I remember standing in Target’s book section several years ago and picking up a book titled Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy about a fat girl who loves Dolly Parton and enrolls in her local beauty pageant. Enchanted, I picked up a copy but didn’t get around to reading it right away (although its cover of a blonde woman in a red evening dress standing in thrall to a tiara never failed to elicit a chuckle when I walked past). Fast forward to December 2018 when said book was adapted into a Netflix movie. It’s heartfelt and funny with a great Dolly Parton soundtrack. So, last winter my reading consisted of a binge of all of Murphy’s novels (including Puddin’, a sort-of-sequel that focuses on some of Dumplin’s secondary characters). Then, once I exhausted her canon, I pre-ordered of her new middle grade novel (designated for readers roughly eight to twelve years old), Dear Sweet Pea, which is on bookshelves now.
Dear Sweet Pea is set in a small Texas town where, following a recent and amicable divorce, thirteen-year-old Sweet Pea’s mom and dad live in near-identical houses on the same street. Sweet Pea finds this same-but-not-the-sameness frustrating as she splits time between the two houses. School is equally challenging as well since a former best friend, now frenemy, creates new drama. In the middle of all these changes in Sweet Pea’s life, her eccentric neighbor and newspaper advice columnist, Miss Flora Mae, asks Sweet Pea to water the plants and forward the advice column correspondence while Flora Mae’s out of town. Sweet Pea intercepts a few letters and gives some advice of her own.
Despite transitioning to a middle grade book after her
earlier YA novels, Murphy’s writing is confident in both its style and storytelling.
The vocabulary and sentence structure are streamlined for younger readers (but
also kept this big kid reader very entertained). Murphy creates a beautiful
array of characters from Sweet Pea and her classmates to assorted teachers and
parents. My favorite might just be the deliciously eccentric Miss Flora Mae who
keeps her most important documents in the oven and who the local kids suspect
may be a vampire. Murphy perfectly captures the feeling of being caught halfway
between childhood and teenagedom as well as the uncertainty of not knowing how
to move from one stage to the next. Dear Sweet Pea is ideal for fifth to
seventh grade readers (and anyone who remembers what those in-between years
were like).
For fans craving the next movie adapted from Julie
Murphy’s work, Disney Channel has your back as they are developing a movie
version of Dear Sweet Pea!
Read if you like: Harriet the Spy by Louise
Fitzhugh as well as Dumplin’ and Puddin’ by Julie Murphy.
Growing up, I did not have cable television (except for when my family stayed in hotels). So the advent of Fall TV meant that there were actually new shows to watch on television every evening of the week (and not just on PBS)! Now we live in a blessed age where approximately three shows a day drop onto streaming platforms and even broadcast networks have started programming more seasonal offerings outside of the traditional September to May schedule. The result is that we’ll all likely have ten shows still on our watch lists when we ascend to the Great Big Couch in the Sky. As an avowed pop culture addict, I wouldn’t choose to live any other way. Still, I look forward every year to seeing what new offerings network television has to offer, creating a schedule of what I want to check out, and determining what I’m willing to commit to (at least for a few more weeks).
Admittedly, there were not a huge amount of shows that
intrigued me enough to watch even the pilot this year. (Optimist’s Translation:
more time to watch streaming shows as they drop throughout the fall and
winter.) That being said, I test drove the police procedural Prodigal Son
that premiered last week.
The premise of Prodigal Son is that Malcom
Bright (Tom Payne) is both a criminal profiler and the son of Dr. Martin Whitly
(Michael Sheen), a serial killer known as the Surgeon who was captured and
incarcerated in the late 1990s. The pilot episode sees Bright working as a
consultant to an NYPD case only to discover that the case is a copycat of four
murders his father committed years ago.
Familiar territory? Yes, and that is one of the show’s
biggest potential pitfalls. A detective/profiler/forensic pathologist with a
personal connection to a killer/landmark case/crime is a trope mystery lovers
have seen before in television, movies, and books. However, the police
procedural format as a whole is not particularly new either and that doesn’t
stop viewers from enjoying interesting characters and unusual cases. More
episodes should help shed light on whether the writers are able to find new
perspectives on these tropes or fail to make them work with these characters
and within the particular environment they’ve created in Prodigal Son.
My other biggest concern with this show is that it too
often uses shock factor to elicit viewers’ emotion rather than relying on the strength
of the writing and acting without layering on gore. For example, the show’s
opening scene depicts Bright entering a butchering process plant that has a
series of severed heads preserved in jars in the background. Obviously, that is
a horrifying concept. However, on screen I couldn’t help but think they looked
like cheap Halloween masks in jars filled with goop. It certainly didn’t scare
me; it just seemed hokey. Similarly, later, the director uses a tight closeup
of Bright’s face screaming, eyes bugged out, after he has a nightmare about his
father. This kind of in-your-face, “isn’t this scaaary?” tactic definitely
backfired for me (and I’d wager for many other viewers as well). Rather than
letting the storytelling and filmmaking stand on its own in evoking reactions
from viewers it seems like the creators are smashing the “break open only in
case of emergency” toolbox too frequently.
The show’s house style is fairly stark, relying on
low-key lighting and heavy shadows and filters that seem to leach almost all
color from the screen. A very minimalist color palette of creams, grays, and
blacks only enhances this effect. Many shots also used shallow focus, meaning
only part of the image is in focus and the rest remains blurry. To be fair, this
cinematographic choice may be trying to illustrate how much viewers don’t know.
We only know a little bit of the history between Bright and his dad and we know
about it primarily from Bright’s perspective. However, I found the frequent use
of shallow focus a bit distracting because it was so pervasive.
Now, what I really liked about the show were the
actors and performances. Michael Sheen’s Dr. Whitly/Surgeon was truly creepy
and seemed to hint at layers of characterization that will (hopefully) develop
over the course of the season. The show also did a good job of using him enough
to establish his backstory and relationship with Bright without letting him
overly dominate the story.
In addition, there are a trio of treasures playing
supporting characters that I hope to see more of in the coming weeks. First, certified
National Treasure Lou Diamond Phillips plays Gil Arroyo, an NYPD cop with a connection
to Bright that’s explained at the end of the pilot. We don’t learn much about
his character in the pilot other than his trust in Bright but I always enjoy
Phillips. He also serves as a more grounded character compared to the
heightened Bright and Whitly and their strange father-son relationship. Second,
the show features Gilmore Girls treasure Keiko Agena who played Lane in
the beloved coming-of-age series. Here, she’s Dr. Edrisa Tanaka, a forensic
pathologist who nervously geeks out over identifying wounds with Bright,
injecting a nice bit of comedy into an otherwise grim show. Finally, Scandal
treasure Bellamy Young, who played Mellie Grant in the political drama, now
plays Jessica Whitly, the mother of Malcom Bright and wife of serial killer
Malcolm Whitly. In the pilot she appears like an aristocratic society mother,
almost as if Edith Wharton’s matriarchs were revamped for the 21st
century. Still, Young’s performance hints at the trauma below the character’s
shiny superficiality and I hope the show will explore that as it progresses.
Verdict: I’m not yet ready to hit the “record series”
button on my DVR. However, I was intrigued enough by the setup and the actors
to keep watching for several more weeks to see how the story develops.
Review of Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks with color by Sarah Stern
I write to you, dear readers, from inside my pumpkin spice confessional. Today is the first official day of fall, but for me once Labor Day passes all I can think about are cooler fall temperatures and all the seasonal trappings that are soon to follow from mums on front porches to cider in the stores and then, later, the smoky smell of fire pits at twilight and stories of supernatural beings as Halloween approaches. Needless to say, I’ve already tasted my first Reese’s pumpkin of the season and have a pumpkin decorating plan locked in (spoiler alert: my pumpkin’s going to look like a unicorn!).
For the autumnally inclined among us, then, the young
adult graphic novel Pumpkinheads, written by Rainbow Rowell, illustrated
by Faith Erin Hicks, and with color by Sarah Stern, could not come at a better
time. This may well be the ideal read for a fall night. What’s more, you can
easily devour it in one sitting if you choose. Set at what Rowell describes in
an interview as “the Disneyland of pumpkin patches,” Pumpkinheads follows
two patch employees, Deja and Josiah, on their last night working at the patch
in their senior year of high school. What follows is a delightful blend of
friendship, romance, and bursts of adventure.
First, the patch itself will make you want to launch
yourself headfirst into a fall festival as it sports a pumpkin slingshot and
haunted hacienda in addition to the more traditional haystack ride and corn
maize (this book has puns galore and I find them adorable). The inside cover of
the book features a map of the über-deluxe patch to help readers orient
themselves during Deja and Josiah’s journey to various attractions. In addition,
Hicks’ renderings of converted barns and families in costume coupled with Stern’s
warm colors create a cozy canvas for the characters to ramble through on their
last night.
Second, have your snacks ready when you read this
because each of the patch’s many food stands outdoes the one before it from the
Kettle Corn Kettle to the Chili Fries Stand to— my favorite— the Pumpkin Bomb Stand.
(I wish I could add sound effects here to give this last one the flourish it deserves.)
The Pumpkin Bomb is a mythical concoction of vanilla ice cream sandwiched
between two slices of pumpkin pie, covered with chocolate, and mounted on a stick.
In other words, it’s pumpkin spice heaven.
Of course, all this delightful scene setting wouldn’t
add up to a story without characters and conflict. Luckily, Rowell delivers on
both fronts. Although we only spend one night with Deja and Josiah, Rowell capably
demonstrates their personalities as they interact with each other and patch
employees and visitors. Here, again, Hicks’ panels provide beautiful facial reactions
during conversations and a sense of movement in the action sequences. The
protagonists’ quick-witted dialogue made me laugh more than once but they also
talk about ideas like fate and free will without those conversations seeming
pretentious or out of context for their situation. As It’s the Great
Pumpkin, Charlie Brown demonstrates, the pumpkin patch has long been a site
for existential contemplation and this remains true for Deja and Josiah.
I would happily read many more stories with Rowell’s
lovable characters in or outside of the patch. The graphic novel hints that they
may apply to be Christmas elves for a mall Santa, and I can only hope this
leads to more holiday sequels! For now, though, I’m off to try and recreate the
Pumpkin Bomb in my kitchen. Happy Fall everybody!
Gone are the days when Dateline and Forensic
Files were the mainstays for murderinos (the affectionate name given to
fans of the podcast My Favorite Murder) seeking details on infamous or puzzling
cases. True crime podcasts now routinely place in the top ten of Apple’s
podcast chart and whether you’re flipping through channels on basic cable, tuning
into HBO, or searching Netflix, true crime is sure to be one, if not more, of
the offerings. Now, the problem is not seeking out true crime stories but
discerning which ones to spend time consuming when faced with a plethora
of choices.
Enter Billy Jensen. He spent much of his journalism
career writing about true crime, specifically unsolved cases. In recent years,
he’s gained attention for helping to finish Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone
in the Dark about the Golden State Killer who was famously identified and
arrested just months after the book’s release in 2018. McNamara died unexpectedly
while writing the book and Jensen worked with a collaborator to piece together
drafts and write new material as well, focusing on techniques like familial DNA
searches and geoprofiling that McNamara was using to help solve the case. I’ll
Be Gone in the Dark is already a true crime classic not only because of
McNamara’s stellar writing but also because the techniques she advocated for were
actually used to identify the suspect after decades of searching. I highly
recommend I’ll Be Gone in the Dark (although it is disturbing and, full
disclosure, it did give me nightmares).
So, back to Billy Jensen. If his involvement with I’ll
Be Gone in the Dark fails to convince you of his pedigree, let me explain
what distinguishes his new book from other true crime releases. While Jensen’s
work on both the Golden State Killer case and McNamara’s book about it are
woven throughout his true crime memoir, Chase Darkness with Me, he
focuses on a number of cases he worked (and sometimes solved) using targeted
ads on social media platforms to solicit witnesses and tips leading to suspects.
The majority of these are cases are likely unknown to readers since most of
them rarely received media attention outside of the area where they occurred.
Yet, Jensen clearly outlines the stakes for the families and communities
impacted by each crime, making each compelling. Although he covers a large
number of cases, his explanations of the details make them unique enough to
remain distinct rather than blurring together. In addition, Jensen explains how
his techniques have actually solved crimes and includes an addendum explaining
best practices for those who want to be become citizen sleuths, as he refers to
them.
Jensen’s years as an investigative journalist have
honed his prose into concise yet informative sentences. Yet because this book
is at least partially a memoir, the crimes and investigations are always
filtered through Jensen’s perspective and that prevents the book from feeling too
clinical or like a mere list of facts. Rather, he weaves stories about his own
life into the book in ways that feel organic instead of forced, providing brief
respites from the crimes themselves. Much of his interest in true crime came
from his father, and those anecdotes are particularly evocative in placing the
reader within Jensen’s point of view.
I knew Jensen from I’ll Be Gone in the Dark and
the podcast he currently co-hosts with retired investigator Paul Holes, The
Murder Squad, but this new book and his work on citizen sleuthing is sure
to establish his important role in the future of true crime. Jensen’s strong
writing skills and compassion for everyone affected by these crimes are
striking. Chase Darkness with Me is a page turner that asks how citizens
can harness technology to help chip away at the ever-growing backlog of
unsolved cases in America. True crime fanatics and people interested in the future
of criminal investigation should seek out Chase Darkness with Me.
I fan girl hard for Lisa Lutz. Reading her Spellman Files series (about a family of private detectives who are always tailing or phone tapping at least one other family member) was a treat I reserved for special reading occasions, like after I finished an onerous task, and I put off reading the final novel in the series because I did not want it to end. In fact, I adore Lutz’s work so much that she’s one of the writers whose names I frequently search on bookselling websites, social media, and her own author website so as to know exactly when her next novel will be released. Needless to say, I have been anxiously awaiting the release of her most recent novel, The Swallows.
For fellow Lutzites (Lutzians? Lutz Loons?), the
archetypes of her previous novels are still present in her new novel:
dysfunctional parents, witty women who somehow still don’t have their life put
together, precocious teen girls who are almost too smart for their own
good, and lovable male allies who prove to be dependable sidekicks for the
female protagonists. While the characters feel consistent with others in Lutz’s
fictional universe, the story itself is quite a bit darker than the beloved Spellman
series.
In The Swallows, set at Stonebridge (a less
than prestigious boarding school in Vermont), Lutz depicts a level of scumbaggery
heretofore unseen in her other works. The novel’s conflicts center on a series
of sexual scandals (some at other schools and in the past as well as at
Stonebridge) that, once uncovered, spiral into tragic and disturbing
consequences for everyone involved.
Set in 2009, The Swallows focuses on a pre-#MeToo
era but one which is no less filled with predators and prey as well as
drastically inequal power dynamics. Smartly, Lutz does not divide the heroes and
villains neatly along gender lines nor between faculty/staff and students. The
spiral of abuse and retaliation becomes increasingly messy as more about the scandals
are uncovered. As a former teacher, I found the corrupt and enabling school
administration and teachers extremely unsettling (and that is due to Lutz’s
skill in depicting these characters and showing their flaws). This is not a feel-good
story and it is to Lutz’s credit that it is not. In fact, the overarching
metaphor for the book is one of war with section titles such as “Allies,” “The
Army,” and quotes from the likes of Winston Churchill and Sun Tzu prefacing
each section. Ultimately, I read the book not as offering solutions to the abuses
it documents but as showing what happens when people try to dismantle
dehumanizing systems.
Overall, I thought Lutz’s portrayal of the abuse and
its intersections with gender was thoughtful and refrained from using
stereotypes. However, the book is almost purely heteronormative in the way it
documents sexual relationships. I wish Lutz had included LBGTQ+ characters or
just addressed these relationships as some part of the school’s social scene. It
would have added a different perspective on so many of the male-female heterosexual
conflicts and been more realistic for a 2009 high school. Still, readers
interested in gender and power dynamics, specifically how they impact people
long before they reach the workplace, will find a lot to think about in this
novel.
So, if you’re still not sure whether or not to read The
Swallows, I suspect the Netflix headings for it would be something along
the lines of: Boarding School Capers, Strong Female Leads (way to turn
something nice into something weird, Netflix), and Feminist YA. Since the
assorted algorithms of Amazon, Spotify, et al, have utterly ruined me, I tend
to sort books in a similar way (especially since I sometimes cluster read books
in a particular genre over time). Read The Swallows if you liked: any of
Lutz’s previous novels, A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro, Truly
Devious by Maureen Johnson, or The Disreputable History of Frankie
Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. (Or, if you haven’t read these other books already,
go ahead and check them out. I enjoyed all of them!)
Wired Wordsmith 