Review: Countess Vera, Or Oath of Vengeance by Mrs Alex McVeigh Miller

Original Publication Date: 1888

Genre: Dime Novel

Topics: Abandonment, secret marriage, bigamy, premature burial, REVENGE!








Review by : Chrisbookarama

Leslie Noble finds his wife of one day dead in her room. Dead! Unwilling to live with a man who does not love her, she committed suicide. Vera Campbell had agreed to marry him to escape her Cinderella-like life of servitude to her aunt Marcia Cleveland and cousin Ivy. After her father abandoned her and her mother, they had nowhere else to go and were dependent upon their ‘kindness.’ Seventeen years of heartbreak were too much for Mrs Campbell, with her last breath she begged Leslie to marry Vera. This was the result.

Shortly after her funeral, Vera’s father (now an Earl) has returned to claim his wife and child, who he mistakenly left to fend for themselves. Too late! Both are dead. But when he unearths his child to gaze upon her face one last time, he discovers that she isn’t dead at all. He whisks her off to England to make up for lost time.

Vera keeps the secret of her marriage to herself, vowing to never remarry. She of course falls in love with a wealthy American. Angst! Then it appears that her husband has died. Yay! But just when happiness is within her reach her father dies and commands her to make an Oath of Vengeance against her cruel aunt. REVENGE!

Chuck Norris approves of your Oath of Vengeance

I’ve never read a dime novel before, which is a shame because this one was fun! Dime novels were cheap entertainment for the masses in the late 1800s-early 1900s. They were a lucrative business at that time. Louisa May Alcott herself wrote a few to make ends meet. The plots were sensational and usually featured a young heroine in peril.

This heroine in peril is Vera Campbell. She doesn’t have much in the personality department, but she does have ‘dark flashing eyes’ and an Oath of Vengeance. Her Aunt Marcia is the worst. She is the most evil of aunts. She could rival Cinderella’s stepmother.

It's an Evil Off!

The writing is not great, and apparently neither was the editing. The transcriber has a list a mile long of spelling and grammar corrections. The plot is super soapy. It’s like Days of Our Lives but with an ending. It is bonkers with premature burials, bigamy, murder-plots, poisons, and kidnappings. I loved it.

Mrs Alex McVeigh Miller (not her real name) wrote at least 80 dime novels (12 found on Project Gutenberg). A look at the synopsises reveals that some are similar in plot. Reading them could get monotonous. So, I’ll proceed with caution and space them out.  Who can resist a title like The Fatal Birthday though?

If you can put up with third person past tense, cheesy dialogue and repetitive phrases (dark eyes everywhere), you’ll enjoy this potboiler.

Download Countess Vera, or The Oath of Vengeance by Mrs Alex McVeigh Miller at Project Gutenberg

Review: The Story of Mary MacLane by Mary MacLane

 Original Publication Date:  1902

Genre: Memoir

Topics: Genius, loneliness.

 

 

 

 

 Review by : Chrisbookarama

How would I describe Mary MacLane? She is  the personification of a meeting between Sylvia Plath and The Craft’s Fairuza Balk character in Lorde’s basement. She’s that goth girl in the back of your High School English class who thinks she’s smarter than the teacher, and she’s probably right. She’s the girl your mom warned you about.

“This is not a diary. It is a portrayal. My inner life shown in its nakedness.” That explains what The Story of Mary MacLane is about in the author’s own words. At the beginning of 1901, Mary set about recording her “three months of Nothingness.” She begins by telling the reader that she is a genius, an egotist, and there is no parallel.

Mary was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and grew up in Butte, Montana. Of her family she doesn’t have much good to say about any of them. They all bore her. They did leave the legacy of being “the real MacLane” of her generation.

I am the real MacLane of my generation. The real MacLane in these later centuries is always a woman. The men of the family never amount to anything worth naming—if one accepts the acme, the zenith, of pure selfishness, with a large letter “s.”

Being a singular woman, she feels her genius wasted in Butte. She waits for the devil to bring her happiness. This is her favorite topic. Mary wanted her memoir to be titled I Await the Devil’s Coming, but the publisher wasn’t having it. She begs the devil to come and marry her for “three days” and has imaginary conversations with him. The devil is a man, a manly man, just as she wants him.

“What would you have me do, little MacLane?” he would say again.

I would answer: “Hurt me, burn me, consume me with hot love, shake me violently, embrace me hard, hard in your strong, steel arms, kiss me with wonderful burning kisses—press your lips to mine with passion, and your soul and mine would meet then in an anguish of joy for me!”

Well, now.

Mary has one friend, a former teacher who moved away, her anemone lady. She writes her long letters, some she sends. Mary is in love with the anemone lady.

I feel in the anemone lady a strange attraction of sex. There is in me a masculine element that, when I am thinking of her, arises and overshadows all the others.

“Why am I not a man,” I say to the sand and barrenness with a certain strained, tense passion, “that I might give this wonderful, dear, delicious woman an absolutely perfect love!”

And this is my predominating feeling for her.

So, then, it is not the woman-love, but the man-love, set in the mysterious sensibilities of my woman-nature. It brings me pain and pleasure mingled in that odd, odd fashion.

Do you think a man is the only creature with whom one may fall in love?

When not thinking about the devil, the anemone lady, and sometimes Napoleon, Mary steals and lies to entertain herself. She has conversations with tinkers, and dirty old ladies. She takes long walks on the prairie, and writes her portrayal.

The Story of Mary MacLane is a strange book. It was quite a hit with teenaged girls when it came out. Mary wished for someone to understand and many young women did. In many ways Mary, for all her genius, is like other girls. She is waiting for something, for her life to start. She thinks forty is old (she wouldn’t live to see fifty), and enjoys her body. She even has a crush.

Even though I raised my eyebrows at her claims of genius, once I read her words, I couldn’t disagree. This was not the kind of writing the public of 1902 would expect of a nineteen year old lady. She opens herself up, knowing “I am not good. I am not virtuous. I am not sympathetic.” She’s sexual and angry and all the things a good Victorian girl shouldn’t be.

In 2013, Melville House republished The Story of Mary MacLane as I Await the Devil’s Coming.

This was a LibriVox recording read by Kristin Hughes. Ms Hughes has the kind of voice perfect for Mary.

Download The Story of Mary MacLane by Mary MacLane at Project Gutenberg|Librivox|

Image sources:

• The Craft, Columbia Pictures, 1996
• The Simpsons Wiki

Review: Herbert West, Reanimator

 Original Publication Date: 1922

Genre: Horror, Science Fiction

Topics: Reanimation, scientific experimentation, God complex, unreliable narrators, the undead

 

 

 

 

 

Review by Chrisbookarama:

Herbert West, Reanimator is one of the few H.P. Lovecraft stories in the public domain. It was first published as a series for Home Brew in 1922. In it, the narrator tells of the experiments conducted by Herbert and witnessed by himself alone. The narrator’s story is told in six parts. At the beginning of each instalment, he sums up what’s happened in the previous ones. Just in case you didn’t save enough pennies for the last issue of Home Brew you won’t be lost. Herbert is a doctor of the mad scientist variety. He concocts a special solution that he injects into his deceased human subjects in the hopes of bringing them back to life. He and the narrator must continually find “fresh” bodies to reanimate. The results aren’t pretty. Basically, these guys are making homemade zombies.

Let’s talk about the narrator for a moment. This guy’s story is sketchy. He says he was afraid of Herbert. He “shudders” at some of the things he does, but he still hangs out with him. He knows the guy has no scruples and committed at least one murder. Why doesn’t he catch a train to As Far From Herbert As Possibleville? Does he owe Herbert money? I think he’s way more into it than he says.

As for the experiments, I would think that after the first couple of times I created an uncontrollable monster, I’d reconsider the whole endeavour. Herbert wants to reanimate a human with the former intellect intact but all he makes are Hulk Monsters. His obsession with finding the right solution and obtaining enough bodies to test those solutions turns him into a monster himself. Herbert finds opportunities for body snatching disguised as a physician treating the sick or wounded. He even resorts to murder. Herbert’s reasons for reanimating corpses don’t stem from some noble cause like curing his poor old mother or anything. It’s just scientific curiosity. While the narrator believes in the soul, Herbert doesn’t. The soul isn’t a factor. The bodies just aren’t fresh enough, in his opinion.

Be warned that H.P. Lovecraft’s terrible racism and xenophobia reveals itself big time about halfway through the story. You’ll be happy to know, however, that we’re all human-flesh eating monsters under the reanimated skin.

Herbert West, Reanimator is an interesting literary artifact as it’s an early zombie story. In it, the undead run amuck munching on the living, until they are destroyed and disposed of. The viral zombie trope appears later in the literary canon (I Am Legend’s zombie-vampire is the first one I can think of). Herbert has the power to create the undead through his solution only, the bite of his creation will not infect others. The creature will live through various states of decomposition, until shot and “killed.” The 1985 film Re-Animator is based on Lovecraft’s story.

This was a Librivox recording by Phil Chenevert. He doesn’t have quite the chilling voice I’d expect for this story. The audio version is about 90 minutes long.

Download Herbert West- Reanimator by H.P. Lovecraft at Librivox

THE AWAKENING - Kate Chopin

Original Publication Date: 1899
Genre: American, classic 

Topics: coming-of-age; feminist; Louisiana

 

 

 

Review by : Liz Inskip-Paulk (www.ravingreader.wordpress.com)

 

 

"The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation."

 

This book (a novel? A novella?) is really the story of a coming-of-age of an adult woman in Louisiana who is struggling with becoming an independent person while being married to a wealthy man she doesn’t particularly love.  A young male acquaintance named Robert is the catalyst for her realization of the possibility that she could be happy and independent, but how to do that, in this world of strict etiquette and gender expectations?
 

I had been thinking (from an earlier reading) that this edition of Chopin’s work was an early Feminist work (published in 1899). However, then, on further delving, it was pointed out that very few people read “The Awakening” when it first came out as it was not a commercial success and it received some pretty awful reviews so it wasn’t republished.  
 

Her other short stories were published and even anthologized, but “The Awakening” didn’t really receive much positive attention until 1969 when a volume of her work was republished and regained attention.  And this is rather a shame, as this is a good read with some great descriptions of Bayou coastal life and life in the South.
 

On reflection, Chopin’s The Awakening’s critical rejection could also have been to the misogyny of the time – most of the media reviewers were men (at that time), and as her leading character was a frustrated married woman who refused to accept the limitations of the woman’s role and instead chose an alternative way (thus completely rejecting societal mores), it might not be that surprising that the male reviewers did not embrace this radical viewpoint.
 

 "Has she," asked the Doctor, with a smile, "has she been associating of late with a circle of pseudo-intellectual women—super-spiritual superior beings? My wife has been telling me about them."
 

So, yes, it’s a Feminist work but it’s been quite widely argued that it wasn’t written to bring attention to the issue of feminism, emancipation or any other cause. Chopin was not involved in any Feminist or other causes (according to researchers) and it’s argued that Chopin was just writing the world as she saw it as an artist and writer and not trying to change the world. She wasn’t using it as a tool to further women’s suffrage, even accidentally.
 

However, as I write this, surely it’s clear from even a cursory reading of this that Chopin believed in the right of a woman to have an independent life and was a pre-supporter of Woolf’s concept of “a room of her own”, whether written down or not.  And by so doing, wouldn’t it be logical that she would want all the other freedoms that would come with that? Or was it the whole concept of individual freedom that Chopin was admiring and gender was irrelevant? And how would race fit into that? (She lived for most of her life in Louisiana which was a huge piece in the slavery industry picture then.)
 

I don’t know. It’s tough to read something that was written at the end of the nineteenth century without looking at it with the perspective of a twenty-first century reader. How can you really ever take that pair of glasses off because your (own) experience of life has to influence how you interpret things, especially works as nebulous as art? Perhaps Chopin was really just writing this to make a buck and there wasn’t any extra meaning to this whole thing.

 

 

Download The Awakening by Kate Chopin at Project Gutenberg|Librivox|

Review: PARNASSUS ON WHEELS – Christopher Morley

 

Original Publication Date: 1922
Genre: American classic
Topics: American, books, gender role, early 20th century












Review by : Liz Inskip-Paulk (www.ravingreader.wordpress.com)

A fun novel about my favoritest of subjects – books and the love of them. Found somewhere on my travels around the interweb, this title popped up on list of fun classics to read. I am not familiar with either the author or the title, but the review looked good and I found it on Project Gutenberg. It’s a quick read, is rather a cross between a novel and novella, I think. Not quite long enough for one, not quite short enough for the other.

The basic plot line is of a sister and brother who both live on a farm in Massachusetts not too far from Boston. Set in the early twentieth century (I think), the siblings get on fine until the brother finds unexpected success as a best-selling author writing about the joys of living on the land. His sister is the one who bakes the bread, cleans and more or less runs the farm as the brother keeps going off on unexpected jaunts to “research” his books. This set up is annoying for the one who is forced to stay at home, and when one day, a mobile book shop – a “caravan of culture” -- shows up, things take a surprising turn. (The mobile bookshop is the “Parnassus on Wheels”, Parnassus being the name of the Greek mountain where the Muses would live).

As the sister ends up going on new adventures further afield and realizing that she has just as of a right of a happy life as selfish authorly bro, the reader can feel the blossoming of her character – of how much more she has to offer the world rather than be skilled at blacking the stove. Over the years, she reckons that she has baked about 15,000 loaves (an “anthology of bread” as she describes it in her bookish way), and so doesn’t feel that guilty about going off and leaving the bro to his own devices on the farm.

Going on this unexpected adventure frees up the sister:  “That’s where I learned that life still held something fresh for me – something better than baking … biscuits for [my brother]…”

Of course, things don’t sit well and the story twists and turns – it’s all very reflective of the burgeoning feminist movement of the time and questioning of gender roles. Very up-to-date issues, really, especially when you consider that it was written by a man in the 1920’s and it’s from the woman’s perspective.

As I mentioned, it’s a quick read and yet it covers a lot of territory the most notable of which was the ongoing adoration of all things literary – books, words, authors, the act of reading… All very suitable subjects for a book nerd such as I am.

It’s also a hopeful and optimistic book for how life can change and looking forward to the future. As the female protagonist reports, “Summer was over, and we neither of us were young, but there were great things ahead of us.”

Good one.

Download Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley at Project Gutenberg|Librivox|