#bun reads nineteen eighty

[merrilark]

Title: Nineteen Eighty Author: David Peace Genre: Fiction / Mystery Page Count: 376 Trigger Warnings: Murder, mentions of rape (somewhat explicit? a character talks about what happened to her to a detective; unlike Seventy-Four and Seventy-Seven, there are no actual rape scenes), brief mentions of miscarriages, and homophobia but not half as bad as in the previous novels. This novel is fairly “safe” by comparison.

The quartet is finally nearing an end with the third installment, Nineteen Eighty, following Detective Peter Hunter as its narrator. 

In contrast to the novels before it, Nineteen Eighty is a much more straightforward, cut and dry detective novel. Peace still likes to use repetition and a poetic, almost lyrical style here and there, but the content feels more substantial than Seventy-Four and far, far, far less surreal than Seventy-Seven. Unfortunately, though it’s easier to follow, it’s also quite a bit more boring than the previous novels. Detective Hunter leads several very interesting interviews, particularly with the now clinically insane Jack Whitehead, and the Ripper Tapes subplot was hair-raising, but overall it doesn’t really feel like he did much besides tell us things that we had already pieced together through Jack in Seventy-Seven. By the time we get to the final chapters and the Yorkshire Ripper (here Peter Williams, not the real-life Peter Sutcliffe), the novel has lost a lot of its momentum and the end feels... sudden? A little rushed? It’s almost as if Peace wrote himself into a corner and realized that Peter was just too nice to make the kind of discoveries that Eddie or Jack could.

That said, Peter Hunter is a refreshing main character. Likable, professional, kind, level-headed, and despite having been once unfaithful to his wife in the past, he’s actually a very good husband who treats his wife with respect and gentleness. If you haven’t read the other books, it’s probably worth saying that the bar for Red Riding’s married couples is extremely low. To get a character who seems to genuinely love his wife and want to be a better husband is sooo nice. A+, way to go Peter. 

Red Riding’s trademark use of animal and religious motifs or color as symbolism was somewhat lacking in this novel. What little it did have was somehow more confusing than in Nineteen Seventy-Seven, but there is a point at the end where Peter imagines himself sprouting huge black, rotting wings. I like to think that this is confirmation that the black birds in Eddie’s nightmares were symbols for the police, as well as maybe a manifestation of Peter’s hopelessness and guilt. He is meant to be one of the good guys, a “guardian angel” of sorts, but he’s in too far over his head. Too, he’s begun to realize how rotted the police force is and feels responsible as one of them, even though he isn’t corrupt himself. 

I wish that there was more to say about this novel, but there really isn’t. It’s good, and there were parts that I enjoyed, that got my heartrate going, but it was very middling most of the time for me, personally. 

[maevefiction]

Your Light in the Mist - Chapter 53: Epilogue

Sunday June 29th, 2036 - Talk Story Bookstore, Kauai, Hawaii.

Stepping inside Talk Story after two decades had passed was surreal. It remained essentially the same, right down to the red painted walls. I, too, remained essentially the same, if you ignored the wrinkles that had begun to etch themselves into the flesh of my fifty-eight-year-old face…laugh lines, frown lines, and a downright furrow between my eyebrows from a lifetime of what-the-fuckery. The grey hair that had first appeared when I found myself wrangling three children all under the age of five was now expertly masked with copious amounts of dye applied by the talented folks at Zig-Zag Hair & Body. I still did yoga on a regular basis, more now that the kids were…well, grown, I guess. For the most part. Which was really a mind-blower, as is everything else associated with the passage of time in regard the human condition. Aging, kids, is not for the weak. No one tells you that if you sleep too long, your body parts will hurt. Your tits will sag, you’ll pee your pants when you cough, sneeze, or laugh too hard, your hands will ache if you, you know, use them to do stuff…like hold books. Your knees will creak to the point where you aren’t sure if it’s you making sounds or the stairs you’re descending. After you’ve finished a round of particularly vigorous doggy-style, you’ll find yourself uncertain as to which will be more detrimental…remaining in place or attempting to get off the bed. It’s an unimaginable brutality, standing powerless against the effects of time on your physical being while the inner you, the corporeal you, does not follow suit. This Maude was the same Maude who had married the love of her life in this very place, right down to her limitless desire for Lindor truffles and continued disgust at the idea of pineapples on pizza. I can, however, confirm that time does aid in the healing process, which is how we ended up back on Kauai. Each year that passed put more distance between us and the horror we’d endured, and little by little we were able to work through it, first by being able to actually view our wedding photos and videos, then feel small bits of joy while doing so, until finally, sixteen years out, the fear and anxiety was almost fully overridden by that joy. And here we were, on the day of our 20th wedding anniversary, right where it had all begun.

Some unpleasant memories, though faded and dim, still lingered, and as a result neither Tom nor I could bring ourselves to return to the Coconut Beach Marriott. The kids were all aware of the circumstances surrounding our wedding and the days that followed, as we’d vowed to be open and honest about it if the subject ever came up, because we preferred that they learned the truth from us rather than believing what they might have seen on the internet. Two years ago the need for the ‘the talk’ had arisen, and Henry’s reaction had utterly floored me…he’d leapt up off the couch, pulled me into his arms and whispered that he’d hoped his presence had brought me some comfort and that he wished he’d been able to do more. He’d turned nineteen in February, my firstborn, and even though as a parent you’re not supposed to, like, have a favorite…he was, in fact, my favorite, at least in the sense that there was a depth and level of understanding between us that was akin to psychic connection. Perhaps it was due to our shared trauma, or perhaps it was the trauma that caused me to relate to him differently…though in the end, it didn’t matter because I’d never expressed such a sentiment out loud, nor would I. Besides, I’d always known that he already knew anyway.

 Henry…also known as Our Son the Writer, as well as Indy Gallagher, his chosen pen name. He’d taught himself to read at age four, having grown frustrated with Tom and I not being able to drop whatever we were in the middle of, which was usually dealing with one of his siblings, in order to do it on his behalf. From that point forward, books and the stories they contained were his passion…he was never without reading material, absorbing any and all information he encountered and losing himself completely in imagined realities, always longing for more. It was that longing which set him upon the path to becoming an author when he was thirteen, having found himself unwilling and unable to accept that George R. R. Martin’s ‘A Song of Fire and Ice’ series had gone unfinished and deciding he’d tackle the task on his own. A year and many kudos on AO3 later he’d started to build his own fictional universe, and when he self-published the first book of the series, ‘Times Prior’, in August of 2034 it sold a half-a-million copies inside of sixty days without any marketing whatsoever. The main characters were inter-dimensional entities left stranded on Earth, their memories thought to have been wiped clean, and the story followed their journey as they sought to combine the snippets of their past that remained into a single coherent whole that revealed their history while attempting to covertly integrate with humanity. Book two, ‘Presented Puzzles’ had been released in early December of last year, hitting the million mark within two weeks. Though I already had first edition tucked away at home, I hoped to find one here to purchase so I could secure the receipt to the flyleaf with a notation that this copy had been purchased from the location where Indy Gallagher’s own story had begun.

 When I felt Tom’s hand on my back as he stopped to stand on my left, I turned my head his way, peering upward. Though he had his share of wrinkles and his hair, which he’d taken to wearing long enough to brush his chin, had gone completely grey at the temples with salt and pepper throughout the rest, the fucker did NOT look fifty-five. Not to me, anyway…when you’re young and you imagine being fifty-five it seems so damn old, but when it’s staring you in the face, or especially once you’ve passed it by yourself, not so much. There were still bricks in his stomach, his ass remained quarter-bounce ready, and, now that the Hiddlespawn had matured, I took advantage of the Silver Fox Hotness Level One Billion as often as humanly possible. As you do. He grinned at me, then leaned in to nuzzle my cheek with his own.

 “Well, here we are, my love, at long last. How the ever-loving fuck has it been twenty years? Speaking of…perhaps I can interest you in a waltz down memory lane via a certain out-of-the way restroom?”

 My jaw dropped open. “Oh my god, how dare you? Since when am I the kind of woman who has sex in public places?”

 He laughed, tongue poking out between his teeth. “To the best of my recollection, since…forever.”

 I crossed my arms, eyes rolling skyward. “Your recollection has clearly become unreliable, old man.”

 “Mmm hmm. Meet me there in twenty?”

 "Absofuckingloutely." I uncrossed my arms with the intention of pinching his nipple through the fabric of his white V-neck T-shirt, but was interrupted by the arrival of our entourage as they filed through the door and filtered into the space around us.

 Simon settled in to my right, with Luke at his side, as per usual. Simon’s approach to aging was best described as rage, rage against the dying of the light…his hair remained blonde, though these days, much like Tom, he’d been wearing it longer, so much so that he occasionally sported a ponytail. Just a ponytail, never, ever a man bun. Never. I was, and I quote, to ‘dispatch him quickly and without prejudice’ if I ever witnessed him committing such an unforgivable offense. Fillers and chemical peels were a regular occurrence, as were weekly spa visits and a thorough daily skin cleansing and hydrating regimen. He made use of our gym more than Tom or I did and had taken up running more than a decade ago, which he’d deemed necessary in order to have enough physical stamina to open his own restaurant. It was a joint venture with his son Roland, aptly named Ka-Tet…with permission from Uncle Steve, of course, who was still cranking out wordy goodness at eighty-nine. It was located close to home, near Regent’s Park in the space formerly occupied by Odette’s, with a décor that was best described as dystopian spaghetti western. There was no set menu…Simon decided he’d be preparing whatever the fuck he felt like making on any given day, take it or leave it…and they were only open Friday and Saturday nights, which created an air of exclusivity that resulted in the place being booked almost a year in advance. It was perfect work-life balance for him, and whenever anyone mentioned how youthful he appeared he’d nod and reply that all credit belonged to his favorite preservation method…daily alcohol infusions.

 Luke remained at the helm of Prosper, though he’d pulled back significantly since Ka-Tet had opened and essentially served only in an advisory capacity. He’d begun to lose his hair just prior to turning forty, and he’d opted to just shave it all off and embrace baldness as opposed to undergoing transplants or wearing a toupee. It suited him, honestly, and his penchant for quirky glasses and three-day stubble seemed to transform him into the way he was always meant to look. Scholarly, like a college professor. Which he and Simon had role-played, as I’d been forced to discover even though my hands were covering my ears, because Simon wouldn’t take no for an answer and spoke louder instead when I requested that he keep that shit to himself. I watched as he reached for Simon’s hand without even a glance downward, their fingers twining together in a gesture so often repeated it was automatic, built into the fabric of their muscle memory. They turned to smile at each other, then shifted their gazes in unison to focus on their daughters as they passed by to their right.

 Seph’s light brown hair was wound up in a bun that rested at the base of her neck, dressed in a light blue linen tank dress that matched the frames of her glasses. She resembled Luke a great deal, other than her lips and nose, the former much fuller, the latter more rounded at the tip. Her frame was lithe, almost lanky, and she stood an inch or two taller than me sans heels. In the fall she’d be returning to Cambridge for her second year in pursuit of her BA Tripos Degree in Law, after which she intended to obtain a Masters in Law, then finally a Doctorate in Law. Ez, who was essentially a carbon copy of Simon as far as physicality was concerned, was currently a student at the New York School of Design and would be heading back to the city after our vacation. She’d just finished the Fashion Design certificate program and was scheduled to intern at Manhattan Fashion in the Garment District from July 15th through September 1st, at which point she’d return to NYSD to complete their Couture and Menswear programs back to back.  She’d designed the dress Seph was wearing, as well as her own, a white cotton sleeveless wrap-around that hugged her curves and accentuated her impossibly tiny waist. Which I supposed was made possible, along with exceptional genetics, by running six days a week, an activity she’d often participated in with the other masochists in my life…Simon, Tom and Henry. Now that she was based in New York it was solely Henry, their ability to pair up simplified by the fact that both of them resided in the same building, Henry in my old apartment, Ez in hers two floors below. He was standing next to her, dwarfing her five-foot-six frame with his own, his height topping out at six-foot-one, just an inch shy of Tom’s. His hair, worn shoulder-length, was black like my mother’s but curly like mine, eyes identical to Tom’s in shape and color. He had Tom’s nose as well, but my lips and jaw. Like his father, he was lean but muscular, blessed with a gracefulness that I had never possessed. He’d relocated to New York the previous summer to focus on writing, opting to forgo college in the wake of the success of his debut novel. I agreed that college would be a waste, being a firm believer in the fact that one could either write, or couldn’t, but I’d called bullshit on the ‘going away to focus’ aspect, at least privately when Tom and I discussed it. He and Ez had always been very good friends, nearly inseparable, and I felt it in my bones that the real reason he’d decided to leave London was so they could remain in close proximity to one another. Her desire to live in the same building had been presented as great way for both of them to adjust to new surroundings without feeling isolated, which was true, but again, my bones had whispered that there was something bubbling beneath the surface. There had been no confirmation as yet, and I’d stopped mentioning it when Tom, the most hopeless romantic amongst all hopeless romantics, told me I was turning into an even more hopeless romantic than he’d ever been. But it hadn’t stopped me from, you know, looking for signs.

A flash of flaming red glimpsed out of the corner of my eye caused me to turn and look to my left, basking in the breathtaking sight of the whirling dervish that was our daughter, Mona Diane Hiddleston, born at sunset on Wednesday, June 17th, 2018. Her hair was the color of my father’s and Tom’s paternal grandmother’s, wavy like Tom’s, worn long and loose and hanging halfway down her back. Her eyes were brown like mine, and shaped like them as well, but the rest of her face was all Tom. She was five-foot-nine, and often described as a force of nature, at which point I’d smile and say that I had not the slightest idea who she’d gotten that sort of personality from. She’d be relocating to New York in mid-August to begin her dual-enrollment program at Julliard, studying both Instruments and Composition with the goal of a Doctorate in Musical Arts and a career as a conductor in mind. Unlike me, she could read and write music, and play any instrument she was handed with little to no training. Her singing voice was exceptional, her range higher than mine though not quite as broad, but she’d never expressed any interest in developing it other than participating in the school chorus because she needed an elective to flesh out her schedule. Mona had been our ‘difficult’ child…as a baby she’d been fussy, easily irritated with a sleep schedule that was measured in fifteen-minute increments, and as a toddler we’d dealt with outbursts and tantrums over what we considered to be thoroughly minor issues, such as the lights being too bright, her clothes being too tight, or the seams of her socks being ‘wrong’. Throughout it all, the only consistent way to soothe her had been with music, be it listening to it or creating her own using our piano, pots and pans, or anything else that provided rhythmic sounds. Shortly after she turned five, she was diagnosed with sensory processing disorder, which we learned later on went hand-in-hand with her being highly gifted. All three kids were, which wasn’t exactly a surprise given Tom’s and my placement on the IQ scale, but giftedness manifests differently in each individual with a variety of traits, some more challenging to cope with than others. Once we’d established a methodology for managing her SPD, she was like a different human being…strong, steadfast, boisterous, fully confident in her sense of self and intent on extracting each and every thing she expected from this world without apology. And my god, I was so very, very fucking proud to be her mother. And honored. She’d noticed I was staring at her and had just opened her mouth to ask me why when our youngest bounded out from behind her, paused briefly at her left, then pivoted to park himself directly in front of her.  

 Sean James Hiddleston, born Friday, October 23rd, 2020 five minutes before midnight, named as such due to the fact that the blue hue of the eyes that peered up at me when he opened them for the first time was identical to my father’s. He’d been a complete surprise, so much so that I hadn’t even realized I was pregnant until I was three months in…at 42, I’d figured missed periods meant I was embarking on the journey into menopause, and when Tom suggested that perhaps I should take a pregnancy test I’d laughed and laughed. Henry had just turned three and Mona wasn’t quite two, and when I saw the giant plus sign in the test window the laughter faded damn fucking quick when I realized Tom and I would shortly be outnumbered by a trio of ankle biters all under the age of four. After the initial shock dissipated, we were overjoyed, in awe of how the universe continued to be so generous to us, providing yet another miracle. By the time I’d begun to show Henry was cognizant enough to ask questions, and when I informed him he’d soon have a new brother or sister his face had paled and he’d whispered ‘Mamma, will it be like Mona?’, causing Tom to run out of the room, unable to keep his shit together, while I comforted Henry by explaining that every baby is different, the entire time asking myself the same question he had internally. As it happened any worries about his temperament were for naught, because Sean had been a jovial soul right from the get go. He was the child, however, that we had to keep the closest eye on because if left to his own devices even for a second he’d be into something he shouldn’t have been, and when confronted he’d just grin and simply say ‘But I’m learning things.’ Even still, at fifteen-going-on-thirty, he uttered that same phrase at least once a day. Sometimes more. Like when I’d caught him trying to remotely hack into my brand new Alienware laptop two weeks prior…you know, just to see if he could. And, of course, he could. Of all three children he resembled Tom the most, blond wavy hair, same blue eyes, nose and jaw…the only bit of me in his face were his lips. He’d begun his adolescent growth spurt just after Christmas and had shot up from five-nine to six-two in what seemed like no time whatsoever, and if I did a side-by-side of him and Tom from his Eton days it wasn’t easy to tell who was who. Despite their physical similarities, Sean had been cursed with my lack of grace and had already broken almost every toe and sprained various extremities on the regular. He had been blessed, however, with my engineering and mathematical skills, and his abilities made an accelerated program via online courses the best option for him after he’d finished year six. Once he turned sixteen he’d be permitted entry into Cambridge’s School of Technology, where he planned to focus on Computer Science, but the next round of required classes wouldn’t be available until fall of 2037. Starting in September of this year he’d be officially interning at CodeHex, working both with me and other high-level employees across our departments. I say ‘officially’ because he’d been interning in an unofficial capacity for nearly four years, popping in every weekday as soon as he’d finished his online courses back at our flat. When he was a preschooler he’d spent a good bit of time there as well, at my side or on my lap, as I worked to establish the CodeHex company and brand during my ‘free’ hours while Henry and Mona were at school. On the first day of his own year one he’d frowned as Tom and I hugged and kissed him goodbye outside the school’s entrance, stating that while he was very excited to make all sorts of new friends and learn new things, he’d very much miss his old job and old friends. Then he’d spotted a girl with a Captain Marvel backpack and promptly ditched us in order to run over and introduce himself, turning back to wave and smile at us before returning his attention to her and walking into the building while Tom and I stood on the sidewalk crying our eyes out like a couple of schumucks.

 He’d moved closer to me, though still blocking his sister, arms raised and hands extended, palms toward Tom and I as he spoke.

 “This is it, then, is it Mum? Where you and Dad met? All those years ago? Right here? In this bookshop?”

 I nodded. “Yeppir. Also where we got engaged, and where we got married.”

 Tom elbowed me, and Simon twisted his torso sideways to gawk at me, his head cocked to the right.

 “Woman, have you finally lost your mind? You were married at the Marriot. I was there, looking resplendent in my purple tux while you puked in the bushes, remember?”

 Opting to attempt to make a royal fuck-up appear as if it were a conscious choice, I turned my head towards him, index finger of my right hand raised and pointing toward his chest. “Well, you’re not totally wrong…we were married at the Marriot, but that was actually our second ceremony. The first one happened here, right after midnight so it was officially on the twenty-ninth.”

 Simon gasped, placing his right hand over his heart, finders splayed wide. “Are you telling me right now, twenty fucking years later, that the two of you snuck off and got married without your best friends and spent the entire next day pretending your entirely invalid not at all legally binding apparently just for show wedding ceremony was one-hundred-percent genuine?”

 I bit my lip and glanced skyward briefly, then back at Simon. “Yes. Yes I am.”

 He reached out and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Maude Hiddleston, I have never been prouder of you than I am at this moment, you sneaky little MINX. How did you keep it a secret this whole time?”

 I shrugged. “Only four people on the planet knew…me, Tom, the judge and Roger Marshal.” While researching our trip we’d learned that Roger had passed away in 2033, but his daughter Denise had taken over the business. Tom and I planned on seeking her out during our visit, but hadn’t provided any advance notice as we felt that expressing our condolences in person would be most appropriate since Talk Story, and her father, had played such an important role in our lives. I poked Simon’s left pec with my right index finger. “Shouldn’t you be all ragey because you weren’t there or something?”

 He released my shoulders and crossed his arms in front of him, rested his right elbow in his left hand as he tapped his lips with his left index finger, then pointed it at me. “You know what? I fucking should be. But I’m not. Because I’m sure it was all mushy-mushy gushy-gushy and there was probably sniffling and crying and Shakespearean sonnet level verbal exchanges and therefore I’m dropping it in the ‘glad to have missed it’ bucket.” He mock-gagged, and as I swatted at him he pulled back and away, flipping me double birds.

 Mona stepped out from behind Sean, her head tilted to the left. “Well that diminishes both the impact and validity of all those lectures on the critical importance of honesty a bit, doesn’t it?”

 Tom roared with laughter, and I smirked. “I look forward to opening the box that contains my ‘HYPOCRITE’ T-shirt this coming Christmas morning. Men’s 2 XL, please. Black with white lettering. Maybe a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ on the back written in a script font?”

 Henry raised his hand as he joined in. “Oh! Oh! There must be some photographic evidence of the clandestine ceremony hidden away somewhere, I’d imagine? That absolutely needs to be on the T-shirt’s front-side. And Dad’s complicit, so we’ll have to have one made for him as well.”

 Sean grinned. “If such evidence exists, you can count on me to track it down.”

 I glanced over at Tom, who was still chuckling. “This whole kid thing…your idea, wasn’t it? I can’t fathom having done this to myself without being coerced by an insanely hot dude via repeated seductions until I…”

 All three of them screeched in unison. “MUM!”

 Tom pointed at them in turn. “The lesson here, progeny of mine, in case you needed a refresher course…your mother is a master of diversionary tactics and especially enjoys their implementation when the outcome is likely her having…hmm…how shall I phrase this delicately?”

 I snorted. “What your voluble father is attempting to convey without incurring my wrath is…the last word. I like having the last word. He neglected to mention that no topic is off limits in the pursuit of achieving that particular goal. So, shall we move on or would you prefer that I begin my dissertation on our wedding night activities?”

 Again, in unison, with Simon, Luke, Seph and Ez joining in this time around. “MOVE ON.”

 We all split off then, singly for some, in pairs for others, and wandered around the shop. Tom and I paused in the precise spot I’d been standing two decades earlier, narrowing down my reading options for what I’d thought would be hours of alone time on the beach. His arm slipped around my waist, and I circled his in turn, each of us leaning into the other, silent in our contemplation of the Before and the After, which is how we both viewed the stages of our lives prior to and since crossing paths. I could hear Sean exclaiming to Mona that he’d located the music section and that she just had to come see it immediately, Seph and Luke laughing as Simon assured them that yes, he did in fact still enjoy reading the Twilight Series novels and that there was nothing wrong with having a little vampy wolfie sad girl angsty fluff in your life thank you very much, and then, footsteps behind us…a strange echo of the past, and this time I didn’t hesitate to spin around to see who they belonged to. Tom did the same seconds afterward, and before us was a woman wearing a tea-length bright green tank dress, her jet-black hair worn in two braids that hung nearly to her waist. She smiled, and my mouth dropped open when I took note of her name tag. She smiled, realizing I’d recognized her.

 “Aloha, Hiddlestons. Welcome back to Talk Story.”

 I shook my head in disbelief. “Alani. Oh my god. Well, this is a mind fuck of epic proportions. And I’m spewing profanity. Whoops. Sorry.”

 Tom somehow managed to speak like an actual human being. “Alani! What a marvelous thing, seeing you again in this very special place…you’ve been well, I hope?”

 She laughed, then stepped forward to embrace both Tom and I, then pulled back. “I have. I teach at the Waimea High School during the year…9th grade English Literature. Weekends and summers inevitably find me here. This place seems to have a gravitational pull I’m unable…and unwilling…to escape.” Sighing, she glanced around the room, then fixed her gaze back on us. “Have you heard?”

 Nodding, I reached for Tom’s hand and took hold. “About Roger? Yes, but not until we started researching our trip. We wanted to wait to meet Denise to express our condolences. Is she available?”

 Alani shook her head, frowning slightly. “She’s not, I’m afraid. Honestly, we’ve not seen very much of her at all, and she hasn’t been back since she told us she was putting the place up for sale. Of course, I understand that it reminds her of her father and…”

 My grip on Tom’s hand tightened, as did his on mine, so much so that we both let go as if we’d received an electric shock. I took a deep breath, telling myself to be cool, Maude, be fucking cool before giving nonchalance a go.

 “So. Talk Story’s for sale? Huh. Well, we most definitely hadn’t heard that. I don’t recall seeing a sign…”

 Tom cleared his throat. “Neither do I. Does that mean a sale is pending, or is the property still available?”

 She nodded, which was not at all helpful, but the words she spoke afterward were. “It’s still available. The sign’s off to the right of the building, attached to the potted tree so it faces oncoming traffic. The realtor’s been in a few times since it went up in January, but never with any clients. Our revenue isn’t even a quarter of what it was a decade ago, and Denise isn’t very involved so things have gotten worse since Roger passed. At this point, I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be able to remain open, but I’m going to keep hoping that someone sees the value here, the history this place contains…” She cleared her throat, then shook her head back and forth slowly. “Goodness, I’m so terribly sorry. I honestly only meant to say hello…everything else just sort of…happened. I don’t know what came over me.”

 I reached out and patted her upper arm. “Please, no worries. This place seems to foster that sort of thing. Books aplenty with the occasional divine intervention. That’s so going on the marketing materials. You on board with that, Tom?”

 “Oh yes. Yes I am. Alani, do you happen to have the realtor’s number handy?”

 One walk-through, two hours, and countless document signatures later we were officially in contract to purchase Talk Story, with a closing date set for Tuesday, July 1st at 1 PM at the Kauai Coldwell Banker Realty office. Much like I had twenty-one years earlier, we all had to haul ass back to Kapaʻa in order to make our dinner reservation at Kauai Pasta, though this time we were a party of nine instead of three. We’d requested the same booth area, spilling over into the two additional sections in the same row that backed the wall. Tom and I, in an effort to be appropriately extra, ordered the exact same meal we’d ordered the day we met, but sat side-by-side instead of across from each other. Midway through the main course we turned to each other, smiling as our eyes met, and all the noise of friends and family faded into the background as we paused to remember, lost in our thoughts of days gone by, and I felt this monstrous rush of emotions…love, joy, peace, and so many more…and I was so…so…grateful. Granted, I was grateful every day, but this was an all-encompassing gratefulness, and I looked away for a moment to survey our friends, their children, and each of our own children in turn. Life is incredibly strange and unusual, even downright cruel at times, but like the weed-dealing kid in American Beauty said, “sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in”, and that’s where I was at in that moment, in the very same space that had fanned the flames of the spark that had emerged at Talk Story. Which we’d just bought. For nine-hundred and fifty thousand dollars, all contents included. I turned my gaze back to Tom, my head tilting to the right.

 “Did we, like, just actually buy a bookstore? As in, the bookstore we’ve always considered ‘our’ bookstore is now…our bookstore?”

 He nodded, and I felt his hand first on my knee, then creeping up under my shorts. “We did. And while I’m thoroughly delighted with that particular development, I’m also a tad disappointed because we missed out on our restroom rendezvous this go-round. Care to christen this one instead?”

 “Oh, that’s a bold move right there, Thomas. The ladies’ room is literally separated from this table by a single wall. I’ll go first, you get up five minutes later and lurk outside the door…I’ll leave it open a crack so I can keep watch. When the coast is clear I’ll pull you inside.”  I lowered my voice, whispering in his ear. “And then I’ll, you know, pull you inside again. And again.”

 He groaned quietly. “Woman. Cease. And go. Go now.”

 I excused myself, and that five minutes seemed to take a thousand years. There was fire in his eyes when he shut and locked the door behind him, and without a word he turned me around, bent me over the sink, pulled off my shorts and underwear and fucked me so hard I couldn’t help but cry out his name as I came, which he muffled quickly by covering my mouth with his left hand, which made me come again. And again. He soon followed, leaning down and biting my clothed shoulder gently to stifle his own cries. After he pulled out I stood upright, and he leaned in to kiss me, sucking my tongue into his mouth as he zipped himself up, peeked out the door, then exited and darted into the men’s restroom next door. I used the facilities, washed up, and waited for three minutes after I heard him finish up and walk by. A sly grin spread wide across his face awaited me as I returned to the table, and as I sat down Sean asked if we’d be ordering desert. Simon, ever the obnoxious asshat, smirked and commented that he was reasonably sure that some of us had already had their desert, which left Sean puzzled, Mona and Seph disgusted, and Henry and Ez blushing like mad, which really got my Spidey Senses all a-tingle. Luke simply smiled at me, shrugging helplessly, and I sighed, nodding, both of us silently accepting yet again that yes, this was indeed the life we’d chosen.

 As it happened, no desert was ordered…instead, we headed back to the beach house we’d rented on the Coconut Coast, in Anahola Beach Park, which was seven miles or so up from the Coconut Beach Marriott. With only four bedrooms, it meant the kids had to share, so Sean and Henry were in one room and Mona, Seph and Ez in another, but it was literally steps from the beach, totally private, and had a pool and a hot tub. All of that was lovely, but lovelier still was the item tucked away in the fridge…a two-tiered chocolate cake with layers of cheesecake filling, iced with white buttercream and decorated with green and purple fondant orchids. As Tom and I fed each other a slice, Simon smeared icing on the back of my neck. I retaliated by flinging a banana from a bowl on the counter in his direction because bananas are disgusting and there was no way I was wasting cake, and suddenly we were in the middle of an all-out food war that ended with all of us jumping into the pool fully clothed. Fun was had, at least until we clambered out of the water and got a gander at the current state of the formerly pristine kitchen. It was almost midnight by the time we finished cleaning up the mess we’d made, but we’d powered through by taking turns listening to our favorite playlists. Just as we’d begun to discuss our shower schedules, the first few notes of Adventure Of A Lifetime began to play. Without pausing to determine who was responsible for choosing it, Tom and I gravitated toward each other and began to dance, then sang, and as the song progressed we were joined by Simon, Sean, Henry, Ez, Mona, Seph and Luke. By the end we were essentially screaming the lyrics, a troupe of dancing fools bound by love and blood still sharing the same adventure, celebrating where we’d already been, exited for what we’d discover down the road. Everything you want’s a dream away…we are legends, every day.

 Later on, after all the good-nights were said and Tom had passed out after our engaging in some seriously spectacular anniversary shenanigans, I found myself wide awake. I walked to the glass sliders and stared past the pool at the reflection of the moonlight on the waves, the ebb and flow of the ocean that had always, to me, seemed representative of the back and forth, the ups and downs…all the moments of our lives as we pass through them. And then, there they were…Henry and Ez, walking toward the pool, holding hands. They too stood gazing out at the waves, and released each other’s hands to slip their arms around each other’s waists. Without warning, since I wasn’t privy to their conversation, Henry leaned backward, face to the sky, laughing the laugh that I knew sounded so very much like his father’s. I could see them both shaking with mirth, and they quieted slowly, her hand rubbing his back. As I continued to watch, transfixed, she rested her head against him, and he turned to pull her into his arms, then leaned down to kiss her.

 At that point what migh happen next was absofuckinglutely none of my business, so I turned around and headed back toward yet another temporary bed that contained the sleeping form of my personal, perfect, permanence, awash in moonlight. I was now more awake than ever, so I remained in a seated position next to him, my back resting against the headboard. He mumbled in his sleep, rolling over to drape his left arm across my lap. The desire to wake him up and share what I’d seen so I could have a ‘HA, I told you so’ moment was strong, but it was cast aside by a vivid memory from when Henry had been an infant. Tom had just returned from promoting Kong, and I, in my incredibly sleep deprived state, experienced an instance of déjà vu that evolved into a vision of me, at some point in the future, passing the sleeper Henry had been wearing that night to a young man. Back then, the voices I’d heard weren’t familiar, nor recognizable, but now…now they were, because I’d been listening to them all day long. I recalled that when I was still carrying him inside me, each time I’d held Ez, Henry had thrashed about wildly, something that had never occurred in such a fashion with anyone else. The entanglement particle theory came to mind, one that Tom had referenced in Only Lovers Left Alive, which Einstein had dubbed ‘spooky action at a distance’. If entwined particles become separated, even if they wind up at opposite ends of the universe, if one is altered or affected, the other will be identically altered or affected.

 I started down at the ring on Tom’s left hand, and the two on my own, one which had been inscribed with two lines of text at the bequest of the man who’d become my husband twenty years ago. On the first was ‘Talk Story - 6/29/15 - Our Story’, and on the second, ‘My Light in the Mist’. I was, briefly, unable to breathe, feeling that I suddenly, and for certain, temporarily, understood life, the universe and everything.

 Even in the darkest hour of our journey through this life, there’s light. You won’t see it in that moment, you might not see it for a long time afterward…but it’s there, hidden by darkness, and as the darkness begins to fade there will be tiny specks of it in the distance. Chase after them, because those specks – they’re hope. The fading darkness transitions to a thick fog, then a translucent mist…you may find yourself lingering there, in the in-between, reasonably content. Living, but with a sense of incompleteness that you can’t seem to define, are able to suppress, but can’t quite shake. That’s the light, reaching out for you. And one day, it will finally make contact. And if you’ll allow it, the light will take you by the hand and lead you out into the open where the sun can fully shine upon you again…or perhaps for the very first time. And I’m here to say…allow it. Grab that hand. Grab it with everything you have, and never let it go. No matter what, never, ever let it go.

- Maeve Curry, June 2015- July 2019

[ssjblueshogun]

Thank you so much for tagging me @breezytealy, I really appreciate that! ☆*:.｡.o(≧▽≦)o.｡.:*☆ So, I guess it’s my turn now :)

Name: Joanna (abbr. Asia/Joasia) so.. technically I’m a JoJo (I also find it funny that the italian equivalent of my name is Giovanna) Nickname: Asia Zodiac sign: Leo... which I’m a total opposite of, according to the personality traits I should possess as that zodiac sign ╮(︶▽︶)╭ Height: 5′6″/170cm so I’m the same height as Trunks. And I like that. Orientation: straight..I guess..but I consider myself more of an asexual person Nationality: Polish.Yeah. Favorite fruit: Apples are my absolute favourite (I’m a Ryuk-level connoisseur) but I also love blueberries, peaches, pears, plums and watermelons Favorite season: I love summer; the days are longer and it’s warmer. But not too hot (the optimum for me is when I can go out wearing a jacket, but it’s warm enough  to take it off and carry it in my hand) Favorite book: It’s difficult for me to pick one, but from the recent stuff I’ve read I’d reccomend “Ferdydurke” by Witold Gombrowicz, “Nineteen Eighty-Four″ by George Orwell (a must-read classic), “The Doll” by Boleslaw Prus (a classic in my country), “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and the “Metro” series by Dmitry Glukhovsky. But I think that the “Leviathan” by Scott Westerfeld is the series that I remember most fondly, epecially due to the fact that I shipped  the main protagonists VERY hard. Favorite flower: i like orchids and cornflowers (their blue colour is mesmerizing) Favorite scent: freshly mawed grass and that resin scent you can smell while walking near logs that have recently been cut down Favorite color: I usually wear black, grey and white but I also love blue Favorite animal: all of them (maybe with the exeption of pigeons that poop on my windowsill (；￣Д￣)

Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate: coffee. always.

Average hours of sleep: usually eight Cat or dog: I think both. Although I’ve never had a cat, but my grandparents have a dog which is the most adorable and goofy thing in the world Favorite fictional character: Many. I maybe make a top list one day, but for now, from the top of my head, it will be (no order):

1. Dragon Ball franchise: Vegeta, Bulma, Piccolo, Tien, Goten, Trunks (my brotp), Vegito, Zamasu, Shin, Whis, Pan, Bra, Uub (I really want them to have some development in the future) ...and General Blue and Goku in Dragon Ball

2. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure:

a) Jojos: Johnny, Josuke (Gappy), Jolyne and Jotaro

b) Jobros: Yasuho, Gyro, F.F., Buccellati, Mista, Koichi, Okuyasu, Kakyoin, Ceasar, Speedwagon

c) Villans: Dio, Diego (Dino), Kira and Valentine

3.Star Wars franchise: Luke Skywalker, Kylo Ren, K2-SO, Obi-wan, Leia and Ezra

4. Yu Yu Hakusho: Yusuke, Hiei and Kurama

5. Adventure Time: Finn and recently LSP (she ROCKED in the elements)

6.  Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Thoru, Mr. Fafnir and the cutest bun ever Kanna (may change; I’m on the 5th episode now and I love this show by far)

7. Soul Eater: Death the Kid

8. Kuroshitsuji: Ciel

9. Fullmetal Alchemist: Edward Elric, Winry and Greed

10. From the books: Stanislaw Wokulski, Jozio Kowalski, Bilbo Baggins, Artyom, Deryn Sharp and Aleksandar Ferdinand (my first otp)

Number of blankets you sleep with: one Dream trip: I really want to visit Japan, China, Saint Petersburg in Russia and Sweden Blog created: 2013, but started as one of those dark/depressive/vent blogs. I had some difficult time back then, struggling with anorexia and depression and I’m so glad I’ve returned to anime after I got into it at secondary school. I’m still having problems (I’m diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and eating disorders) but anime really helps me to cope with that, it brings some joy into my dull and empty life. Number of followers: 603, as of now

Woah, so , that’s about me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m tagging: @sarahw-world, @z-paladin, @anpan-chan, @margiepm, @lovecutenpsycho, @piccolodaimio, @angiewingie @bowie282 and anyone who wants to do this! But don’t feel obligated, you don’t have to if you don’t want to (*^‿^*)

[merrilark]

Getting to Piggott’s chapter and seeing that his POV is written all in second person:

[merrilark]

Welp. That closes Nineteen Eighty. There isn’t too much to say about it, but I’ll write a quick review a bit later tonight since I wrote a post for the other two. I’ve already jumped into the final novel, Nineteen Eighty-Three, and not even into chapter one Peace is already hurting me with poor BJ. orz

There’s usually a teaser or quote of some sort before the first chapter, and this time we get three: a short poem about Little Red Riding Hood, a very painful excerpt in BJ’s POV titled “The last beg”, and a quote from Voltaire.

I’m so excited to see my favorite character finally get a voice, but I am SO afraid for him. The excerpt alone made me tear up. Why did my heart decide it wanted this one for a comfort character?

[merrilark]

Omg

Eddie when asked about BJ: Yeah, IDK him, the guy I met was [blatantly wrong description to protect BJ despite not really liking him]

Peter when asked about BJ: Oh yeah, I saw him yesterday also he knows all this incriminating stuff about you guys but hey let me give you his exact location—

[merrilark]

Things the film should have left in: Detective Peter Hunter socking Reverend Martin Laws in the nose while in church. That was SO satisfying. 😌👌

[merrilark]

Dang. Nineteen Eighty is a lot dryer than the previous two books, but, boy, if I don't feel bad for Det. Hunter and his wife. I know they're doomed for a bad end as all the MCs are until Nineteen Eighty-Three, yet I keep hoping that they'll get some small joy before it all goes to the gutter.

Watching him and his wife want a child so badly reads with the same kind of cold, gut-wrenching mourning of the Denbroughs in Stephen King's It over Georgie, and Bill wondering about the distance it's caused between his parents. The cold, empty space between those relationships reads so viscerally similar. :(

[merrilark]

I'm over halfway done with Nineteen Eighty and I've not been liveblogging it quite as much bc frankly there isn't a lot to say about it. Hunter is 10x more likable than any other character we've had for an MC, save maybe Jack, but it's also just a much more cut and dry detective novel in comparison to the other two. Peace retains some of his surrealistic, poetic style in much smaller doses, which makes the story easier to understand, and also... drags it, a bit? It's not quite as fast paced as the previous novels and feels more rigid. This is probably meant to reflect Hunter's professional nature, but it leaves little to talk about lol

I think that—without spoiling the bigger points—I wish the film had included some of the mysterious writing that the novel includes, and maybe the whole thing about Jack's involvement with Laws and eventual admittance into the mental facility. It adds an interesting horror element that the slower film sorely needed. Or, even though it would have been a bit cheesy, BJ or Hunter narrating the more poetic parts that get repeated through the novel (ie — the "death factory" monologue, "on the dark stair we miss our step", etc.); since BJ already does this in the final film, I don't think it would be too jarring, and it would help carry that sort of... storybook energy that 1983 has thanks to BJ's narration.

Anyway, Nineteen Eighty is a lot tamer than the other two so far. It's refreshing. Though with more questions than answers, I worry that there won't be enough time to tie up all the loose ends and mysteries by the final book... We shall see!

[merrilark]

Oh my stars Jack Whitehead is ALIVE.

[merrilark]

TW for somewhat explicit description of murder and brain injury; Just rambling out a theory for Nineteen Eighty-Three regarding BJ...

I can’t know for sure until I finish Nineteen Eighty and Nineteen Eighty-Three, assuming the novels clarify it, but 1983, the film, implies that BJ has auditory hallucinations. I presume this is a result of the many, many traumatic events he’s gone through, but I also wonder if it could be in part Nineteen Seventy-Three’s allusion to BJ using cocaine or (and this is 100% speculation after reading Nineteen Eighty) legitimate brain damage.

In Nineteen Seventy-Seven, we learn Laws was involved in performing at least one fatal exorcism involving (for some godawful reason) driving a nail into a young woman’s skull; he was arrested for this prior to the events of the novels. Anyway, he performs a similar “exorcism” on Jack Whitehead in 1977, who comes to him willingly, and though it isn’t explicitly stated, I assume is killed by Laws as well.

It... appears? that this can be done without killing the person, though, assuming Jack isn’t so unreliable that he’d imagine a hole in Laws’ own head. So. My suspicion, and my fear, is that Laws has also performed this (non-fatally) on BJ sometime before 1983, and BJ’s sudden change in speech pattern between 1977 and 198x as well as the film’s mention of “voices” is actually brain damage rather than a trauma response. Which... I’m honestly not a huge fan of and I think it takes some interest away from BJ’s character? We’ll see.

My biggest hope is that Laws’ MO is explained and not just left to “oooOOOooOo psychopath priest!” because if done right, this could make him an extremely interesting villain. I just don’t want Peace to throw it away as doing evil for the sake of being evil like he kind of did with Eddie at the end of Nineteen Seventy-Three and Bob throughout Nineteen Seventy-Seven.

Aaaaanyyyway, this is neither here nor there. I won’t know ‘til I know, but in the meantime I’m screamin’! In a good, terrified, would-be-shoveling-popcorn-in-my-mouth-if-I-had-it way lol. For all I criticize Red Riding, the strength in this series really lies in its ability to keep you wondering what will happen next and how it unfolds. Thriller, indeed!

[merrilark]

Nineteen Eighty reads a lot more like the crime novel I expected out of the first two. Peter Hunter is (so far) the sort of determined, no-nonsense detective I wanted out of Fraser. He knows his job and does it well and thoroughly. He seems nice to boot so that's certainly refreshing. I'm starting to think I judged Peace too harshly; Eddie Dunford and Bob Fraser might have just been lemons.

[merrilark]

even though paddy considine did a lovely job with detective peter hunter in the 1980 film, i can't stop imagining christopher eccleston as peter as i'm reading the novel

[merrilark]

Well.

That. Certainly was an ending.

I have no idea what I just read, but the ending wasn't at all like the films. Hope? Maybe, if you squint. But there's no hope for BJ, who gets his revenge fully on his mother and Laws (the latter I really wish that they had kept), but has sealed his fate by lifting a shotgun to a band of policemen.

Hazel? Dead. Piggott? Dead. BJ? Probably dead and if not gone to prison. Jobson? I have no idea. I don't understand what I read there but it sounds like he's dead too...?

Most questions are answered, which is why I initially wanted to read the novels, but there are still many things I don't understand simply because the writing style was so bizarre.

I'll write a review for this later like I did for the others, but as far as the big question goes "Are they worth reading?": After that ending, my gut reaction has to say "no". They're intriguing shots of adrenaline and clarify a lot that the films struggled to portray, but I don't think that four books of head-scratching are worth the payoff unless you're just that masochistic.

Fffffffuh, that was bleak. I have to move on to something happier and lighthearted now.

[merrilark]

Let’s play another game of Is The Prose Too Convoluted, Is That The Point™, Or Am I Just Stupid?

The deeper I go into Nineteen Eighty-Three, the less BJ’s timeline makes sense (or anyone’s timeline, but lbr he’s the only one I care about). I think all of the jumping back and forth between the ‘60s and early ‘70s with Jobson, the ‘80s with Piggott, and back to the ‘70s with BJ is rreeeeally starting to confuse me. It also doesn’t help that a lot of characters have the same first names and sometimes are only referred to by their first names. BJ’s narration is getting more and more jumbled, too. I can’t tell what is actually happening and what is him hallucinating or having a flashback.

Mainly, and the most annoying thing, is that I’m really struggling to understand how BJ ends up from point A to point B between chapters. It was fairly linear before Clare’s murder, but now I feel like I’m missing huge chunks of important detail. For instance, one chapter ends with BJ in hiding with an unknown man approaching him and calling him by name; the way it’s written makes this feel like a cliffhanger, like something important, or dangerous is about to happen... And then in the next chapter BJ is just... somewhere else? No mention of who the man was, or what happened? It’s like either we jumped way ahead in time, or we’re meant to assume something bad did happen, and BJ is blocking it out.

The latter would actually be a very interesting given that BJ’s narration style is already littered with signs of C-PTSD. Sometimes it reads like he’s regressing into childhood, or having a panic attack, or dissociating... b u t, me, the reader, would still like to know what is happening. So if BJ blocking things out is part of Peace’s experimental style, I... think that’s neat, but perhaps too ambitious. 

For all of the confusion in Nineteen Seventy-Seven, I think that I actually might understand this final book less. Seventy-Seven was at least enjoyable in its absurdity. This, though? It just makes me realize that I should have taken more notes, something that should be done for fun, not a requirement to understand what’s happening.

[merrilark]

Title: Nineteen Eighty-Three Author: David Peace Genre: Fiction / Mystery Page Count: 405 Trigger Warnings: Everything. Got a trigger? Any trigger? Don’t read it. But, no, truly, this is maybe not the harshest of the quartet, but it is, in my opinion, the most disturbing. There’s quite a lot of child abuse (mostly brief, some of it is a bit explicit as told through the POV of a survivor), murder of course, suicide, religious trauma, torture, police brutality, humiliation, animal death... etc. etc. But the psychological horror and deterioration of the characters’ sanity was probably the most difficult for me personally.

And so closes the grim and relentless Red Riding Quartet. One more review and then I can put this one to bed. First I’ll talk about the book itself, and then at the very end I’ll talk briefly about how the four books relate to the three film adaptations.

Whoof. What a wild, horrible ride. Beautiful, somehow, even it its horribleness, but still absolutely not for the faint of heart. I wouldn’t advise binging the series like I did, no matter how seductive the octane rush of jumping straight into the next book might be. In some ways, it’s almost necessary to read them back-to-back in order to better see how all the moving parts weave together, but Peace’s repetitive, often surrealistic style becomes toilsome by the final novel and TRRQ’s misery becomes heavy to the point of making them a burdensome read. 

Nineteen Eighty-Three ties up most of the loose ends from the previous books, including some things I had entirely forgotten about from the very first novel, Nineteen Seventy-Four. It further solidifies Barry James “BJ” Anderson’s role as the red line connecting everyone and everything from the very beginning, if in a somewhat convoluted way. This is an impressive feat that I wasn’t sure Peace could pull off, but he did, and I appreciate that. However, out of all four novels, even in comparison to the psychotic absurdity of Nineteen Seventy-Seven, was the most difficult for me to understand.

Eighty-Three is told in three parts through three characters: Police officer Maurice “The Owl” Jobson, solicitor John “The Pig” Piggott, and prostitute / eventual thug BJ. Jobson’s POV is told in first person, Piggott’s second, and BJ’s POV is in third person for the majority of the book until his final few chapters where he switches suddenly to first. Each of these three parts are told at different periods: Jobson’s starts in the ‘80s then suddenly backs up to the ‘60s where it proceeds mostly linearly through the ‘70s and back into the ‘80s, Piggott’s the ‘80s, and BJ’s beginning in 1974 with intermittent flashbacks to childhood and eventually skipping to the ‘80s. Eventually all three narratives collide in 1983.

Fortunately, skipping around chronologically wasn’t confusing at the beginning as Peace usually puts the date somewhere at the start. Unfortunately, after a while, it didn’t matter because I was getting confused anyway with how many similar names and events were being tossed around, with little clue about which I should connect. Something about Peace’s repetitive style made this equally hard, as some plot points (torture scenes for instance) would be described in almost the exact same way, repeatedly. I began losing track of what was done to who and when, because I started remembering everything the same way. Throw in the fact that none of the narrators are reliable and most are mad or are going mad, and it’s just a terrible, muddy mess. Despite the stream of consciousness prose being written rather beautifully, I think it does sometimes get in the way of the story and is probably the biggest problem with TRRQ as a whole. 

Something else that makes the books challenging is that Peace loves to play with his readers. Despite each chapter being told from a character’s POV, the reader doesn’t know everything that the character does, and the character won’t always reveal the meaning behind their words, or the memory or piece of information that provides meaning to the thing that their experiencing. For instance, we don’t know that the dead woman that Jack keeps dreaming about in Seventy-Seven is his ex-wife until the end of that book, and in Eighty-Three, BJ keeps seeing a man whom he recognizes but never names. Many characters (mainly Jack, BJ, and Laws) speak in riddles which are never explained. Maybe if I re-read and re-read the series, I might understand them, but... this is not really a series that I think most people would want to re-read.

Anyway. Overall, I don’t regret reading this series. It excited and terrified me in a way that few books have, and I devoured them like I was starving. Certainly, TRRQ will be a series that I’ll remember for a long time, for both good and bad reasons, and it has taught me a lot about how I would like to experiment with my own writing. That said, having completed the series, I still don’t think that I would recommend them to most anyone. The payoff simply isn’t worth it and I found it much more unsatisfying than the films. Which leads me to the final thing I wanted to talk about...

The Red Riding Quartet vs. The Red Riding Trilogy.

I initially began reading the quartet after watching the film adaptations which cover books 1, 3, and 4 because the films themselves made little sense to me and I was determined to understand who killed Clare Kemplay. I got what I wanted, and more than I bargained for.

I think that if someone wants to read the books, they should definitely watch the films first. Both the original source and the film adaptations work brilliantly as companions to each other, and together they paint a much clearer, more satisfying picture than either do alone. However, if a person isn’t sure how they would like to experience Red Riding and can only do one or the other, I absolutely, 100% suggest watching the films over the books purely for the ending alone.

Where no one truly gets their happy ending in the quartet, the trilogy takes a (by comparison) much more positive spin on the quartet’s finale. No one is especially happy, but there is hope, and bittersweetness there, and it’s actually a quite beautiful, poetic way to end a story so full of abuse. Spoilers, but it’s impressive how the filmmakers turn BJ’s vengeful, tragic monologue as he kills Laws in the quartet into this gorgeous sigh of relief in the trilogy. I have a deeper appreciation for 1983 (the film) now, actually, thanks to that.

Aaand now is about the time that I start to lose my train, so I’ll stop the review here. I’m not sure if anyone actually reads these, but it’s nice to slap my thoughts down somewhere. 

So, thanks, David Peace. I commend the ability to make me feel your characters’ fear and paranoia, whether I enjoyed who they were or not. I certainly won’t forget your work any time soon. It was demented, irreverent, stomach-churning, and vile. And yet somehow you still sucked me in. I both love and hate you for that.

Up next on my reading list... The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It’ll be my first Gaiman novel and, despite the title, I hope it’s cheerier than Red Riding. But then I think anything would read like sunshine and rainbows by comparison. 🌈✨