wife Alison who speaks the most sense. At one point when confronting her ex about his delusions about his career, about waiting for his break, she makes her thoughts plainly and brutally:

They sat in silence for a moment, looking at each other, eyes narrowed.

            ‘You don’t think I’m any good, do you?’ said Stephen, finally.

            ‘No.’

            ‘Well, that’s the impression you give, Alison. I mean, if you do think I’m good then why don’t you support me?’

            ‘Hold on, Stephen, sorry, but I don’t think you understood me. What I meant was – no, I don’t think you’re any good.’

            A moment passed.

            ‘You don’t?’

            ‘No. No, I don’t.’

            Again, a moment.

            ‘Since when?’

            Alison closed her eyes. ‘Never […] Sorry.’ (pp. 306-7)

All through the novel, the reader is indeed treated to the true extent of Stephen’s delusions and dreams about his career. Early on in the novel, Nicholls treats us to what he calls Stephen’s ‘Nearly CV’, the CV he would have had had he actually won the countless auditions he went to and didn’t get. His lack of success and foolish faith that his hour will come is not only to the distress of Alison but his eight-year-old daughter, Sophie, who feels frequently humiliated by her father’s antics. Admittedly, Sophie is something of a pretentious and annoying little brat, influenced by her equally pretentious stepfather Colin, who constantly undermines Stephen. When talking about Sophie’s Christmas present of a piano, Colin suggests that Stephen might want to contribute something, ‘the piano stool or some sheet-music or something.’ Stephen does deserve to be undermined in some ways, but the characters who do it to him are usually very annoying so you still side with him. In regards to Sophie, while she can be dismissed as a bit of a brat her feelings are understandable, as any girl who has ever had a waste-of-space for a father would tell you.

Ultimately the end of The Understudy is somewhat satisfying although the conclusion is predictable. You will put the book down knowing that Stephen has done right the thing and, more importantly, learned his lesson. I definitely would recommend it for a quick read, like a long train-ride or to read during lunch breaks. While not the most compelling of novels, it isn’t supposed to be. It is a just a piece of harmless fun where the baddies get what they deserve and the goodies end up with a reasonable, satisfying lot. While we don’t know whether Stephen will be getting his happy ending, and too be honest we don't really care.


6/10


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Old Review: HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE, Diana Wynne Jones

Like a dream it fills you up until you're full of joy...

Diana Wynne Jones is renowned for being "hotter than Potter" and her books are sold all over the world. They are popular and loved by each generation they touch. Diana Wynne Jones is famous for the award winning THE CHRESTOMANCI SERIES, and other works such as DARK LORD OF DERKHOLM. Yet out of all of her novels there is one novel which is without a doubt the most popular, treasured and loved of them all - HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE. Most people who have read it will confirm that it is a charming tale of magic, love, humour and wonder. It touches the fibres of your heart so greatly that the sound of the character's names "Sophie", "Howl" and "Calcifer" bring a smile to your face. Although each character is faulted they are wonderfully painted so that you love them as if they were real people.

The story follows the tale of Sophie Hatter, the eldest of three sisters, who unfortunately lives in a world where fairytale traits are the laws of physics. For that reason, despite being attractive, intelligent and talented, the eldest child is destined to come to nothing. While her younger sisters go out doing their own thing, Sophie is forced to make hats in their late father's hat shop. However, it turns out that she has a remarkable talent with magic as well as a needle as she speaks life into the hats, giving them personalities so that good things will come to the wearer of the hat. This is how Sophie attracts unwanted attention from the jealous Witch of the Waste, thinking her a rival witch, and turns her into an old woman to punish her. Ashamed of her appearance, Sophie decides to seek help from the infamous Wizard Howl whose moving castle roams the hill above Sophie's home, and is known throughout Market Chipping as a wicked young man who sucks the souls out of young girls and feasts on their hearts.

Feeling unthreatened as an old woman, Sophie ventures inside and instead of finding Howl, she finds his fire demon Calcifer who convinces her to make a bargain with him - he'll lift the spell on her if she breaks the contract between Howl and himself. Sophie soon discovers that far from being evil and cruel, the Wizard Howl is a cowardly heartbreaker who takes pleasure in courting girls but dumping them before it turns serious. Also cursed by the Witch, Howl cannot allow himself to fall in love otherwise he must return to the Witch and give her his heart. In order to save Howl, Calcifer, and her own youth, Sophie has to hurry to find out how to free Calcifer and Howl from their contract before the Witch catches up with them.

A beautifully written tale of a cursed young girl and her cowardly sweetheart, HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE is a light and hysterical novel with a heroine to love; an anti-hero to adore, and a villain to hate and fear, and yet pity. As the novel goes on and the love between Howl and Sophie grows, you heart dances with excitement and joy which rises up and up until the last chapter. The feeling of your heart beat is one of the most important factors of the novel; don't take it for granted. I highly recommend this book to anyone. It is a book you will keep by your bedside forever, re-read every year or so, and cherish forever. I also recommend the animated film by Hayao Miyazaki of the same name. Both are truly stunning works of art.

Old Review: Jack the Ripper Unmasked, by William Beadle

I wrote this review a few years ago when this book was still published, and after having giggled over it with my mother last weekend, I thought I'd post it here again...

‘Jack’ is one of the great mysteries of crime. Ever since his career came to an abrupt end in November 1888 people have attempted to put a name to the infamous Ripper. Many have devoted time to writing and proposing their theories on the case and the suspects have become something of celebrities from the outlandish Royal conspiracy revolving around William Gull to the simplistic believers in no. 1 suspect M. J. Druitt, commonly referred to by the Ripper world as the “Druittists”. One thing for certain: William Bury will not be garnishing enough support to start the "Buryists" any time soon. While he is a reasonable suspect (albeit nothing to get excited about) this book is one of the most intolerable I have ever come across in the Ripper World.

JACK THE RIPPER UNMAKED is a typical example of Ripperology gone wrong. In an attempt to appear more scientific psychological terms are thrown at you left, right and centre in the first chapter. Therefore you are advised to read up on your criminal psychology before venturing into this book as you will find yourself bombarded with crime information completely unrelated to ‘Jack’. For the sake of your sanity here is what the author does: he uses the ‘Top-down’ approach to crime investigation to draw (very poor) assumptions about Bury’s link to the crime. He quotes several 20th century examples of crime in order to back his argument that ‘Jack’ was in fact ‘Billy’. This fell flat as I can quote several studies that show ‘Top-down' is not always a reliable form of deducing a criminal, and if this book can be scrutinised with A-level Psychology, I hate to think what real Criminologists would make of it!

While respect should be given to the time and research put into this book (four years) by William Beadle, it becomes clear quickly that all he did after four years was write a very muddled book. He has the nerve to consistently state that Bury (Not Jack or ‘The Ripper’) murdered the main five victims as well as other (deservingly) less probable Ripper victims and expects us to agree with him from the off. It is closely followed by the author's assumption that the ‘tragic’ Bury killed the prostitutes because their names were the same as his mother and sister.

Yes, because of their names.

It is all tied together with a repetitively anal and an unfounded psychoanalysis of Bury that would make Sigmund Freud blush. The author even attempts to tie Bury into the Ripper Letters (Including those that are obviously forgeries) and continues to do so despite the fact that a handwriting expert he himself asked said Bury’s writing did not match those of the letters! You get the feeling that the author distorts the facts slightly to better to his version of events. Whether this was his intention or not, who knows?

Throughout the book you are overrun with irrelevant 20th century cases that have no real parallel to the Ripper and frequent statements that ‘Bury did this...’ and ‘Bury did that...’ that by the time the important bit comes together, you no longer know what is fact and what is guesswork. Furthermore when you take time to analyse the sources used by Mr Beadle to ‘clarify’ the more convincing points he makes, you discover they from are rags such THE WEEKLY NEWS, written nearly forty years after the murder of Mary Kelly.

A majority of the ‘terrible childhood' he describes on the blurb is made up and based on unfounded assumption on his part about Bury’s early mental state. He frequently contradicts himself and glosses over any evidence contradicting him rather than produce a reasonable argument to it. To say that the book was disappointing is an understatement. It should not be tossed anyway lightly but thrown with tremendous force.

It frequently happens that when someone becomes in depth with the Ripper case, they latch on to a suspect and fight tooth and claw for them. In extreme cases, as fellow followers will agree, (Need I remind us all of Patricia Cornwall's JACK THE RIPPER: CASE CLOSED?) the writer becomes so obsessed with their idea that they start talking about their suspect as if he truly was the Ripper. This book is an example of that. He waits until the very last chapter to make his point by which time you are completely lost in a sea of head-spinning statements, most of which are speculation wrongly presented as fact. He lost me in first chapter and in the case of my mother who also read the book, the first paragraph.

The most important fact that ties Bury to the Ripper killings is that he murdered his wife in a slightly similar way to the earlier Ripper killings. It would seem more logical to start with that key point but no, Beadle insists on taking us on a fantasy background he had made up for William Beadle and delusional journey of circumstantial evidence before he even details the murder of Ellen, and even that misleading.

All things considered the book falls as flat as most Ripper books that have ‘UNMASKED’ in the title. The Ripper is certainly not ‘unmasked’ when he's armed with no more evidence than a half-decent suspect and over-the-top assumptions about Bury’s state of mind. The conclusions drawn certainly do not set the world alight nor do all of them make sense. Whether Bury manages to crawl into Donald Rumbelow's THE COMPLETE JACK THE RIPPER if he comes to revise it again in five years or so, who knows? But he'll have no trouble picking holes in the case if he does.

For a more comprehensive and readable book about William Bury I highly recommend Euan Macpherson’s THE TRIAL OF JACK THE RIPPER: THE CASE OF WILLIAM BURY. Macpherson manages to present Bury’s case in a much more organised (and honest) manner than Beadle does although I personally remain unconvinced by either.

My final message is to the author: I recommend that you find a good editor because the book is also not only confusing but riddled with several grammar mistakes. One or two can be forgiven but in the end my mother (who is a teacher) went through with a pencil, marking the mistakes. Overall it has all the sophistication of a first year A-level student's induction essay - and it's certainly not an A-grade.