C.E. JAPHE - MOSTLY MYSTERY REVIEWS
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C.E. Japhe C.E. Japhe is an horror/mystery writer and avid reader, currently living in the panhandle of West Virginia. In addition to formerly serving as an editorial reviewer for FMAM, she is a member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA). |
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October 2006
THE
HARROWING
Alexandra Sokoloff
St. Martin’s Press, August 2006, $21.95, 224 pp.
ISBN: 0-312-35748-6
Depressed, suicidal, unwilling to spend Thanksgiving with an alcoholic
mother, Robin Stone is left behind at Baird College’s creepy Mendenhall
by her classmates heading home for Thanksgiving break. Or so she thinks.
Before long, four other students, similarly unwilling to go home to dysfunctional
families, reveal themselves. They find an old Ouija board, and decide
to play to pass the time, but soon find there are forces at work they
don’t understand. They think they have contacted the spirit of a
student who died tragically at the college twenty years earlier. But,
instead, they have unleashed an unearthly, deadly force that doesn’t
want to go back from whence it came.
The story is certainly nothing new, and none of the stereotypical characters
ever develop any depth. Robin, our heroine, seems attracted to every male
student she sees, and possibly to the female ones as well. Robin’s
annoying Southern belle roommate is mercifully disposed of along the way
to a thoroughly improbable ending.
Ms. Sokoloff ‘s previous writing experience has primarily been with
screenplays, which is very evident in her first novel. This is a novel
that wants to be a teen slasher movie. THE HARROWING is an okay read for
a rainy afternoon, but don’t expect too much.
C.E. Japhe
IT
MIGHT HAVE BEEN WHAT HE SAID
Eden Collinsworth
Arcade Publishing
$23.95, 279 pp.,
ISBN: 1-55970-812-3
Isabel tried to kill her husband, James, but can’t remember why.
Was it something he said? What starts out ostensibly as a mystery evolves
into a study in family dysfunction in various forms.
The story of Isabel and James comes to us in a series of sometimes confusing
flashbacks. We are told of Isabel’s strange childhood, growing up
in a privileged household, but with a suicidal, mentally ill mother, and
a distant father. We learn of James, who was raised on the family estate
in Virginia, penniless but with a pedigree. We see how they come together
as adults--Isabel, now a young, ambitious book publisher, and James, a
flighty, parasitic, sometimes travel writer. The book is a study in the
paradoxes of love, and how sometimes, when we are in love, we foster hope
that flies in the face of reason.
The fact that, even after Isabel tries to kill James, they stay together
for quite some time falls a little flat. In the end, Isabel sees the shallowness
in James that the rest of us saw all along, and we see her eventually
grow in the process. IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WHAT HE SAID is an absorbing character
study, giving us a glimpse into the cultured, advantaged lives of the
characters. We may not understand them, and we may not even like them,
but they are fascinating to read about. A recommended read.
C.E. Japhe
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