SKELLIG/WILD GIRL, WILD BOY -- David Almond

Delacourt Books for Young Readers -- tpb
©2005 -- 240pp
ISBN: 0385730748

Skellig is the dramatization of his highly acclaimed novel. What has Michael found in the derelict garage? What is this creature that lies in the darkness? Is it human, or a strange beast never seen before? And what will happen in the world when he carries it out into the light?
Wild Girl, Wild Boy is an original play produced in London by the Pop-Up Theatre company. Young Elaine has recently lost her father, and now she spends her days dreaming in the family’s garden, skipping school, unable to read or write. One day, Elaine conjures up a Wild Boy from spells and fairy seed. No one else can see him, and Elaine disappears into a world of fantasy where she and Wild Boy remember the teachings of her father. Will her mother ever come to understand?

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Almond's actual book, Skellig is quite remarkable and unique, and being a theatre professional, I was looking forward to this as well. While I think the play manages to retain much of the spirit of the book, Skellig, it seems to be lacking in something quite important -- characterization.

I am well aware that theatre characters are the "bones" of a character and the actors and director put on the "flesh," but it was strange to read a play based on a book that I'd read which had some very strong, identifiable characters and then to read a play in which the characters seem to be lacking a spine.

Wild Girl, Wild Boy had a similar 'problem...there wasn't much character definition. First, there's 'Wild Girl' who doesn't change or grow much during the course of the play, and because of her learning disability, she's rather one dimensional. 'Wild Boy' is intriguing, and there's some very nice themes running through here, but again, getting to them is a bit of a slow process, and not always appearing to be worth the effort.

Moments of brilliance kept me going, but I'd like to have seen/read this same play by Almond as a more experienced playwright. Do we really need all the different scenes? Can we get these plays to flow a little more evenly?

This tends to be a problem with novelists who decide to write plays. In books, they can jump around from scene to scene easily. But when they write plays, they tend to have trouble condensing and confining while keeping the story active. Almond has the same trouble here -- Wild Girl, Wild Boy has only 82 pages, but has fifteen different scenes. Skellig has fiften scenes in act one and nine in act two.

Skellig also makes use of a narrator -- another common problem with novelists-turned-playwrights ... you can tell a read anything you want about a character in your book, but how do you give the audience inside information? A good playwright knows how to do it. A 'young' playwright gives us a character or characters to give us that sort of information.

As theatre, neither of these plays work. As literature, there is some great moments, keeping my rating neutral, rather than too low or too high.

BORDERLANDS 1 -- Thomas F. Monteleone, editor

White Wolf Pub. -- pb
Stone Mtn, GA -- ©1994 -- 334pp
ISBN: 1-56504-107-0

Dark Fantasy/Horror fiction.

'Introduction' -- Thomas F. Monteleone
"The Calling" -- David B. Silva
"Scartaris, June 28th" -- Harlan Ellison
"Glass Eyes" -- Nancy Holder
"The Grass of Remembrance" -- John DeChancie
"On the Nightmare Express" -- Francis J. Malozzo
"The Pounding Room" -- Bentley Little
"Peeling It Off" -- Darrell Schweitzer
"The Raw and the Cooked" -- Michael Green
"His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood" -- Poppy Z. Brite
"Oh What a Swell Guy Am I" -- Jeffrey Osier
"Delia and the Dinner Party" -- John Shirley
"Suicide Note" -- Lee Moler
"Stillborn" -- Nina Kiriki Hoffman
"Ladder" -- T.E.D. Klein
"Muscae Volitantes" -- Chet Williamson
"The Man in the Long Black Sedan" -- Ed Gorman
"His Frozen Heart" -- Jack Hunter Daves Jr.
"Evelyn Grace" -- Thomas Tessier
"By The Light of the Silvery Moon" -- Les Daniels
"A Younger Woman" -- John Maclay
"But You'll Never Follow Me" -- Karl Edward Wagner
"Stephen" -- Elizabeth Massie
"Alexandra" -- Charles L. Grant
"The Good Book" -- G. Wayne Miller
"By Bizarre Hands" -- Joe R. Lansdale
'About the Editor'

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I have always enjoyed taking a literary ride on the 'horror' train, though I haven't read as much dark fantasy lately as I did as a teenager. I picked this book up in an airport some years back when I had forgotten to bring along something to read, and while I read maybe two stories at the time, this book sat around on my shelves waiting for me to get back to it.

Mostly this book was a time-passer. Few, if any, of the stories really reached me. Nothing stood out as a story I'll remember for a long time. One story, as I was reading it, had me thinking ... oh good, a story that I can write about in my review, but as I look through the table of contents, it doesn't stand out. I recognize all the titles. I remember reading them, but none strike me as 'outstanding.'

At the same time, none of these struck me as terrible. In some cases, they were predictable ("By Bizarre Hands" "The Man in the Long Black Sedan" "Muscae Volitantes" "Stillborn" "Delia and the Dinner Party" "The Raw and the Cooked" "The Grass of Remembrance"). However, of these, some did stand out as being excellently written, specifically "Stillborn" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman and "Delia and the Dinner Party" by John Shirley and "The Grass of Remembrance" by John DeChancie.

If you enjoy the genre, then this book will probably be a welcome window to the dark for you. If you are new to this type of fiction, then better, perhaps to start with a true master of the field (find something by Robert Bloch or Robert Aikman or H.P. Lovecraft).

SPINNING INTO BUTTER:A PLAY -- Rebecca Gilman

Faber & Faber -- tpb
©2000 -- 96pp
ISBN: 0571199844

a new play that explores the dangers of both racism and political correctness in America today in a manner that is at once profound, disturbing, darkly comic, and deeply cathartic. Rebecca Gilman challenges our preconceptions about race relations, writing of a liberal dean of students named Sarah Daniels who investigates the pinning of anonymous, clearly racist letters on the door of one of the college's few African American students. The stunning discovery that there is a virulent racist on campus forces Sarah, along with other faculty members and students, to explore her feelings about racism, leading to surprising discoveries and painful insights that will rivet and provoke the reader.

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I was not at all familiar with this play before reading it. Gilman's name sounded familiar but I couldn't name anything she'd written. I am sure that will change for me.

Judging simply by the title, I suspected that this play would deal with racial issues and I admit to having second thoughts because I just wasn't looking for a didactic lesson on race. Fortunately, what I got was not a lesson on race but a lesson on racism. And...surprise, surprise...from a "white" perspective! How novel! How daring! And, being Caucasian, it actually reached me in a way that a play never has before.

The play is about one individual on a college campus who is forced to face her own feelings of racism. Outward, she appears level-headed, intelligent, and very sympathetic to racial issues. But of course sympathy is perhaps not the right emotion to have. Inward, the woman struggles with her views on 'blacks' and admits that one of the reasons she took a job at a college in Vermont was to get away from the black population.

One of the most beautiful aspects of this play is that it takes a major issue, and brings it in to focus through one individual -- and a likable individual! It forces us to look at ourselves and how similar we may be to this character.

There are no clear answers, only lots of soul-searching questions, but the play does end with a spark of promise.

NORSE CODE -- Greg van Eekhout

Bantam Spectra -- pb
New York -- ©2009 -- 292pp
ISBN: 0553592130

The NorseCODE genome project was designed to identify descendants of Odin. What it found was Kathy Castillo, a murdered MBA student brought back from the dead to serve as a valkyrie in the Norse god’s army. Given a sword and a new name, Mist’s job is to recruit soldiers for the war between the gods at the end of the world—and to kill those who refuse to fight.
But as the twilight of the gods descends, Mist makes other plans.

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My timing on reading this book turned out to be nearly perfect. I'd just finished a great deal of research on Norse mythology for a project that I was commissioned to write, and I was heading out for a week of vacation on the beach and grabbed this book as something small and 'light' for beach reading. 

Having so many of the Norse gods and their relationships and places still in my head, this book struck me as extremely well researched and a fun take on the personalities. I knew immediately who each character was and of course I knew their relationship with the other characters. I did wonder, though, if I hadn't been as fmailiar with them before reading this, would I have enjoyed this book nearly as much? Probably not. 

Although I gave this book four stars, based on my own enjoyment of reading it, I did have a few problems with the story. 

First, while I really liked the idea of "Norse Code" -- a technologically modern center for finding appropriate people to bring to Valhalla to fight for Odin at the final battle, I felt that this gimmick was ill-used. Certainly not worthy of the title of the book. It came into play in the first couple of chapters and then was really nothing at all important to the story. 

Second, we as readers had to take some giant leaps (pun intended) of literary faith to accept that everything that happens in the story is simply because one woman, a mortal who became a Valkyrie, wants to rescue her sister and a man she doesn't know (but whom she killed) from Hel. I don't think that the relationship with the sister was ever really established enough, and the guilt over killing the man was definitely not believable. Perhaps that's why both ... neither was strong enough motivation? Even so...for all that these people faced, marching into Hel, attempting to stop Ragnarok (the final battle), facing undefeatable foes, all to rescue two people... well, it just seemed a bit lame, quite frankly. 

If I could have given this three and a half stars, I would have, but I stand by the four stars because ... well, I enjoyed it.

THE DAY ROOM -- Don DeLillo

Alfred A. Knopf -- hc
New York -- ©1986 -- 113pp 
a play 


A black comedy that explores the chaos caused when the onlooker is unsure of the status of a team of medics in a psychiatric unit. Are they really bona fide staff or patients just pretending to be?


*****


I enjoy absurdist theatre a great deal and while the name Don DeLillo may have brought people in to watch a theatrical production who might otherwise never have gone to a play, I found very little that was original about this. 

First of all, there's going to be an obvious One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nestcomparison. I caught myself making just such a note early as I was reading, but I also found myself thinking about Harold Pinter's The Hothouse, and in both cases the earlier play is a much more engaging piece. Of course the plots are vastly different, with The Day Room asking some rather metaphysical questions, such as "What is real?" "Who can you believe or trust?" It is a deconstruction of reality, whereasCuckoo's Nest is a fight for reality and Hothouse is about abusive power. 

But if you are going to deconstruct reality, you must be compared to another master playwright, Eugene Ionesco, who managed to do it over and over again. 

Back to DeLillo... 

The main problem I had with this script is "why?" Why tell this story? What was in it for me? I didn't finish it and think about my own life and what was real or not. I didn't feel compelled to see this on stage any time too soon. 

I enjoyed the theatricality of this, and the humor, but found it lacking in story or purpose.