#bookbrews

[bookbrews-blog]

Review: Ruth Ware’s “In a Dark, Dark Wood” Misses the Forest for the Trees

Ruth Ware’s mystery/thriller may be interesting enough, particularly for mystery lovers unafraid of a rather cliche storyline - yet while the book kept me turning pages, it certainly had more than its fair share of missed opportunities.

Never fear: No spoilers here! 

In a Dark, Dark Wood takes place, for the most part, in that very setting. Nora (also called “Lee” by the childhood friends who refuse to honor her choice of adult moniker) receives a mysterious invitation to the “hen party” - that’s bachelorette party, for non-Brits - of her long lost friend Clare, who, it turns out, is marrying someone Nora was once involved with. The party takes place at the isolated family home of Clare’s new, and not entirely stable, bestie Flo, and includes a small cast of characters who may or may not have reason to wish Clare and/or Nora ill. 

From the moment the guests arrive, an atmosphere of dread pervades the scene, ratcheted up by Ware’s shifts from the past (the party) to the present (Nora in hospital, recovering from unexplained injuries). Someone is dead, we know almost from the novel’s beginning; the story unfolds through Nora’s memories, as we travel with her from London to the woods, slowly getting glimpses into her past with Clare while meeting the people Clare has surrounded herself with in the present. 

The cast of characters is, in fact, my second biggest complaint about the novel. Ware trots a host of interesting personalities across the stage, yet she fails to develop any of them - including the narrator, Nora - beyond the most superficial mystery stock ensemble. Frankly, Clare struck me as more intriguing than Nora, yet we barely get to know her; her present remains as shadowy as the past she shares with Nora, making her motivations less complex (as a good mystery novel should) than simply impossible to decipher. Likewise, two of the party guests, Tom and Melanie, feel like throwaway characters, whereas the would-be groom figures so loosely into the story that, for all that the plot hinges upon his involvement with Clare and Nora, he feels more like a ghost haunting the pages than a flesh-and-blood character whose choices contribute significantly to the final, tragic ending. 

Most disappointing of all, however, was the use Ware did - or, more precisely, did not - make of her spectacular setting: the woods. As the party begins, Ware devotes more than a few pages to describing the house’s isolation. The forest feels ominous, a place of silent, watchful horrors, yet its potential dread is never realized. At times, I felt as though Ware was undecided about what kind of story she was writing. The woods, like the odd middle-of-the-novel scene involving a Ouija board and a seance, seemed to suggest a supernatural element to the story - yet nothing was ever actually made of this. Furthermore, by halfway through the book the shifts from Nora’s memories of the party to her present in the hospital stopped feeling suspenseful and started feeling like a contrivance to delay what turns out to be an annoyingly obvious whodunnit revelation. In short, by the time the foreshadowed murder occurs, the book seems to have run out of actual plot and uses its time switches to keep the story going until the end.

Nevertheless, there is some beautiful writing in the book, and the story, if ultimately anticlimactic, is a pleasantly spooky read, good enough for passing a snowy afternoon with a cup of hot chocolate - and perhaps a plate of cookies. 

Book: In a Dark, Dark Wood

Author: Ruth Ware

Publisher: Scout Press 

Pages: 308

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Rating: 3 stars

[bookbrews-blog]

Cake Mix Cookies

My mom found this recipe in a magazine while living in California in 1968. They have been a staple of our family holidays ever since!

Ingredients

1 box yellow cake mix

1 1/2 c semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/2 c chunky peanut butter

3/4 c milk

Feel free to substitute dark chocolate, almond or cashew butter, and non-dairy milk, as needed. Gluten-free cake mixes and gluten-free chocolate will also work!

Recipe

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two ungreased baking sheets with parchment paper. (The parchment paper makes the cookies easier to remove with a silicone spatula!)

In large bowl, combine the cake mix and milk. Mix well. Add the peanut butter; stir until well blended. The batter will be thick. Add the chocolate chips last and mix throughout the batter.

Drop by rounded teaspoons onto cookie sheets. Bake for 10 minutes; cool 5 minutes before removing to a wooden or wire rack. Store in airtight container 5-7 days. 

Yield: Approximately 2 dozen cookies 

[bookbrews-blog]

Review: Chang-Rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea

Never fear - no spoilers here!

In the hands of a lesser writer, On Such a Full Sea (the title is cribbed from Shakespeare) would be your enjoyable-yet-forgettable sci fi quest-slash-road story: Teenage Fan’s boyfriend, Reg, vanishes from B-Mor, formerly Baltimore, a structured community barely clinging to a middle-class existence as its residents serve the needs of the ultra-wealthy Charter villagers; Fan leaves B-Mor in search of Reg, taking her into both the dangerous “counties” outside control of the directorate and the opulent, yet horrific, Charter villages. Along the way, Fan meets a host of characters who may not bring her closer to Reg but nevertheless bring us closer to understanding this society - and to seeing our own reflected in it. 

Lee employs the ingeniously novel device of a communal, almost Greek chorus-style narrator to relate Fan’s adventures. Simultaneously, the communal narrator connects Fan’s story to the civil unrest Reg’s disappearance, and Fan’s determined rescue attempt, create in B-Mor. Interspersed with Fan’s story is the unfolding of the history of B-Mor, a colony of New China; while Lee does not detour into the particulars of how China came to colonize the United States, it is clear that by the time the New China colonists (referred to in B-Mor as “the originals”) arrived on North American shores, the United States had largely ceased to exist. Outside structured communities like B-Mor and D-Troy (Detroit) or the superbly affluent Charter villages, there are no roads, no utilities, no police forces or governments; hence, we can easily understand why citizens of B-Mor or the Charter villagers would be willing to do almost anything to remain in their communities, supplied and secured - if also controlled - by the shadowy directorate, and we can marvel all the more at Fan’s decision to leave behind this security to find her Reg. 

In fact, I would say the novel is not so much “about” Fan or even Reg. Rather, through its communal narrator, the novel is able to be “about” a society in which only money can buy security. There is no social safety net in the Charters, as Fan learns when she meets Quig, a former Charter veterinarian now scraping out an odd and dangerous living in the counties; if a Charter loses their fortune, they are forced to make their own way in what essentially amounts to a wilderness. B-Mors, meanwhile, are on no less tenuous footing, although at first glance their society might seem less individualistic and competitive - for what becomes fascinatingly obvious is how this Communist-style society has been programmed to function according to the economic needs of the directorate, which obviously exists for the benefit of the wealthy Charters, so that any questioning of the status quo is dangerous. While Reg’s disappearance and Fan’s departure creates unsettling waves in B-Mor, Lee is also careful to contextualize the B-Mor residents’ responses within their growing frustration with tightened restrictions of access to healthcare; fewer opportunities for their children’s education; and higher prices for goods middle-class families feel they should be able to enjoy. It is not difficult to see our own allegedly “free” democratic society reflected in B-Mor: The B-Mors’ dependence on the system to sustain them, and their willingness to sacrifice liberty for (economic) security, surely speaks to much of middle-class America these days, where we might be momentarily outraged by the government’s treatment of our own citizens (like Fan and Reg) but ultimately, if the lights stay on and the water runs clean and the stores keep food on the shelves, we quickly go back to our usual lives once the furor passes. 

What made Lee’s novel so beautiful to me, besides his delightful prose and intricate characterizations, was its insight into our allegedly-free democratic society. By the end, I found myself asking not so much whether our world could ever be like Fan’s but instead whether we have any chance of not becoming that, if we continue to think so short-sightedly about our individual needs and comforts without considering what role we might be playing in a greater evil by remaining silent and secure. 

Book: On Such a Full Sea

Author: Chang-Rae Lee

Publisher: Riverhead Press

Pages: 352, hardcover

Genre: Sci fi/speculative fiction