A story told from the point of view of an unreliable narrator, with events seen through the veil of an apparently dissociated mind, makes for an interesting narrative, where we wonder how much we can trust what the narrator is telling us. Turns out, we can trust her more than we imagined, as long as…
This is the second in a series of five books, but can be read without having read the first novel. It involves a young boy who is the seventh son of a seventh son, and on his eleventh birthday discovers he has magical powers, being the last of the Old Ones, servants of the Light…
“The Father Christmas Letters” is a collection of letters and accompanying pictures written by JRR Tolkien for his children. Of course it is traditional in many countries for children to write letters to Father Christmas, but Tolkien’s children were lucky enough to receive letters back. (What a great dad Tolkien must have been, with so…
“The House of Usher” (1960) is one of Roger Corman’s series of films based on Edgar Allen Poe stories. Starring Vincent Price, it centres around the family of Usher, a brother and sister living in a rundown old house over a ‘tarn’ or mountain lake. A visitor comes to the house, who in the film…
Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House” is considered a classic of horror fiction. I will admit immediately that I didn’t find it particularly scary. The 1963 film adaptation, which kept fairly close to the book, may be partially responsible for that, in that I knew what was going to happen and how it would…
By the author of “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell” and “Piranesi”, these eight short stories are a combination of stories set in the world of “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell” as well as some fairy tales that readers will find familiar, though reworked in the author’s own style. It’s a highly entertaining group of stories…
“Piranesi” is a novel about a House, with no end, and no exit. The main character, referred to as Piranesi (though this is not his name) lives in the House, and is alone except for one other living person and thirteen dead ones. The story is told through a series of journal entries he makes.…
“Duncton Found” is the final volume in the Duncton Chronicles trilogy. A trilogy which started with a group of moles in one location (Duncton Wood) has expanded to become a Christian allegory about the fight between light and darkness, and the sacrifice of the ‘Stone Mole’ a Christ-like figure, in order to teach moles that…
The other night I watched the 2017 film of “Murder on the Orient Express”. This is not a review of that movie. It just got me thinking about an aspect of the story that younger me, reading the Agatha Christie novel and watching the earlier film, did not consider. And it’s a powerful one. There…
“The Sandman” is a series of comics written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by various artists. While the original comics began in the 1980s, in 2010 they were re-released in a series of ten volumes collecting the stories. “Preludes and Nocturnes” is the first of these, collecting “The Sandman” numbers 1-8. The main character is…
Eclectic Assemblage 