#catherine helstone

[toby-du-coeur]

Morality, Redemption & Mirrors in 'Under the Pendulum Sun'

My stream of consciousness after I read this book {it'll make more sense if you've read it, which i 1000% recommend with the caveat of the tw}

full spoilers

tw: [consensual between adults] incest

From an Amazon review - "Under the Pendulum Sun is the story of sinners, pressed into a world where maybe those sins don't count the same way, among creatures who may or may not even have souls to save". I'm trying to pick apart the book's ambiguous ending.... It seems like in the world of the story, whatever is between the Helstones is genuine love, is consensual, and is their truest true nature {as revealed by the trickery of the fae, that's kind of the whole point}. And whether or not they choose to live together as a couple.... their love now is revealed as what it is; it can't be taken back.

Now given the foundational texts of THIS world {with Adam rejecting his equal 'sibling' Lilith for an even more incest-y Eve & this causing the outcasting of the fae}, the Helstones' love should be good as Mab says, and should be a redemptive recapitulation of that original act - especially given that they are called to fairyland/hell. By lies & trickery Mab has given them the truth of love, rather than their living a false life in the human world. They in their forbidden nature & desires belong more to the fae order, so that it is the fae who have first redeemed them - a humility that makes them in turn the perfect missionaries. {It won't be this prideful holier-than-thou colonialism. With the translation of the Enochian book that places the fae within Christianity, the Helstones can offer the fae's own story back to them - just as the fae have offered Cathy & Laon's own hearts to them. It is an equal exchange of gifts.}

From the perspective of the fae, they've given these humans the redemptive gift of a new Eden. To the humans, they've committed the worst sin. And both parties agree that it is this action that makes the Helstones suited to bring the fae into Christianity. It is both sin and redemption, like Christ dying accursed {except this 'cross' is about the love of two rather than the death of one, which *chef's kiss*}. Because this is the harrowing of a new hell, and to bring in the margins always requires scandalising, challenging and changing the ways of the centre.

The Helstones are juxtaposed with the Roches. The Roches were a clean, straight cishet Christian couple on the outside - and yet the spirit of their love was about power, abuse, secrets & [corrupting] knowledge. He lured her to Arcadia, used her and drove her mad, so she killed him. They failed the test of Arcadia. {p.s. this was patently the husband's fault, what a dick} Cath & Laon are a sinful and scandalous kind of couple on the outside, yet their love is pure and honest so that they pass the test of Arcadia. The Roches saw the mirror and tore each other apart; Cathy and Leon see the mirror and love.

[mybeingthere]

A few more paintings by Catherine Hyde (British, b. Dartford, Kent, England, based Helston, Cornwall, England), Acrylic on Canvas.https://catherinehyde.co.uk/

[venusinmyrrh]

mid-year (ish) reading roundup

I never got how people could read 52 books in 52 weeks, but then I got a library card and downloaded the Libby app, and now holy shit I've read 52 books by August. anyway I borrowed this questionnaire from @wormwoodandhoney!

best book you’ve read so far in 2023? Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History by Richard Thompson Ford. this is exactly the kind of academic book on fashion that I've been dying for. I want ten more of these and to kiss him on the mouth.

best sequel you’ve read so far in 2023? I don't usually read series, but I made an exception for Hannah Whitten's For the Wolf, and I'm so glad I did. it took me a while to fall in love with this fantasy twist on Red Riding Hood, but once I did, I fell hard, and I'm planning on reading the sequel For the Throne once it's finally released.

new release you haven’t read yet, but want to: I don't really keep up with releases, but the new releases I've enjoyed most recently are The Guest by Emma Cline, about a low-level con woman drifting through the New York upper class, and Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, about a sound editor in 1990s Mexico who gets caught up in an occultist's plot dating back to old Hollywood.

most anticipated release for the second half of the year: this is cheating because it's coming out in February, but the teasers for Saint Gibson's An Education in Malice already have me drooling.

biggest surprise: I picked Art and Madness: A Memoir of Lust Without Reason by Anne Roiphe at random off a prop bookshelf backstage, and immediately experienced that wonderful shock you get when meet a stranger who understands you perfectly.

favorite new author (debut or new to you): Jeannette Ng, whose Victorian gothic fantasy romance Under the Pendulum Sun I devoured in less than 24 hours.

newest favorite character: a tie between Catherine Helstone (Under the Pendulum Sun) and Noemí Taboada (Mexican Gothic).

book that made you cry: The Unexpurgated Beaton. these are British photographer, designer, and former Bright Young Thing Cecil Beaton's unedited diaries from the last ten years of his life, and I knew this going in, but still, somehow, it snuck up on me that he dies in the end.

book that made you happy: Maurice by E.M. Forster! what a relief, what a joy, to know that tales of queer love could have happy endings, even in 1914.

most beautiful book you’ve bought so far this year (or received): that honor would have to go to Kit Mayquist's modern gothic novel Tripping Arcadia!

what books do you need to read by the end of the year? Gods of Jade and Shadow (Silvia Moreno-Garcia), Save Me the Waltz (Zelda Fitzgerald), The Language of Fashion (Roland Barthes), and Other People's Shoes: Thoughts on Acting (Harriet Walter)

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 5.8

Holidays

Ace Day of Visibility Day

Adam Lambert Day (San Diego)

Brian May Day (UK)

Children’s Day (Maldives)

A Day Without Child Care

A Day Without Socks

Emancipation Day (Columbus, Mississippi)

Fête de I'iris (Brussels, Belgium)

Free Trade Day

Furry Dance (a.k.a. The Flora; Helston, Cornwall, UK)

Infant Mortality Awareness Day

International Blue Iguana Day

International Thalassemia Day

International Viking Day

Iris Day

Jamestown Day

Let It Be Day

Liberation Day (Czech Republic, Norway, Slovakia)

Miguel Hidalgo Day (Mexico)

National Amyloidosis Day (Australia)

National Archery Day

National Catahoula Day

National Coral Reef Day (Indonesia)

National Dakota Day

National Maria Day

National Meeting Planners Appreciation Day

National Nova Day

National Outdoor Intercourse Day

National Report Government Contractor Fraud Day

National Student Nurses Day

National Women’s Checkup Day

No Socks Day

Parents’ Day (Korea)

Provider Appreciation Day

Reward Yourself Day

Time of Remembrance and Reconciliation for Those Who Lost Their Lives During the Second World War Day (UN)

Truman Day (Missouri)

Veterans Day (Norway)

Victory in Europe Day (a.k.a. V-E Day)

Westminster Dog Show Anniversary Day

World Donkey Day

World Ovarian Cancer Day

World Red Cross & Red Crescent Day

World Smallpox Eradication Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

Coca-Cola Day (a.k.a. Have a Coke Day)

Empanada Day

Give Someone a Cupcake Day

National Coconut Cream Pie Day

National Have a Coke Day

2nd Monday in May

American Craft Beer Week begins [2nd Monday; thru 16th]

Child Welfare Professionals Recognition Day (Florida) [2nd Monday]

World Melanoma Day [2nd Monday]

Feast Days

Amato Ronconi (Christian; Saint)

Apparition of Saint Michael (Christian; Saint)

Arsenius the Great (Christian; Saint)

Back Scratching Day (Pastafarian)

Buddha Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Camillus (Positivist; Saint)

Catherine of St. Augustine (Christian; Saint)

Chivington Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

The Crumb (Muppetism)

Delousing Day (Church of the SubGenius)

Desideratus (Christian; Saint)

The Festival of Mens (Ancient Roman Goddess of Mind and Consciousness)

Fulla’s Blot (Pagan)

The Furry Dance (a.k.a. The Flora; Cornwall, UK)

Gybrian of Ireland (Christian; Saint)

Ida of Nivelles (Christian; Saint)

Julian of Norwich (Anglican, Lutheran)

Magdalene of Canossa (Christian; Saint)

Mates Day (Pastafarian)

Odrian of Waterford (Christian; Saint)

Our Lady of Luján (Christian; Saint)

Peter of Tarentaise (Christian; Saint)

Teresa Demjanovich (Ruthenian Catholic Church)

Wiro of Ireland (Christian; Saint)

White Lotus Day (Theosophy)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Sakimake (先負 Japan) [Bad luck in the morning, good luck in the afternoon.]

Unglückstage (Unlucky Day; Pennsylvania Dutch) [17 of 30]

Premieres

About a Boy (Film; 2002)

Buccaneer Bunny (WB LT Cartoon; 1948)

Captains and the Kings, by Taylor Caldwell (Novel; 1972)

Deep Impact (Film; 1998)

Dr. Jerkyl’s Hide (WB LT Cartoon; 1954)

Dr. No (US Film; 1963) [James Bond #1]

Down to Earth or The Bullwinkle Bounce (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 47; 1960)

Dracula (Film; 1958)

Endless Love, recorded by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross (Song; 1981)

Fall Story or Adrift in the Lift (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 48; 1960)

A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney (Essay Collection; 1982)

Frolicking Fish (Disney Cartoon; 1930)

Grace and Frankie (TV Series; 2015)

Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales (Book; 1835)

Hot Pursuit (Film; 2015)

The Lady of the Lake, by Sir Walter Scott (Poem; 1810)

Let It Be, by The Beatles (Album; 1970)

The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe (Novel; 1794)

The School for Scandal, by Richard Brinkley Sheridan (Play; 1777)

Solar Opposites (Animated TV Series; 2020)

The Stand (TV Mini-Series; 1994)

Star Trek (Film; 2009)

Three Imaginary Boys (a.k.a. Boys Don’t Cry), by The Cure (Album; 1979)

Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’, by Michael Jackson (Song; 1983)

Today’s Name Days

Ida, Klara, Ulla, Ulrike (Austria)

Arsen, Ida, Marija (Croatia)

Státní svátek (Czech Republic)

Stanislaus (Denmark)

Timmo, Timmu, Timo (Estonia)

Heino (Finland)

Désiré (France)

Ida, Klara, Ulla, Ulrike (Germany)

Arsenios, Melios, Theologos (Greece)

Mihály (Hungary)

Desiderato, Egli, Geronzio, Maria, Michele, Rosario, Vittore (Italy)

Aiga, Ceronis, Inita, Staņislavs, Stefanija (Latvia)

Audrius, Džiugas, Mykolas (Lithuania)

Åge, Åke (Norway)

Dezyderia, Ilza, Marek, Michał, Piotr, Stanisław (Poland)

Ioan (România)

Ingrida (Slovakia)

Eladio, Heladio, Luján, Pedro, Víctor (Spain)

Åke (Sweden)

Acacia, Acacio, Acacius, Ace, Hal, Harold, Harriet, Harris, Harrison, Harry, Hattie (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 128 of 2024; 237 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 1 of week 19 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Saille (Willow) [Day 23 of 28]

Chinese: Month 3 (Bing-Chen), Day 19 (Bing-Yin)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 17 Iyar 5783

Islamic: 17 Shawwal 1444

J Cal: 7 Bīja; Sevenday [7 of 30]

Julian: 25 April 2023

Moon: 86%: Waning Gibbous

Positivist: 15 Caesar (5th Month) [Junius Brutus]

Runic Half Month: Lagu (Flowing Water) [Day 14 of 15]

Season: Spring (Day 50 of 90)

Zodiac: Taurus (Day 19 of 30)

[brookston]

Holidays 5.8

Holidays

Ace Day of Visibility Day

Adam Lambert Day (San Diego)

Brian May Day (UK)

Children’s Day (Maldives)

Colorism Awareness Day

Crow Day

A Day Without Child Care

A Day Without Socks

Dupuytren’s Disease Day (UK)

Emancipation Day (Columbus, Mississippi)

Fête de I'iris (Brussels, Belgium)

508 Day

Free Trade Day

Furry Dance Day (a.k.a. The Flora; Helston, Cornwall, UK)

Hayek Day

Infant Mortality Awareness Day

International Blue Iguana Day

International Thalassemia Day

International Viking Day

Iris Day

Jamestown Day

Katniss Everdeen Day (Hunger Games)

Let It Be Day

Liberation Day (Czech Republic, Norway, Slovakia)

Miguel Hidalgo Day (Mexico)

Mississippi River Day

National Amyloidosis Day (Australia)

National Archery Day

National Catahoula Day

National Coral Reef Day (Indonesia)

National Dakota Day

National Maria Day

National Meeting Planners Appreciation Day

National Nova Day

National Outdoor Intercourse Day

National Report Government Contractor Fraud Day

National Student Nurses Day

National Women’s Checkup Day

No Socks Day

Occupational Safety & Health Professional Day

Orache Day (French Republic)

Parents’ Day (Korea)

Provider Appreciation Day

Radio Day (Philippines)

Reward Yourself Day

Truman Day (Missouri)

Veterans Day (Norway)

Victory in Europe Day (a.k.a. V-E Day)

Westminster Dog Show Anniversary Day

Women’s Historic Night (Norway)

World Donkey Day

World Orienteering Day

World Ovarian Cancer Day

World Red Cross & Red Crescent Day

World Smallpox Eradication Day

World Smile Day

Yerkrapah Day (Armenia)

Food & Drink Celebrations

Coca-Cola Day (a.k.a. Have a Coke Day)

Empanada Day

Give Someone a Cupcake Day

National Coconut Cream Pie Day

National Have a Coke Day

Independence & Related Days

Breve Empire (Declared; 2021) [unrecognized]

British Monarchy (Restored after the Commonwealth; 1660)

Impy (Declared; 2020) [unrecognized]

Qaflana (Declared; 2019) [unrecognized]

2nd Wednesday in May

Bike to School Day [Wednesday of 1st Full Week]

CBDC Day (Canada) [2nd Wednesday]

Donate a Day's Wages to Charity Day [2nd Wednesday]

Emergency Medical Services for Children Day [Wednesday of 1st Full Week]

National Day for Staff Networks (UK) [2nd Wednesday]

National Nightshift/Third Shift Worker Day [2nd Wednesday]

National Numeracy Day (UK) [Wednesday of 2nd Full Week]

National Receptionists’ Day [2nd Wednesday]

National Root Canal Appreciation Day [2nd Wednesday]

National School Nurse Day [Wednesday of 1st Full Week]

World Facilities Management Day [Wednesday of 2nd Full Week]

World FM Day [Wednesday of 2nd Full Week]

Weekly Holidays beginning May 8 (1st Full Week)

National Women’s Health Week (thru 5.14)

Time of Remembrance and Reconciliation for Those Who Lost Their Lives During the Second World War Day (UN) [thru 5.9]

Festivals Beginning May 8, 2024

Furry Dance (Flora Day; Helston, UK)

Heart’s Delight Wine Tasting (Washington, DC) [thru 5.11]

Nigeria International Book Fair (Lagos, Nigeria) [thru 5.10]

Tehran International Book Fair (Tehran, Iran) [thru 5.18]

Feast Days

Acacius (Christian; Martyr)

Agathius (Christian; Saint)

Alphonse Legros (Artology)

Amato Ronconi (Christian; Saint)

Apparition of Saint Michael (Christian; Saint)

Arsenius the Great (Christian; Saint)

Bacciccio (Artology)

Back Scratching Day (Pastafarian)

Benedict II, pope (Christian; Saint)

Bertalan Székely (Artology)

Boniface IV, Pope (Christian; Saint)

Buddha Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Camillus (Positivist; Saint)

Catherine of St. Augustine (Christian; Saint)

Chivington Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

The Crumb (Muppetism)

Delousing Day (Church of the SubGenius)

Desideratus (Christian; Saint)

Dog-Prodding (Gremlins; Shamanism)

Feast of the Apparition of St. Michael the Archangel (Christian; Saint)

The Festival of Mens (Ancient Roman Goddess of Mind and Consciousness)

Forest Day (Starza Pagan Book of Days)

Fulla’s Blot (Pagan)

The Furry Dance (a.k.a. The Flora; Cornwall, UK)

Gibrian (Christian; Saint)

Gybrian of Ireland (Christian; Saint)

Ida of Nivelles (Christian; Saint)

Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Mœbius; Artology)

Julian of Norwich (Anglican, Lutheran)

Ludvig Karsten (Artology)

Magdalene of Canossa (Christian; Saint)

Mates Day (Pastafarian)

Nathaniel Dance-Holland (Artology)

Odrian of Waterford (Christian; Saint)

Our Lady of Luján (Christian; Saint)

Peter of Tarentaise (Christian; Saint)

Plechelm and Otger (Christian; Saints)

Teresa Demjanovich (Ruthenian Catholic Church)

Thomas Pynchon (Writerism)

Victor Maurus (Christian; Martyr)

Wiro of Ireland (Christian; Saint)

White Lotus Day (Theosophy)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Butsumetsu (仏滅 Japan) [Unlucky all day.]

Unglückstage (Unlucky Day; Pennsylvania Dutch) [17 of 30]

Premieres

About a Boy (Film; 2002)

The Blue Dahlia (Film; 1946)

Buccaneer Bunny (WB LT Cartoon; 1948)

Captains and the Kings, by Taylor Caldwell (Novel; 1972)

Clash and Carry (Chilly Willy Cartoon; 1961)

Cover Her Face, by P.D. James (Novel; 1962) [Adam Dalgliesh #1]

Deep Impact (Film; 1998)

Dennis the Menace in Mayday for Mother (DePatie-Freleng Animated TV Special; 1981)

Dr. Jerkyl’s Hide (WB LT Cartoon; 1954)

Dr. No (US Film; 1963) [James Bond #1]

Down to Earth or The Bullwinkle Bounce (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 47; 1960)

Dracula (Film; 1958)

The Driver’s Seat, by Muriel Spark (Novella; 1970)

Elbow Room (America Rock Cartoon; Schoolhouse Rock; 1976)

Endless Love, recorded by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross (Song; 1981)

Fall Story or Adrift in the Lift (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 48; 1960)

A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney (Essay Collection; 1982)

Frolicking Fish (Disney Cartoon; 1930)

The Good Shepherd, by C.S. Forester (Novel; 1955)

Grace and Frankie (TV Series; 2015)

Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales (Book; 1835)

Hot Pursuit (Film; 2015)

Huey’s Father’s Day (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1959)

The Lady of the Lake, by Sir Walter Scott (Poem; 1810)

Let It Be, by The Beatles (Album; 1970)

The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe (Novel; 1794)

Olive Oyl and Water Don’t Mix (Fleischer Popeye Cartoon; 1942)

Pacific 231, by Arthur Honegger (Orchestral Work; 1924)

Ragtime, by E.L. Doctorow (Novel; 1975)

Red Riding Hood (MGM Cartoon; 1943)

The School for Scandal, by Richard Brinkley Sheridan (Play; 1777)

Solar Opposites (Animated TV Series; 2020)

The Stand (TV Mini-Series; 1994)

Star Trek (Film; 2009)

Technocracked (Ub Iwerks Cartoon; 1933)

Three Imaginary Boys (a.k.a. Boys Don’t Cry), by The Cure (Album; 1979)

Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’, by Michael Jackson (Song; 1983)

War as I Knew It, by George S. Patton Jr. (Memoir; 1947)

Woody’s Clip Joint (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1964)

Today’s Name Days

Ida, Klara, Ulla, Ulrike (Austria)

Arsen, Ida, Marija (Croatia)

Státní svátek (Czech Republic)

Stanislaus (Denmark)

Timmo, Timmu, Timo (Estonia)

Heino (Finland)

Désiré (France)

Ida, Klara, Ulla, Ulrike (Germany)

Arsenios, Melios, Theologos (Greece)

Mihály (Hungary)

Desiderato, Egli, Geronzio, Maria, Michele, Rosario, Vittore (Italy)

Aiga, Ceronis, Inita, Staņislavs, Stefanija (Latvia)

Audrius, Džiugas, Mykolas (Lithuania)

Åge, Åke (Norway)

Dezyderia, Ilza, Marek, Michał, Piotr, Stanisław (Poland)

Ioan (România)

Ingrida (Slovakia)

Eladio, Heladio, Luján, Pedro, Víctor (Spain)

Åke (Sweden)

Acacia, Acacio, Acacius, Ace, Hal, Harold, Harriet, Harris, Harrison, Harry, Hattie (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 129 of 2024; 237 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 3 of week 19 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Saille (Willow) [Day 25 of 28]

Chinese: Month 4 (Ji-Si), Day 1 (Ren-Shen)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025) [Wu-Chen]

Hebrew: 30 Nisan 5784

Islamic: 29 Shawwal 1445

J Cal: 9 Magenta; Twosday [9 of 30]

Julian: 25 April 2024

Moon: 1%: Waxing Crescent

Positivist: 17 Caesar (5th Month) [Regulus]

Runic Half Month: Lagu (Flowing Water) [Day 14 of 15]

Season: Spring (Day 51 of 92)

Week: 2nd Week of May

Zodiac: Taurus (Day 19 of 31)

Calendar Changes

梅月 [Méiyuè] (Chinese Lunisolar Calendar) [Month 4 of 12] (Plum Month) [Earthly Branch: Snake Month] (Sìyuè; Fourth Month)

[octavianacidicbreastmilk]

to get your mind off from bad fantasy titles can you recommend any good ones?

ooohh 👀👀 ty!!! so, a big premise is that im not really sure if all of this is stricly fantasy since most of these are a result of hybrid genres. plus, afaik these are all adult books, so no ya. with that said:

Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente (Fantasy Retelling of Russian Folklore): its a retelling based on russian folklore where the protagonist, Marya Morevna navigates Russia in the early 1900s and onwards (so the revolution and wwii) + her role as the intended wife for Koschei the Deathless. I love this book a lot: the relationship between Marya and Koschei is wonderfully toxic + i love the prose + and I do think it treats the folklore involved in a way thats surprisingly loving and careful

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Historical Fantasy set in Mexico, late 1920s); Casiopea Tun mistakenly restores to a semblance of life the Mayan Death God Hun-Kamé, thus binding her life to his, as they go on a quest to regain his missing body parts his brother had scattered through the earth. Its a very death and the maiden story + the setting of mexico during the jazz age is really fun + it deals a lot with Mayan mythology and theres a wonderfully complicated and antagonitic relationship between brothers who are also gods

Orfeia by Joanne M. Harris; a mother goes on a quest for her missing daughter to restore her to life after she was stolen away by the fae

Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeanette Ng (Dark Fantasy + Historical Fantasy set in the Victorian Era); Catherine Helstone travels to Arcadia in search of her brother Laon, a missionary who disappeared while trying to convert the fae to Christianity. this one had such an extensive worldbuilding and descriptive prose; im not spoiling anything but the way they connected chrstianity and the fae made me scream. i do wanna warn ppl that theres a lot of theological discussions involved, if that is a deal breaker

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Gothic Fantasy; set in Mexico); Noemí Taboada's cousin Catalina has written to her, begging Noemí's help, as she firmly believes that her English husband, Virgil Doyle, intends to murder her. Suspecting that Virgil may also be after Catalina's money, Noemí's father, Leocadio, sends her to the Doyle home, High Place, which is located in the mountains outside of a small town named El Triunfo

Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (Science Fantasy); Set in a galactic empire of nine planets, each ruled by a noble house that practices its own unique type of necromancy. The heirs of said houses are invited by the Emperor, worshipped as a God, to undergo a trial to become his Lyctors. so, full disclaimer, before picking them up i would suggest giving a try beforehand with the prose of Gideon the Ninth since it might not be your cup of tea; that said, i love Gideon as a narrator, and Muir does foreshadowing so well!!! So many good female characters!!! Harrow my beloved!!! and honestly the second book is so much better than the first, whom i liked a lot, bc of the worldbuilding, the character relationships, the plot twists

Vicious by V.E Schwab (Urban Fantasy); two college students learn how to create superhuman abilities and later become archnemesis. its an incredibly fun book since the relationship at its core between the protagonists is sorta fucked up, really codependent on each other to better define themselves, but lovely to read about. also Eli my beloved

A Winter's Promise by Christelle Dabos; Long ago, following a cataclysm called “The Rupture,” the world was shattered into many floating celestial islands called Arks, over one of which the protagonist, Ophelia, lives. She can read the past of objects simply by touching them but has to move to another Ark after her betrothal. A big caviat is that o have to yet read the ending of the series, and ive heard very conflicting opinions on it, so i would inform myself before diving headfirst into smth that may have a disappointing ending. That said: fun worldbuiling; I really like Ophelia as a protagonist; her relationship with the love interest is interesting; and i dig the mistery behind uncovering what happened and why "God" would rupture the world

[st-just]

University had only nourished and nurtured his ambitions, but education had stifled mine. I had been taught to tame my wild impulses and desires that had agitated me to pain. I had folded it with my soul and learnt to drink contentment like you would a poison. Drop by drop, day by day. Until it became tolerable.

Catherine Helstone, Under The Pendulum Sun by Jeanette Ng

[thebigkelu]

Catherine Hyde (British, b. Dartford, Kent, England, based Helston, Cornwall, England) - June’s Mist, Painting

[superborb]

Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng

This was what I was being all hesitant about on twitter, the idea of writing a review for a book where the author can potentially see it without deliberately seeking out reviews of her work? But I figure it'd take at least one click out of twitter to get here, and I really want to talk with people about this book!!!

The premise: in Victorian England, Catherine Helstone's brother, Laon, has gone to be a missionary to the land of the fae. As the letters he's been sending back are scant, she decides to follow him. There, she meets a handful of mysterious and unusual fae and discovers the history of that world.

Would recommend if you like: intricate but well resolved plot, Gothic novels, Christian theology, tight first person unreliable narrator

One of the parts I enjoyed most was figuring out what the next plot point was going to be from dropped hints! The narrator is quite unreliable, and that is used to great effect. Some of the inconsistencies and weirdness early on in the novel become explained later on, which was very fun when suddenly it was like-- OH I should have interrogated that more. Though to be fair to myself, the ones I missed were due to not knowing Christian theology very well, which brings up the next point.

Despite the whole novel taking place in the land of the fae, it felt to me like it primarily drew upon the Gothic tradition for style/atmosphere and Christian theology for plot. Like, I think if you loved Gothic novels, I would recommend this to you, versus if you were just into novels about the fae, it's not guaranteed? It obviously pulls from fae mythology, but I think those parts were more optional in terms of understanding what was going on. In contrast, if you didn't grow up in the West and thus weren't ambiently surrounded by Christian theology and the missionary narrative, I feel like the novel would be quite impenetrable. Like, most of the more uncommon references are explained in text, but it just felt more structurally necessary to plot understanding than a deep fantasy background would be.

I really loved Ariel Davenport and the other side characters, but because there were so few of them and the narrative in such a close first person POV, the entire book felt SUPER claustrophobic. Also contributing was that most of the book is restricted to the one house, even if it's a big fantastical house. After a lot of metaphor and ambiguity in the first 90% of the book, the ending was also really concrete and literal. As a result, the story felt oddly-- small? I don't think this is necessarily bad, just unexpected give the whole land of the fae, unearthing the wider story of the world part of the story? Like, NOT at all what I expected until I was relatively close to the end and like, oh this is going to wrap up really neatly, isn't it.

Overall, I enjoyed it, but it was not at all what I expected! I went in without having read anything at all about it (rare for me!) on the strength of Jeannette's twitter ahaha.

[thecloserkin]

book review: Jeannette Ng, Under the Pendulum Sun (2017)

Genre: Gothic fantasy

Is it the main pairing: Yes

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: No

Is it endgame: Yes

Is it shippable: It is lit

Bottom line: HOW IS THIS BOOK EVEN REAL. When they put me in the ground I hope they bury me with a copy of this book so I can read it in the afterlife.

Miss Catherine Helstone, a clergyman’s daughter, sets sail for the infidel lands where her brother Laon is a missionary and from whence his letters home have grown increasingly cryptic and erratic. The twist is, he’s not spreading the Good Word in India or Africa or the New World — he’s in Fairie asdfgkkjkdfjdk. Catherine hasn’t seen him in three years. She’s so worried about him that she strong-arms the Missionary Society of London into bankrolling her ticket to Arcadia, on the grounds that the previous guy who held the post met a messy & mysterious end, and she is the properest person to prevent the same fate befalling Laon. Because she’s highkey in love with him. Well, that revelation takes half the book to unfold, however the opening line is “My brother and I grew up dreaming of new worlds.” For the first 25% of the book she doesn’t even lay eyes on Laon, she just shows up in Arcadia and stays in his house while he’s gone on some unspecified errand. And what a house it is.

I feel like I’ve spent my whole life reading about impossibly grand, potentially sentient haunted houses. Such houses are drenched in secrets. You need a first-person narrator to really experience the affect of the house, preferably someone who’s unfamiliar with the setting and disoriented by the mind games it plays: Jane Eyre in Mr. Rochester’s house leaps to mind. Jane Eyre btw nearly marries her first cousin to take up the missionary life with him (before deciding to go back to Rochester). See, the reason Jane’s cousin proposed to her was because ties of blood were thought to be not strong enough to bind—when you’re out in the field converting heathens you need an acknowledged romantic attachment. So the fact that Cathy follows her brother to Arcadia tells you everything about how important he is to her. She would have followed him to perdition. Think of that immortal Sylvia Plath quote: I love him to hell and back and heaven and back, and have and do and will.

To return to the subject of incest in haunted houses: The Fall of the House of Usher? Atmospheric, creepy af, but the implied relationship is presented decidedly unsympathetically. The Thirteenth Tale? The incest is canon but you are not supposed to be rooting for the incestuous couple. Crimson Peak? She’s mentally ill and it’s not even the fucked-up kind of shippable a la Jaime/Cersei. Flowers in the Attic? Shippable, but the dubious consent squicks me out. A Spell of Winter? Comes closest, in that they were 100% in love, but it was a situational in love if you know what I mean—where is my tormented passion with 200 pages of obsessive pining??? Now do you see why I lost my fucking mind when I read Under the Pendulum Sun? I have been waiting for this book for MY ENTIRE GODDAMN LIFE.

Laon may be absent from the house, but he is very much present in Cathy’s thoughts. She can’t go five paragraphs without mentioning some innocuous detail, fondly remembered from their shared childhood.

In youth, I had shared Laon’s restlessness. University had only nourished and nurtured his ambitions, but education had stifled mine. I had been taught to tame my wild impulses and desires that had agitated me to pain. I had folded it with my soul and learnt to drink contentment like you would a poison. Drop by drop, day by day. Until it became tolerable.

If this isn’t shades of Cersei & Jaime, mirrors cracked by patriarchy!!! Seriously this is exactly how Cersei must have felt, after 8 years of crossdressing in each other’s clothes, the day the master-at-arms put a sword in Jaime’s hand and she got… what, embroidery? Cathy cried the first time Laon went off to Latin & Greek lessons without her. He smuggles his books to her afterwards, of course, and they do spend plenty of time poring over the classics together. But it’s not the same as being granted that education in her own right. In the great tradition of clergymen’s daughters, Cathy is “genteel enough to be educated and accomplished, but never useful. Caught between the world of labour and that of letters,” she goes on to become a lady’s companion and later a governess—which for a gently-reared lady is a kind of social death. Jane Fairfax in Emma certainly saw it that way. Wellborn women generally embark upon the vocation of governess as an avenue of last resort. Which is to say, there’s not a lot of scope for independent ambition for a girl in Cathy’s position. She’s twenty-five when she comes to Arcadia, and what is incredible is not that she doesn’t mention any suitors or romantic dalliances but she doesn’t even mention any friends by name. It’s like her whole world is Laon, her thoughts are consumed by him, her memories are dominated by him. It must have been very lonely growing up on the Yorkshire moors.

When I was young and I walked on the moors with Laon, I could not imagine a wilder place, given over to nature. The biting chill in our faces and the mists hanging over the endless, treeless dales. We chased each other, through the rippling heather, through ruined farmhouses. We would pretend that we were the only people left alive in the world.

And so, here I was: clutching the compass he had left behind, knot tightening within my heart, under the light of the pendulum sun.

Mark that metaphor of the knot tightening around her heart—it will continue to crop up. She’s been in love with him a long time, even if she won’t admit it to herself. Ffs he left her a compass when he took up his missionary duties, and if that isn’t a metaphor for his heart I dunno what is.

Laon and I used to play games, scaring each other under the sheets … I still remember huddling against him, hooking our fingers together and promising under every token that we held sacred that if one of us were to die, we would come back and haunt the other.

This is at once wholesome and macabre—they would give up heaven and hope of salvation in order to HAUNT the other as a GHOST because they’re that scared of being separated from each other? ICONIC.

I longed to hear my brother’s sermons again. He had a passion that surged under the measured cadence of his voice and, more than that, I had begun to miss his discordant singing.

She misses his sermons! She misses his voice even if he can’t carry a tune! She misses everything about him!

I missed Laon. I used to tickle him in church to keep him awake. All too often, we’d giggle and bicker under our breaths until our father cast us a stern gaze from the pulpit and we’d silence. I’d keep holding his hand, though, as he needed my nails in his palm to not fall asleep.

He would reach across the table and wind my hair behind my ear. Reaching for a pin to secure the distracting hair, I told myself that it was nonsense to miss the softness of his touch or the stroke of his fingers.

That night, I dreamt. Laon and I were children again, when his hands were no bigger than mine. We were running, tumbling through the heather …

I tried to imagine his voice. I remembered the curve of his ears against my lips and the warmth of his hands in mine. We had not laced together our fingers for a very long time. He didn’t even shake my hand before he left.

This girl sure spends a lot of time thinking about holding her brother’s hand!!! Here the text begins to tease at the rupture that happened before he left, and the non-supernatural causes of their long estrangement. Oh here she is asking theologically thorny questions of her tutors at boarding school:

My palms stung for days afterwards as I was whipped for impertinence. I gritted my teeth through the pain as I wrote to Laon about it, my letters curling all wonky.

Awwww he’s her #1 confidante, the one she turns to for comfort and validation. It’s been tough not having him around these last few years:

More than ever, I missed Laon. I wanted to tell him about this, to press my forehead against his and whisper to him what I knew like old secrets shared in the dark under blankets and sheepskins.

It’s just that everyone seems to take Cathy for granted—offhand she says she’s darned more socks than educated young minds—and Laon is the only one who sees her and values her. Every memory of their childhood closeness is somehow sweet as well as mega suggestive?! Here are some more super suggestive lines:

”You don’t only ever want things you could have.”

”It is dangerous eating forbidden foods.”

That last line refers to the well-known injunction against mortals eating or drinking anything while sojourning in the faerie realm: Once you taste fae food the Fair Folk get to keep you forever. In the mythology of this story, it’s okay to eat as long as you sprinkle salt on it first. You have to put salt in everything you consume, though, even your hot chocolate—just another reminder that Arcadia is inhospitable and alien and if you set one foot wrong your soul is forfeit. For the moment Cathy is confined to the manor, because there’s a geas that guarantees her safety on the property but not beyond it. So she wanders around this creepy-ass house that features doors into empty air, lanterns guttering out, moths that eat away the ink on your parchment. The other inhabitants include: A ghostly housekeeper she never sees, a gnome handyman lately converted to Christianity, and a changeling fae girl who Cathy suspects to be her brother’s mistress. Cathy obtains the journals of Reverend Hale—the priest who preceded Laon—and sets to work deciphering them.

My brother’s house became to me a place of questions without answers.

Later on, when Laon returns, he straight up begs her to leave it alone:

”Don’t do this,” he pleaded. “Don’t try to solve this place. It won’t end well.”

This, of course, is the sort of admonition ignored by the heroine of every Gothic romance—warnings destined to fall on deaf ears as she plunges ahead to unravel the mystery. Ok but let’s talk about the scene where Laon comes back, encounters Cathy and concludes she is a PHANTOM conjured up to torment him:

”If you are trying to seduce me, spirit, I’m afraid I’m quite incapable at the moment.” “I … I am your Cathy. Your sister.”

But of course any spirit would take the form of his sister, the person dearest to his heart. “Seduce” is an interesting word choice, isn’t it? But listen to the way she says “your Cathy”!!!

”Why do you plague me so? Does it please you to see me like this? Have you tortured me enough?” ”Is it so impossible that I am indeed your sister? Can you not believe that I could and would follow you? Can you not believe that I have the strength and the love to come? Can you not believe that I would care—“ “Catherine!” His walking stick clattered to the floor.

And then he TAKES HER IN HIS ARMS. They fall down and roll around, his face muffled in her shoulder, and she “dared not look at him” which is code for “if I look at him I will kiss him” until they’re interrupted by a servant and guiltily spring apart. She’s so glad to have him back. Listen to the easy way they tease each other:

”Oh, hush, you are nothing like Lord Byron.” I took the page from him. “Your poetry is abysmal.” “Exactly like him then,” said Laon.

I SNORTED.

”You used to crawl into my bed when there was thunder. I was always fairly sure it was just an excuse, you would fall asleep so quickly when you clung to me.” “You were warm,” I muttered in half confession, avoiding his gaze. “And your bed smelt nice.” “My bed smelt of me.” My voice grew smaller and my fingers agitated. “Exactly.”

HE SMELLED NICE. And who can resist the all-powerful bedsharing trope amirite? The problem is, just because Laon is physically present doesn’t mean he stops being emotionally distant:

I found myself studying the rhythm of his gait, the set of his jaw and the weariness in his shoulders. There was so much between us that remained unspoken, and for all that I could read from the way he moved and held himself, it was not enough.

There are oceans of unsaid things between them. Plus, every time she lays a hand on him—and after their reunion it’s always Cathy initiating the touch—he acts like it physically pains him. How do you react to that, to your brother recoiling from you touch?

”I am not an ornamental hermit,” said Laon, his anger spilling over. I placed a hand on his shoulder and he flinched at my touch but calmed.

The sight of my own helpless brother disarmed me. I reached out a comforting hand to him, laying it on his shoulder … He leaned into my touch and I could see his demeanor soften before he pulled away.

”You need me here, Laon.” I put my hand on his shoulder; he flinched and pulled away. ”You aren’t safe here.” his eyes flickered to me and then away again. “It’s not about that … It’s not that I need you, it’s that I want—“ he stopped. His voice sounded as though it was about to break. He turned and simply left.

Laon does that at lot—breaks off in the middle of sentences. He’ll say things like, ”Is it not enough that—“ and then just stop. Like he has to clamp the words down before he can betray his true feelings to Cathy. He tells her she has to leave in two weeks, which is an entirely arbitrary deadline based on the fact that he can’t stop either worrying about her or wanting her:

”It is very dangerous out there, Cathy. In the mists. Anything … I cannot—“ “What cannot you do, Laon? … Have you not done it all? Have you not gone to university? Have you not left England? Have you not made yourself a grand explorer?”

What he cannot do, and what he longs to do above all, is protect her. He’s been petitioning the Faerie Queen to grant the Church some concessions, like license to travel & preach all over Arcadia, and it doesn’t sound like he’s getting anywhere. Cathy’s presence is both keeping him sane and driving him to distraction.

Though my eyes were on the fire, his were on me. I could feel his gaze on my skin and I ached to touch him again.

She ACHES for hiS TOuCH omg i am L I V I N G. Did I mention she DREAMS about him, like, constantly?

That night, I dreamt of Laon. He lay under a willow in a garden, resting his head on the lap of a pale, pale woman. She wound her arms around him and he sighed as she stroked his face … The dream continued for some time, and when I finally awoke, I found my eyes gritty and sore from unshed tears, and my heart aching.

She later recognizes the “pale, pale woman” as the actual Faerie Queen who invites herself to Laon’s house on a sort of Royal Progress. This is Cathy greeting the queen and registering that she’s the woman from her dream:

I withered under her gaze and that knot of pain in my chest grew heavier and tighter. She smiled, and I could see again those lips brushing against my brother’s ears.

The thing is, Cathy invokes the imagery of lips brushing against ears in reference to her own memories of growing up with Laon, “his lips brushing against my ear in mimicry of a secret.” It gets worse. She’s summoned to the Faerie Queen’s chambers and the bottom drops out of her stomach when she sees the bed:

I remembered attaching my green ribbons to our old sheets. They had been our mother’s in her dowry, and when Laon had inherited them I had sewn on the green ribbons on an extravagant whim. I had worn those ribbons in my hair running through the moors. I remember him trying to snatch them from me as we rolled about in the heather. Those were Laon’s sheets on Mab’s beds.

Those are literally the sheets that made up their mother’s trousseau, that Cathy herself had painstakingly embellished with her own handiwork. In an era when all your clothes and linens had to be hand-sewn without aid of machines, it was indeed extravagant to spend that much time adding green ribbons to a perfectly serviceable set of sheets. The symbolic significance though—Cathy would have sewn them on for Laon, would have expected Laon to sleep on them. WHAT KIND OF FUCKING MESSAGE IS THIS BITCH TRYING TO SEND??? Cathy can’t be blamed for wondering. It makes her blood boil to imagine Laon in the Faerie Queen’s arms. If the goal was to make Cathy insanely jealous by flaunting her hold over Laon, well, achievement unlocked I guess.

The Fairie Queen takes up residence. She insists on (1) a masquerade ball and (2) a boar hunt. The ball is a highly bizarre affair—the dancers are clockwork automatons, the guests materialize out of paintings—but one thing it does is force Cathy and Laon to confront their frankly off-the-charts level of physical attraction to each other:

He loomed over me and I felt that prickle of annoyance that I have known all my life about his height. “You— you’re…”he hesitated before finishing. “You’re quite pretty.” The knot within my heart tightened. I simply could not remember the last time he had remarked upon my appearance. He said nothing when I twirled before him in old dresses on the eve of my first dance at the squire’s house. Nothing when the village girls and I gigglingly contemplated the prospect of marriage and asked his assessment. Nothing when I attended his first sermon in my best dress and mother’s brooch. He must not have done so since we were children. My brow furrowed, trying to make sense of that knot within me. It ached with a visceral familiarity, as though I had borne it all my life without knowledge of it. “I’m sorry,” said my brother. “I should not have said anything.” “No … I hadn’t realized how long it was since you last said that.” A smile wavered at the corner of his lips.

”Cathy, do you think me handsome?” … I took a step closer, to see him better. A flush rose within me, unaccustomed to the nearness of him. Without asking, I reached behind him and undid the ribbon of his domino mask. It fell free of his face, and I kept staring. For the first time in a long time, I simply looked at my brother’s face. It was strange, as I had thought it so familiar, but it was to his moods and changes, the subtle quirk of his mouth or flash of his eyes …. Would she think him as beautiful as I did?

Ok first of all to reach behind someone’s head and remove their mask is the most intimate of gestures. Second of all, Cathy and Laon encounter another pair of siblings at the ball who are codependent as hell and not tryna hide it, of the “he stroked her hair with the lightest of touches…. she drew a nail across the skin of his jaw” variety. Those two are described as waltzing across the floor in a hold “too close to be decent,” which could also describe their relationship in general tbh. What’s interesting is that while Laon and Cathy do not waltz together at the actual masquerade, that night she dreams about waltzing with him. The significance of the waltz versus one of the regular old country dances is the waltz is deemed waaaaay more risqué; you spend the whole dance with one partner and there’s a lot more skin-to-skin contact. Halfway through the ball, the Faerie Queen claps her hands, dispels the illusions that festoon the hall and voila, the fae revert to their true shapes! The singing birds are revealed to be human prisoners in chains! Cathy’s elaborate ballgown disappears!

”Cathy …” My brother choked out my name. I looked confused at his face. He was staring at me intently. The hunger in his eyes was both alien and achingly familiar. That knot within me tightened and I felt a warmth spread across my skin. “You—“ His jaw clenched and his lips pulled into a tight line. He did not stop staring, though, even as I could tell he was trying to stop … I was completely naked underneath the gossamer thin fabric. I could feel my brother’s gaze upon my skin, his study of my shape.

He can’t tear his eyes from her naked body and I don’t care how cliched it is, I am HERE FOR IT. She flees up to her room then, and it’s in the context of her mortifying exit from the ball that she has the dream where she’s waltzing with Laon:

We were at once running through the heather and arguing over his departure to become a missionary. We were bickering over toy soldiers, getting lost in the garden. We were gazing upon our father’s coffin and despairing over our inheritance of debts. All moments of our intertwined lives tangled before me. I felt that old, familiar knot within my chest tighten. My fingers traced against his flesh and I found the words that were written there …. As I read his bound soul, his hands uncovered mine. We followed each unutterable word, each branded red and raw in the book of human skin … I found my own name written upon the book of his soul.

This is (1) unbearably poetic (2) inevitable. Their whole lives have been leading to this. And then the next day she confronts him in the stables before the hunt:

“You can’t do this alone. You need me here.” “You don’t understand, Cathy …” “If not me, then someone else, a wife, Miss Davenport.” My voice was hollow even to my own ears; I did not want him to marry. To utter the words twisted the knotted pain in my chest, the knot I did not want to give a name to. I remembered feeling it every time he flirted with another woman, every time the ladies at church would flutter by and giggle at the prospect of an attachment. I had carried it within myself for so long, heavy as a stone. For the first time, I felt the true weight of it, across my shoulders and tight around my chest. I felt a spinning sense of unbalance even as that weight and pain anchored me. “You need someone and it should be me. You should not be alone here.” “I want you here. More than anything.” “Then why are you sending me away?”

Do you hear that? The weight of her painful passion for her brother has anchored her for so long that she’s unbalanced by the loss of it. When she places the look in his eyes as lust, when the knot in her chest begins to loosen the tiniest bit, she’s flailing bc she doesn’t know what to do with herself. At this point I need to spoil the central twist of this story so I urge you all in the STRONGEST terms to please go read it then come back ok?

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Gothic fiction is full of doubles. Not like, literal doppelgängers, but characters whose existence is designed to cast certain traits of the protagonist’s into sharp relief. Fresh off the boat the very first person that Cathy meets in Arcadia is Miss Ariel Davenport, the aforementioned changeling whose function in Laon’s household is unclear. Ariel is weird. She rambles on about esoteric subjects, asks non sequitur questions, and claims an unearned intimacy by calling Cathy by her Christian name. Ariel was swapped for the “real” Ariel Davenport as a baby, and grew up thinking she was human. Here’s how she found out she wasn’t:

”I do know I don’t need food. I don’t starve, I just feel hungry … Ariel Davenport’s family died in a workhouse. I watched them starve when I did not. Whatever fae gears were inside me kept turning.”

What a brutal awakening. Ariel talks a lot about how she doesn’t fit in, how she doesn’t really belong in Arcadia but when she tries to do human things like embroider a handkerchief or love someone there’s an offness to it:

”But it’s not quite the same. Doesn’t come naturally.”

Ariel’s name recalls the spirit from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, who also got a pretty raw deal—she was a genie-in-a-bottle enslaved to a magician with delusions of grandeur— and Ariel Davenport likewise never grows enough of a spine to openly cross her master. Her “master” would be the Faerie Queen, the one at whose court Laon is currently detained. She’s the one pulling all the strings. There’s a reason that Ariel was sent to stay with Laon and Cathy, and the reason, as you may have surmised, is that Cathy is a changeling too. DUN DUN DUN.

That’s the revelation that shatters her. It’s Ariel who discloses the truth to her, a truth the reader has probably divined already from other hints; it’s Ariel who, transfigured into various animal guises, is the quarry of the hunt. Cathy plunges a knife into Ariel’s heart (!) bc someone’s gotta do it, the Queen has decreed Ariel must die for sport and at least this way Laon’s hands will be clean of murder. It’s ok if Cathy does it, she tells herself, because she doesn’t have a soul. And the consummation of her and Laon’s relationship happens right on the heels of that, because you can’t really expect a mainstream audience to be invested in a love scene unless you assure them it’s not really incest since they’re not blood-related, so that checks out. She’s trying to wash Ariel’s blood off when he knocks on her door:

No, Catherine Helstone’s brother. I corrected myself … He was not mine to call my own.

I did not turn around. I did not want to see the look in his eyes. I feared his pity, his revulsion, his anger. I dreaded it all, but above all, I feared his absence.

Ahsjhdjfhdjfd he drops his greatcoat on the floor, rolls up his sleeves, and takes up a washcloth to bathe her:

”We used to share a copper bath like this by the fire,” he said conversationally. I could hear the strain in his voice, see the slight tremble in his motions. “When we were small enough to both fit inside the tub. You hated washing your hair because of the soap in your eyes.” Did I giggle when he upended buckets of water over my head or was I angered? Did I sit patiently as he scrubbed my back or did I squirm at his touch. The water was lukewarm but Laon’s touch was anything but cold. I followed his every movement, the nonsense patterns upon my skin. I was holding my breath, listening to his. I could feel him, warm and solid behind me, his breath hot on my shoulder, at the base of my neck. Shivers spidered down my spine and spread over me. I ached … And then, his hands were on me again, strong, demanding. I revealed in his force; it proved to me that I was not breaking, that I would not shatter. He tightened his grip on my hips and I gasped. Fleetingly, I felt real.

That’s the crux of it. Her entire life has been a sham; being loved by Laon is the only thing that’s left, the only thing that’s real. You can see her already begin to doubt her recollection of the past, wondering “did i giggle…? did i squirm…?” because HONESTLY IT COULD’VE BEEN INCEPTION. HOW DO U KNOW WHATS REAL. She’s spent the first half of the novel spinning us endless anecdotes from her childhood with Laon, and now this happens, it destroys the foundations of her identity:

All my memories seemed so distant. My imperfect, simulacrum mind with its imperfect memories … I told my youth to myself like a story, trying to remember who I was. I told myself about the little papers I wrote with Catherine Helstone’s brother, the names we gave the toy soldiers and the fantastical yet tediously mundane lands they explored … It all seemed so very insubstantial. Except that memory. I flushed warm whenever my thoughts brushed against it. Unlike everything else, I remembered with embarrassing clarity, every touch between us, every biting kiss and each hot breath. I was a moth, speared like a specimen by his scrutiny. I lay under him, pinned. His gaze, his touch, his grip made me real.

This is Cathy two or three days ago talking to Ariel about her earliest memory:

”I always liked to think that my first memory was of Laon. I was three, maybe and we were playing. I don’t remember what, but we were hiding under a table and we had to be very quiet. The tablecloth was red and I think I remember his fingers against my lips.” “Is it real?” “Of course it is,” I said. I touched my fingers to my mouth, lingering on that memory, the vivid feeling of his skin against mine.

If she doesn’t even have her memories of Laon, what does she have??? What is true and what is a forgery? This is from her waltz dream the night before:

We were surrounded by faceless automatons, by soulless far, by mindless beasts. He was the last real thing within these borders, under this unreal sun.

So the Queen and her retinue depart. Cathy and Laon are not atm seeing eye to eye because he’s wracked by guilt for the carnal sin they’ve committed, and she’s wracked by guilt because she, you know, murdered Ariel. I’m not at all surprised at Laon, though—this is after all the man who wrote in his journal:

Sometimes this cross is heavy beyond endurance. I carry it in repentance for the sins of my heart, for that is the same as the sins of the flesh. To look upon a woman in lust is to have committed adultery with her already . I know this and I bear it. I feel that I shall bear it for all my days.

For all his days, he says—he’ll go to his grave loving Cathy and that’s the tea. But right now she’s hurting, and she more or less keeps to her bed:

He did not ask if I was going to leave the room or when; he recognized this childish habit already. I had done it after the funeral of Catherine Helstone’s sister when I was seven and a half, then again for a while after her father’s. I remembered counting the threads in the quilt, willing my world to be just that warm, soft embrace. He had taken care of me then … He still gazed at me in hunger when he thought I wasn’t looking. I yearned for that closeness, that reality, but I could not bring myself to deserve it. Day after day, I ate because he bid me to.

He has looked after her in her grief before and he does so again now. She spends the next few chapters avoiding his name and referring to him as “Catherine Helstone’s brother.” What jolts her out of her funk is, one day they crawl into the belly of a beached whale and catalogue the wonders contained therein. It’s an adventure, and she doesn’t initially go willingly:

Deaf to my protests, he had gathered me into his arms, deposited me onto the floor and proceeded to roll my outdoor stocking onto my feet. Despite my squirming and kicking, he persevered.

Lmao this is peak sibling interaction. Once they’re inside the belly of the beast, of course, it turns into something else:

He was standing very close to me and all at once I was all too aware of him. I forgot why I was fighting so hard to put aside our attraction, forgot all the reasons I gave myself for why I shouldn’t. Each memory seemed to lead me inexorably to this point where I was standing before him, slightly too close and far too afraid. I had not wanted to give name to this passion, not wanted to acknowledge it. I could have gone to my grave not knowing why I felt this ache whenever I saw Catherine Hailstone’s brother. I could have passed this life blind of my own longing and ignorant to his. I could have … He was simply there, too close, too real and too beautiful.

So OF COURSE they tumble into bed in Cathy’s tower room amidst their scribbled notes (they’re working on translating the Bible because “the mother tongue is the best missionary”) and the ink is blotted onto Cathy’s skin holy shit how appropriate is that. All those Greek and Latin texts they pored over as kids, the sermons he practiced on her, all of that was leading up to this: Cathy Helstone, the wife and helpmeet that Reverend Helstone DESERVES. I am strongly put in mind of two other stories stop for a second and hear me out: (1) Pygmalion, the tale of the sculptor who falls in love with his own creation and brings her to life and (2) Tam Lin, the ballad about a fellow who’s abducted by the Faerie Queen and whose ladylove rescues him through sheer grit and pluck—her trial is to hold onto him and not let go while he transforms into every dangerous beast under the sun. In the beginning it seemed like Laon = Tam Lin but now it’s Cathy who’s fallen into the Faerie Queen’s clutches.

we lay curled up against each other like the working dogs used to by the fire. He looked over at me and with a lazy, contented smile on his lips, he said, “Cathy—“

”Don’t call me that,” I said, cutting him short. Panic welled up at the back of my throat at that name. “I’m not —“

”Cathy,” he said again, pressing his face against the curve of my neck. I felt his warm breath upon my skin and giddy pleasure spread from those lips; I calmed. “Let the other be Catherine. And you can be Cathy. You will always be my Cathy and you will always be my sister.” I raised an eyebrow at that, and he had the decency to look sheepish. “And other things, true,” he said. “But either way, you shouldn’t think of yourself as less real. And I do have to call you something.”

”I’m not real.”

”You feel real to me.”

I love how her being “other things” to him doesn’t in any way negate her being his sister. Lord, that “you feel real to me” is everythinggggggg. At the same time I can’t blame Cathy for being assailed by doubt:

”it’s possible that no memory before I set foot on fae soil is real … I can’t trust my own mind.”

”I know my sister like I know my own mind. I would know if you —“

”You thought I was an illusion created by the mists to torment you.”

”I had imagined you so many times … I knew I had to leave, I wanted you too much … So, believe me. I did not doubt you because you are not who I know you to be. I doubted you because of my own weakness. You are the sister I are up with, the sister I have loved and love now. And that’s all that matters.”

Laon goes as far as to try to obtain receipts to prove her realness: They attend a Goblin Market where everything is for sale—for a price. He offers to sell an arm, a leg, a lung and an eye in exchange for Cathy’s memories??? It’s half of him for half her soul, I guess. Find yourself a man who looks at you the way Laon Helstone looks at his sister:

”Cathy, I love you.” Unlike his earlier declarations, he said it quite plainly as though it were an observation about the weather … “I’ve loved you, adored you, desired you for as long as I remember … As a sister, as a lover, it doesn’t matter … You doubt the truth of your mind and your memories, and if this can give you answers … Then I’m willing to pay the asking price for that.”

This speech absolutely melted me. She talks him down from selling an arm for her soul, but I mean, as far as God’s concerned the way she feels about Laon skates perilously close to idolatry:

For all that we had the books of our faith before us, he stood between me and every impulse of religion, even as he reached out to me with the promise of intercessory grace, he eclipsed such hopes of heaven. I had made an idol of him, and for all my excuses that this but a return to the childish hero worship I had once had for him, this went deeper. When he clasped his hand around mine in prayer, when I knelt before him, I thought not of God, that Lord of Hosts, nor of Jesus, the Redeemer, but of him, simply and eternally.

So to recap: Laon and Cathy are holding onto each other for dear life in this godforsaken hellscape of a ruined castle-manor where the weather has to be summoned with arcane spells and the flowers, instead of thriving or wilting naturally, have to be individually painted with the change of seasons. Come to find out, they are literally in hell. Not purgatory, hell itself. Which would explain how all Laon’s proselytizing has amounted to one (1) successful convert. That’s a piss poor track record by any metric. And their lone convert didn’t even accept Jesus Christ as his savior on Laon’s watch. It happened when the other guy, Reverend Hale, was here. What happened was Reverend Hale’s wife decided to take her Communion bread unsalted, and was promptly CONDEMNED TO HELL FOR ETERNITY because remember the first rule of Arcadia: Don’t eat anything unless you salt it. She is the madwoman in the attic, the “woman in black” that Cathy has caught glimpses of from time to time. It was an experiment designed to show that God’s grace extended even unto Arcadia. It didn’t work, but I guess anyone who witnessed this crazy stunt would have developed a newfound respect for humans and their faith. What this means is that the madwoman in the attic is not after all the original Catherine. She is not Laon Helstone’s sister, which was the working assumption of both Cathy and the reader up till now.

A fire breaks out in the kitchen. Cathy and Laon are unharmed by the conflagration. This is because in the house they are still protected by the geas — the one that is centered on Laon, the one that Cathy was told extended to her too because “Blood binds blood. And blood knows blood.” But the entire point of Cathy being a changeling is that she does not share Laon’s blood. Something doesn’t add up. A rider arrives with a letter. It’s dated months and months ago, from the London Missionary Society. Someone has been carrying on a correspondence with Reverend Helstone’s sister in their name, but it isn’t them, and they sure as hell did not sponsor Cathy’s passage to Arcadia. The truth hits Laon and Cathy at the same time:

My mouth was a grave of words, each thought dying there and it was their rot that I tasted, that filled me with gut-wrenching revulsion. He laughed, threw his head back and just laughed. His wide shoulders shook with his senseless mirth until his eyes too were filled with tears. “I thought you were an apparition to tempt me.” His beautiful mouth twisted cruel. “I thought the mist spat you out to make me sin, to pull me down, to drag me to hell. I thought I could outrun myself, my own sins, my own sister. I thought—“ “Laon, no …” I wasn’t sure what I was objecting to, but I wanted him to stop. I wanted myself to stop. “But they did better than that.” I flung myself at him, covered his lips with mine. Tear-stained hands cupping his face, it was not a kiss so much as a hard, stubborn meeting of lips. It needed to stop. Everything needed to stop, to silence. Gasping, he choked out, “You’re my sister.” My cheeks were against his face and my tears were his. We were broken mirrors of one another. “You’re my sister,” he said again. He did not push me away.

!!!!! SHE’S REALLY HIS SISTER AFTER ALL NOT A CHANGELING IT WAS ALL PART OF THE FAERIE QUEEN’S PLAN!!!! Here she is confirming it:

”My grand scheme.” She made a gesture towards the clockwork that framed her throne. “The sins that I have set in motion, the gift that I have given you. Had I not summoned you to Arcadia, would you have seen these wonders? Had I not placed into my own home, remade for your pleasure, would you have realized your love?”

And it wasn’t like she lied about it—the fae can’t lie, after all. That’s why they’re so deadly at weaponizing the truth. She just left a trail of breadcrumbs and let people (aka Ariel) draw their own conclusions, and spill those conclusions to Cathy. You have to admire how elegantly she sprung the trap. And certainly neither Laon nor Cathy appears to regret falling into each other’s arms. It’s just that once again Cathy’s whole world has been turned upside down:

There was an acidic taste at the back of my throat … Our love had been the last pure, real thing that I had clung to and it was slipping away … Every kiss, every caress that had passed between us came to the fore of my mind, now tainted by new, old knowledge.

Okay but you know here is what else Cathy has also said on the subject of forbidden knowledge (one of the oldest senses of the verb “to know” is to know someone biblically):

The world was made with words. If I looked hard enough, I could read those words still. They flowed in the veins of the world, written on their seams. They told me this tree would reach the heavens. They told me nothing was forbidden. They told me knowledge could not be a sin.

Being expelled from Eden was not altogether a bad deal for Adam and Eve. And we are talking Edenic parallels here, since it’s revealed one of the Faerie Queen’s names is Lilith, aka Adam’s first wife. When I was younger and thought myself very superior I was of the Phillip Pullman School of “it is better to know sin than to remain ignorant and innocent,” but it’s not that simple. Cathy and Laon came to Arcadia to save souls; now it looks like they’ve lost theirs. Laon has spent more than half his life wrestling with theology: he is a preacher, and singularly unsuited to doing anything else. I keep circling back to that image of words written on the seams of the world, and I think about Cathy’s waltz dream where she read her name on the book of Laon’s soul, and the masquerade ball before that where they encountered the too-close pair of siblings whose skin was actually branded with words??? Not tattoos actual words of fire. Cathy could only kind-of read them, not being fluent in the Arcadian tongue. Cathy and Laon have spent half this novel translating scripture. Words are the building blocks of reality. If you notice in the passage where she finds out they’ve been sinning this whole time, it opens with “My mouth was a grave of words.” Anyway, Cathy is all to pieces because a person can only sustain so many blows to their sense of self in quick succession:

Lantern in hand, I drifted through the castle, numb from new knowledge: I was human. I was in love with my brother. I was in hell.

She’d need time to process even one of those revelations, let alone all three at once. And in the end they decide to stay in Faerie and do missionary work together. Because, Cathy points out, if “the mother tongue is the best missionary” and here they are in Hell, it can only help their cause that they are both fluent in sin. GIRL, A+ LOGIC. If anyone wants to read a short (<2k) fic about Cathy and Laon embarking on the next chapter of their lives, I highly recommend this one, where the Author’s Note muses, “What's the biggest theologically-evocative Molotov cocktail I could throw in their path?” and the story goes with “Cathy gets pregnant” asddfggkgjgk.

Friends, I do not scruple to say that Jeannette Ng has written the perfect incest book for me. I still can’t believe it’s an unabashed love story. Where the main pairing is canon and also endgame. It all unfolds inexorably, and when I found out Cathy was a changeling it didn’t feel like a cop-out, unlike other stories where “they’re stepsiblings!” or “one of them’s adopted!” absolutely does feel like a cop-out. Because Cathy’s identity crisis is at the core of the story. When I found out she wasn’t a changeling that felt inevitable too. It’s just such a powerful meditation on memory, that most fallible of human faculties. It’s such a power move to saturate the narrative with memories of Cathy and Laon playing as children, and then reveal that even those fragments aren’t necessarily authentic:

We chased each other through the mists, like we were children again, playing on the moors … Was I imagining now how much i had relished his closeness then? Was it simply newfound desire that was igniting all past memories or had I always flushed warm under his gaze?

It’s unlikely had they remained in England they would have gotten together. The Fairie Queen had to pull out all the stops for this to be endgame. Can we all just ... RESPECT.

[water-gaw]

Recsmas 2018 Day 4: a first book

Jeannette Ng’s Under the Pendulum Sun

Such an enormously clever and engaging riff on nineteenth-century literature. Catherine Helstone has travelled to fairyland in search of her brother, a lost missionary to the fae. The gothic atmosphere is perfect, and Ng’s fairyland indicts the imperialist mindset in ways I hadn’t seen before in this kind of fantasy setting. It’s the kind of book that deserves tags like ‘tour-de-force’, and it’s so very smart in all the ways that I just want to collapse in an awed heap and give it a round of applause.

[libromundoes]

Me gustaría que más personas leyeran … Bajo el sol del péndulo por Jeannette Ng | Libros

TEl discurso del ascensor puede ser difícil para cualquier libro, pero quizás aún más para las novelas de fantasía. Es una tarea difícil resumir mundos nuevos y extraños y sistemas mágicos complejos en una o dos oraciones que llaman la atención.

Pero permítanme presentarles el mejor discurso de ascensor para una novela de fantasía que he escuchado: los misioneros victorianos están tratando de convertir a las hadas al cristianismo. Un golpe de puro resplandor.

Puede que le preocupe que la ejecución nunca pueda igualar una premisa tan soberbia, pero afortunadamente Jeannette Ng cumple con aplomo, una hazaña particularmente impresionante dado que Under the Pendulum Sun fue su debut, lo que le valió lo que anteriormente se conocía como el Premio John W Campbell al Mejor Nuevo Escritor (ahora llamado Premio Asombroso al Mejor Nuevo Escritor, gracias en gran parte al discurso de aceptación de Ng el año pasado). Es un sueño de fiebre retorcida, un ensueño teológico y un notable homenaje a la tradición gótica.

Como lo demuestra el éxito de las obras de Holly Black, Karen Marie Moning, Julie Kagawa y Sarah J Maas, entre otras, las fae son las criaturas míticas de la hora. A veces son retratados como monstruosos, a veces como estafadores, a veces como intereses amorosos sensuales. En Under the Pendulum Sun, las hadas son maliciosas, del tipo Unseelie, Ng rompiendo su propio sello al entrelazar las influencias celtas con la tradición abrahámica.

Asombroso … Jeannette Ng

Ng es un fabricante global atento y detallista con talento para la descripción atmosférica. En su visión del siglo XIX, la humanidad tiene una relación frágil con los fae, que habitan en la tierra de Arcadia. Catherine "Cathy" Helstone se va a las enigmáticas Faelands en busca de su hermano, el reverendo Laon, que desapareció mientras intentaba llevar la Palabra de Dios a la reina Mab y su corte perturbada. A su llegada, Cathy se encuentra consignada a Getsemaní, un inquietante castillo misterioso, a la espera de noticias de Laon. Sus compañeros son el tambaleante Ariel Davenport y el señor Benjamin, un gnomo, que es el único converso del reverendo.

"Recuerde, no camine por el pasillo cuando está oscuro", advierte Cathy. "Ninguna mirada detrás de la cortina esmeralda. No hay retratos en los ojos. No comas nada sin sal. Y no confíes en la salamandra. Después de semanas de sofocante encierro, Cathy finalmente le da la bienvenida a Laon a Getsemaní, y lo que sigue es una muestra lenta de deseo culpable, locura y asesinato, todo perseguido por el espectro de Mab, la astuta reina.

Cada capítulo comienza con un extracto de un texto misterioso, que incluye textos victorianos reales que se han adaptado a la realidad alternativa de Ng. Como el mago de la corona por Zen Cho y Jonathan Strange y M. Norrell por Susanna Clarke, Under the Pendulum Sun captura el tono y el estilo de la literatura del siglo en el que tiene lugar; Ng atribuye las hermanas Brontë y los románticos en su agradecimiento. Y el título del péndulo del sol, una gran linterna que oscila en la Arcadia y hace que el tiempo sea difícil de calcular, es en sí mismo una hazaña notable de la construcción mundial. Con su característica atención al detalle, Ng buscó el consejo de "la aproximación más cercana a un físico" para definir los detalles, que ella detalla en un artículo titulado La ciencia del sol del péndulo: Una lectura tan fascinante como el libro mismo.

El giro del estómago al final de la novela. puede dejarlo desesperado por una ducha, pero también por temor a la fusión magistral e inventiva de Ng entre historia, ciencia, literatura y mito. Como un fantasma vagando por los páramos, todavía me persigue: la marca de una verdadera obra maestra gótica.

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[sanfranciscobookreview]

Under the Pendulum Sun

New Post has been published on San Francisco Book Review

Under the Pendulum Sun

A missionary’s sister journeys to the magical land of the fae to discover her brother’s fate before becoming embroiled in a creepy and dark politics in Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng. Under the umbrella of a missionary mission, Catherine Helstone embarks on a journey to Arcadia to find h...

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[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 5.8

Holidays

Ace Day of Visibility Day

Adam Lambert Day (San Diego)

Brian May Day (UK)

Children’s Day (Maldives)

Colorism Awareness Day

Crow Day

A Day Without Child Care

A Day Without Socks

Dupuytren’s Disease Day (UK)

Emancipation Day (Columbus, Mississippi)

Fête de I'iris (Brussels, Belgium)

508 Day

Free Trade Day

Furry Dance Day (a.k.a. The Flora; Helston, Cornwall, UK)

Hayek Day

Infant Mortality Awareness Day

International Blue Iguana Day

International Thalassemia Day

International Viking Day

Iris Day

Jamestown Day

Katniss Everdeen Day (Hunger Games)

Let It Be Day

Liberation Day (Czech Republic, Norway, Slovakia)

Miguel Hidalgo Day (Mexico)

Mississippi River Day

National Amyloidosis Day (Australia)

National Archery Day

National Catahoula Day

National Coral Reef Day (Indonesia)

National Dakota Day

National Maria Day

National Meeting Planners Appreciation Day

National Nova Day

National Outdoor Intercourse Day

National Report Government Contractor Fraud Day

National Student Nurses Day

National Women’s Checkup Day

No Socks Day

Occupational Safety & Health Professional Day

Orache Day (French Republic)

Parents’ Day (Korea)

Provider Appreciation Day

Radio Day (Philippines)

Reward Yourself Day

Truman Day (Missouri)

Veterans Day (Norway)

Victory in Europe Day (a.k.a. V-E Day)

Westminster Dog Show Anniversary Day

Women’s Historic Night (Norway)

World Donkey Day

World Orienteering Day

World Ovarian Cancer Day

World Red Cross & Red Crescent Day

World Smallpox Eradication Day

World Smile Day

Yerkrapah Day (Armenia)

Food & Drink Celebrations

Coca-Cola Day (a.k.a. Have a Coke Day)

Empanada Day

Give Someone a Cupcake Day

National Coconut Cream Pie Day

National Have a Coke Day

Independence & Related Days

Breve Empire (Declared; 2021) [unrecognized]

British Monarchy (Restored after the Commonwealth; 1660)

Impy (Declared; 2020) [unrecognized]

Qaflana (Declared; 2019) [unrecognized]

2nd Wednesday in May

Bike to School Day [Wednesday of 1st Full Week]

CBDC Day (Canada) [2nd Wednesday]

Donate a Day's Wages to Charity Day [2nd Wednesday]

Emergency Medical Services for Children Day [Wednesday of 1st Full Week]

National Day for Staff Networks (UK) [2nd Wednesday]

National Nightshift/Third Shift Worker Day [2nd Wednesday]

National Numeracy Day (UK) [Wednesday of 2nd Full Week]

National Receptionists’ Day [2nd Wednesday]

National Root Canal Appreciation Day [2nd Wednesday]

National School Nurse Day [Wednesday of 1st Full Week]

World Facilities Management Day [Wednesday of 2nd Full Week]

World FM Day [Wednesday of 2nd Full Week]

Weekly Holidays beginning May 8 (1st Full Week)

National Women’s Health Week (thru 5.14)

Time of Remembrance and Reconciliation for Those Who Lost Their Lives During the Second World War Day (UN) [thru 5.9]

Festivals Beginning May 8, 2024

Furry Dance (Flora Day; Helston, UK)

Heart’s Delight Wine Tasting (Washington, DC) [thru 5.11]

Nigeria International Book Fair (Lagos, Nigeria) [thru 5.10]

Tehran International Book Fair (Tehran, Iran) [thru 5.18]

Feast Days

Acacius (Christian; Martyr)

Agathius (Christian; Saint)

Alphonse Legros (Artology)

Amato Ronconi (Christian; Saint)

Apparition of Saint Michael (Christian; Saint)

Arsenius the Great (Christian; Saint)

Bacciccio (Artology)

Back Scratching Day (Pastafarian)

Benedict II, pope (Christian; Saint)

Bertalan Székely (Artology)

Boniface IV, Pope (Christian; Saint)

Buddha Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Camillus (Positivist; Saint)

Catherine of St. Augustine (Christian; Saint)

Chivington Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

The Crumb (Muppetism)

Delousing Day (Church of the SubGenius)

Desideratus (Christian; Saint)

Dog-Prodding (Gremlins; Shamanism)

Feast of the Apparition of St. Michael the Archangel (Christian; Saint)

The Festival of Mens (Ancient Roman Goddess of Mind and Consciousness)

Forest Day (Starza Pagan Book of Days)

Fulla’s Blot (Pagan)

The Furry Dance (a.k.a. The Flora; Cornwall, UK)

Gibrian (Christian; Saint)

Gybrian of Ireland (Christian; Saint)

Ida of Nivelles (Christian; Saint)

Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Mœbius; Artology)

Julian of Norwich (Anglican, Lutheran)

Ludvig Karsten (Artology)

Magdalene of Canossa (Christian; Saint)

Mates Day (Pastafarian)

Nathaniel Dance-Holland (Artology)

Odrian of Waterford (Christian; Saint)

Our Lady of Luján (Christian; Saint)

Peter of Tarentaise (Christian; Saint)

Plechelm and Otger (Christian; Saints)

Teresa Demjanovich (Ruthenian Catholic Church)

Thomas Pynchon (Writerism)

Victor Maurus (Christian; Martyr)

Wiro of Ireland (Christian; Saint)

White Lotus Day (Theosophy)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Butsumetsu (仏滅 Japan) [Unlucky all day.]

Unglückstage (Unlucky Day; Pennsylvania Dutch) [17 of 30]

Premieres

About a Boy (Film; 2002)

The Blue Dahlia (Film; 1946)

Buccaneer Bunny (WB LT Cartoon; 1948)

Captains and the Kings, by Taylor Caldwell (Novel; 1972)

Clash and Carry (Chilly Willy Cartoon; 1961)

Cover Her Face, by P.D. James (Novel; 1962) [Adam Dalgliesh #1]

Deep Impact (Film; 1998)

Dennis the Menace in Mayday for Mother (DePatie-Freleng Animated TV Special; 1981)

Dr. Jerkyl’s Hide (WB LT Cartoon; 1954)

Dr. No (US Film; 1963) [James Bond #1]

Down to Earth or The Bullwinkle Bounce (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 47; 1960)

Dracula (Film; 1958)

The Driver’s Seat, by Muriel Spark (Novella; 1970)

Elbow Room (America Rock Cartoon; Schoolhouse Rock; 1976)

Endless Love, recorded by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross (Song; 1981)

Fall Story or Adrift in the Lift (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 48; 1960)

A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney (Essay Collection; 1982)

Frolicking Fish (Disney Cartoon; 1930)

The Good Shepherd, by C.S. Forester (Novel; 1955)

Grace and Frankie (TV Series; 2015)

Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales (Book; 1835)

Hot Pursuit (Film; 2015)

Huey’s Father’s Day (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1959)

The Lady of the Lake, by Sir Walter Scott (Poem; 1810)

Let It Be, by The Beatles (Album; 1970)

The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe (Novel; 1794)

Olive Oyl and Water Don’t Mix (Fleischer Popeye Cartoon; 1942)

Pacific 231, by Arthur Honegger (Orchestral Work; 1924)

Ragtime, by E.L. Doctorow (Novel; 1975)

Red Riding Hood (MGM Cartoon; 1943)

The School for Scandal, by Richard Brinkley Sheridan (Play; 1777)

Solar Opposites (Animated TV Series; 2020)

The Stand (TV Mini-Series; 1994)

Star Trek (Film; 2009)

Technocracked (Ub Iwerks Cartoon; 1933)

Three Imaginary Boys (a.k.a. Boys Don’t Cry), by The Cure (Album; 1979)

Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’, by Michael Jackson (Song; 1983)

War as I Knew It, by George S. Patton Jr. (Memoir; 1947)

Woody’s Clip Joint (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1964)

Today’s Name Days

Ida, Klara, Ulla, Ulrike (Austria)

Arsen, Ida, Marija (Croatia)

Státní svátek (Czech Republic)

Stanislaus (Denmark)

Timmo, Timmu, Timo (Estonia)

Heino (Finland)

Désiré (France)

Ida, Klara, Ulla, Ulrike (Germany)

Arsenios, Melios, Theologos (Greece)

Mihály (Hungary)

Desiderato, Egli, Geronzio, Maria, Michele, Rosario, Vittore (Italy)

Aiga, Ceronis, Inita, Staņislavs, Stefanija (Latvia)

Audrius, Džiugas, Mykolas (Lithuania)

Åge, Åke (Norway)

Dezyderia, Ilza, Marek, Michał, Piotr, Stanisław (Poland)

Ioan (România)

Ingrida (Slovakia)

Eladio, Heladio, Luján, Pedro, Víctor (Spain)

Åke (Sweden)

Acacia, Acacio, Acacius, Ace, Hal, Harold, Harriet, Harris, Harrison, Harry, Hattie (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 129 of 2024; 237 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 3 of week 19 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Saille (Willow) [Day 25 of 28]

Chinese: Month 4 (Ji-Si), Day 1 (Ren-Shen)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025) [Wu-Chen]

Hebrew: 30 Nisan 5784

Islamic: 29 Shawwal 1445

J Cal: 9 Magenta; Twosday [9 of 30]

Julian: 25 April 2024

Moon: 1%: Waxing Crescent

Positivist: 17 Caesar (5th Month) [Regulus]

Runic Half Month: Lagu (Flowing Water) [Day 14 of 15]

Season: Spring (Day 51 of 92)

Week: 2nd Week of May

Zodiac: Taurus (Day 19 of 31)

Calendar Changes

梅月 [Méiyuè] (Chinese Lunisolar Calendar) [Month 4 of 12] (Plum Month) [Earthly Branch: Snake Month] (Sìyuè; Fourth Month)

[brookston]

Holidays 5.8

Holidays

Ace Day of Visibility Day

Adam Lambert Day (San Diego)

Brian May Day (UK)

Children’s Day (Maldives)

A Day Without Child Care

A Day Without Socks

Emancipation Day (Columbus, Mississippi)

Fête de I'iris (Brussels, Belgium)

Free Trade Day

Furry Dance (a.k.a. The Flora; Helston, Cornwall, UK)

Infant Mortality Awareness Day

International Blue Iguana Day

International Thalassemia Day

International Viking Day

Iris Day

Jamestown Day

Let It Be Day

Liberation Day (Czech Republic, Norway, Slovakia)

Miguel Hidalgo Day (Mexico)

National Amyloidosis Day (Australia)

National Archery Day

National Catahoula Day

National Coral Reef Day (Indonesia)

National Dakota Day

National Maria Day

National Meeting Planners Appreciation Day

National Nova Day

National Outdoor Intercourse Day

National Report Government Contractor Fraud Day

National Student Nurses Day

National Women’s Checkup Day

No Socks Day

Parents’ Day (Korea)

Provider Appreciation Day

Reward Yourself Day

Time of Remembrance and Reconciliation for Those Who Lost Their Lives During the Second World War Day (UN)

Truman Day (Missouri)

Veterans Day (Norway)

Victory in Europe Day (a.k.a. V-E Day)

Westminster Dog Show Anniversary Day

World Donkey Day

World Ovarian Cancer Day

World Red Cross & Red Crescent Day

World Smallpox Eradication Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

Coca-Cola Day (a.k.a. Have a Coke Day)

Empanada Day

Give Someone a Cupcake Day

National Coconut Cream Pie Day

National Have a Coke Day

2nd Monday in May

American Craft Beer Week begins [2nd Monday; thru 16th]

Child Welfare Professionals Recognition Day (Florida) [2nd Monday]

World Melanoma Day [2nd Monday]

Feast Days

Amato Ronconi (Christian; Saint)

Apparition of Saint Michael (Christian; Saint)

Arsenius the Great (Christian; Saint)

Back Scratching Day (Pastafarian)

Buddha Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Camillus (Positivist; Saint)

Catherine of St. Augustine (Christian; Saint)

Chivington Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

The Crumb (Muppetism)

Delousing Day (Church of the SubGenius)

Desideratus (Christian; Saint)

The Festival of Mens (Ancient Roman Goddess of Mind and Consciousness)

Fulla’s Blot (Pagan)

The Furry Dance (a.k.a. The Flora; Cornwall, UK)

Gybrian of Ireland (Christian; Saint)

Ida of Nivelles (Christian; Saint)

Julian of Norwich (Anglican, Lutheran)

Magdalene of Canossa (Christian; Saint)

Mates Day (Pastafarian)

Odrian of Waterford (Christian; Saint)

Our Lady of Luján (Christian; Saint)

Peter of Tarentaise (Christian; Saint)

Teresa Demjanovich (Ruthenian Catholic Church)

Wiro of Ireland (Christian; Saint)

White Lotus Day (Theosophy)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Sakimake (先負 Japan) [Bad luck in the morning, good luck in the afternoon.]

Unglückstage (Unlucky Day; Pennsylvania Dutch) [17 of 30]

Premieres

About a Boy (Film; 2002)

Buccaneer Bunny (WB LT Cartoon; 1948)

Captains and the Kings, by Taylor Caldwell (Novel; 1972)

Deep Impact (Film; 1998)

Dr. Jerkyl’s Hide (WB LT Cartoon; 1954)

Dr. No (US Film; 1963) [James Bond #1]

Down to Earth or The Bullwinkle Bounce (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 47; 1960)

Dracula (Film; 1958)

Endless Love, recorded by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross (Song; 1981)

Fall Story or Adrift in the Lift (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 48; 1960)

A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney (Essay Collection; 1982)

Frolicking Fish (Disney Cartoon; 1930)

Grace and Frankie (TV Series; 2015)

Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales (Book; 1835)

Hot Pursuit (Film; 2015)

The Lady of the Lake, by Sir Walter Scott (Poem; 1810)

Let It Be, by The Beatles (Album; 1970)

The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe (Novel; 1794)

The School for Scandal, by Richard Brinkley Sheridan (Play; 1777)

Solar Opposites (Animated TV Series; 2020)

The Stand (TV Mini-Series; 1994)

Star Trek (Film; 2009)

Three Imaginary Boys (a.k.a. Boys Don’t Cry), by The Cure (Album; 1979)

Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’, by Michael Jackson (Song; 1983)

Today’s Name Days

Ida, Klara, Ulla, Ulrike (Austria)

Arsen, Ida, Marija (Croatia)

Státní svátek (Czech Republic)

Stanislaus (Denmark)

Timmo, Timmu, Timo (Estonia)

Heino (Finland)

Désiré (France)

Ida, Klara, Ulla, Ulrike (Germany)

Arsenios, Melios, Theologos (Greece)

Mihály (Hungary)

Desiderato, Egli, Geronzio, Maria, Michele, Rosario, Vittore (Italy)

Aiga, Ceronis, Inita, Staņislavs, Stefanija (Latvia)

Audrius, Džiugas, Mykolas (Lithuania)

Åge, Åke (Norway)

Dezyderia, Ilza, Marek, Michał, Piotr, Stanisław (Poland)

Ioan (România)

Ingrida (Slovakia)

Eladio, Heladio, Luján, Pedro, Víctor (Spain)

Åke (Sweden)

Acacia, Acacio, Acacius, Ace, Hal, Harold, Harriet, Harris, Harrison, Harry, Hattie (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 128 of 2024; 237 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 1 of week 19 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Saille (Willow) [Day 23 of 28]

Chinese: Month 3 (Bing-Chen), Day 19 (Bing-Yin)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 17 Iyar 5783

Islamic: 17 Shawwal 1444

J Cal: 7 Bīja; Sevenday [7 of 30]

Julian: 25 April 2023

Moon: 86%: Waning Gibbous

Positivist: 15 Caesar (5th Month) [Junius Brutus]

Runic Half Month: Lagu (Flowing Water) [Day 14 of 15]

Season: Spring (Day 50 of 90)

Zodiac: Taurus (Day 19 of 30)

[rhetoricandlogic]

“Truth is Their Weapon.” – A Review of Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng

Some time ago, there was an article on Lithub titled “The Greatest Goths in Literary History”: something fun and light that poked gentle fun at some notable writers. Since I have some friends who are fascinated by goth culture and even participate in it, I posted the link on my Facebook and tagged the friends in question. One of them pointed out that Arthur Conan Doyle’s belief in fairies is actually very much goth – especially if one believes in “old-school” fairies: by which she means the Fae of European folklore.

That is an idea I very much agree with. After all, if “gothic” can be broadly defined as “dark, eerie, and slightly macabre”, then the Fae very much fit into that definition. It takes some digging, since so much of the older stories has been obscured by more recent interpretations of fairies, but a quick reading of the older stories shows that the Fae are not the bright, happy, cherubic creatures so often portrayed in children’s literature and media. They are harbingers of death, or givers of blessings. They are impish pranksters who mean little to no harm, or wilful deceivers who lead mortals into harm’s way. They steal men, women, and babies; sometimes they return them, but always with caveats. Oftentimes, they are all those things, all at once. The Fae occupy a space in the imagination that seems limned with light, but if the reader looks close enough, looks hard enough, he or she realises that all that light actually hides – or creates – some very deep, very dark shadows.

This is the vision of the Fae that Jeannette Ng presents in her novel Under the Pendulum Sun. Set in an alternate history of the 1800s, the narrator is Catherine Helstone, who journeys to Arcadia, the land of the Fae, in search of her brother Laon. Upon arrival, however, she is brought to Gethsemane: an old mansion where she is told to await her brother’s return from whatever journey he has gone on. But Gethsemane hides secrets within its walls, and as Catherine starts piecing those secrets together, truths are gradually revealed that could alter her perspective of Arcadia, the Fae, her brother – and herself.

One of the first and most important things readers need to know about this book is that it is multilayered, and those layers go pretty deep. On the surface, it looks like the standard gothic novel with some fairytale elements, but if the reader digs deeper then he or she begins to find threads that point to other sources. The literary references are fairly obvious: traces of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and Keats’ La Belle Dame sans Merci can all be found quite easily, and likely spring to mind easily as well, given the references to the Fae.

But less obvious are the theological references: callbacks to Milton, Dante, Calvin, and other theological authors and philosophers are littered throughout the text. Then there are other, far less obvious references that I cannot tease out due to my lack of knowledge of said texts. On one hand, this makes sense, since Catherine and Laon are meant to be missionaries converting the Fae to Christianity, but on the other the references go deeper than that. They all tie into the themes: questions about the nature of God, faith and the soul are obvious, of course, but there are also more philosophical questions buried in there, questions about how to define truth, and how stories and storytelling play into the creation of truth.

Of course, all of this means that this is a rather complicated, multilayered read. Indeed, reading this novel reminded me of Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning. In Too Like the Lightning, Palmer uses Enlightenment philosophy as the primary underpinning for the novel; similarly, Ng uses theology and medieval and Renaissance literature as the primary underpinning for Under the Pendulum Sun. If the reader does not have the same level of knowledge that the author does, then he or she is likely going to miss something, or have a reference go over his or her head.

Personally, I do not think this is a bad thing; part of the reason why I read books in the first place is to learn new things, and if a book exposes gaps in my knowledge then that’s quite fine with me. It just means there is more to discover out there, more things to learn, and I am one of those people who is always happy to know that the horizon of my knowledge has not yet come so close that I am running out of new things to know.

I am aware, however, that all of this subtlety is not to other readers’ tastes. That is understandable, since some readers just do not have the patience for untangling all the small references that the author has layered into this book. In some novels, this might be a make-or-break kind of deal, but fortunately in this one, that is not the case. This novel does not require a degree in theology, or one in medieval and Renaissance literature, to enjoy – though of course, such knowledge certainly adds to the enjoyment. Readers are free to read this purely as a gothic horror story, but if they have the kind of background knowledge to understand all the references included in the story, then they will derive that much more enjoyment from it.

And speaking of plot, this novel has an amazingly well-crafted one. I like it when I cannot always predict which way a plot will turn, and this novel had quite a few twists and turns that I rarely saw coming. I encounter such books fairly rarely, so when I do read one it is always a genuine pleasure for me.

I must note here, however, that one of those twists makes use of a trope that I am not sure other readers will enjoy. I shall not mention it, since to do so would be to give away a particularly large spoiler, but I would like to reassure readers that the author manages to handle it fairly well, all things considered – especially given how other creators have handled this particular trope. Still, it is there, and if readers of this review are concerned about it, I would be willing to inform them of it in the comments.

Overall, Under the Pendulum Sun is what I call a “Chinese puzzle ball” story: beautifully crafted and structured, but containing a deeper, hidden heart that takes patience to reach. As is often the case with many puzzles, the pleasure is not in solving the puzzle, but in the journey to that solution: the many possibilities and options the mind considers as it tries to get to the heart of the matter. That is very much the case with this novel, and while some readers might not enjoy its intricacies, I am certain there are plenty more out there who will derive great pleasure from this rich, multilayered read.