Wondering About

On the train back from the British Museum, I randomly started reading 'The Psychic Tourist' by journalist William Little.  Yesterday, I finished it.

The journey begins when Little buys an astrological birth chart for his sister and her daughter as a gift.  Unfortunately, they both predict a water-related death, something which terrifies his sibling and affects badly, making her avoid travelling on or over water at any cost and give up water-based hobbies.  Upset that his gift has caused so much distress, Little decides to start and investigation into the world of psychics and prediction to find a way to undo the damage he's done.

Having enjoyed 'Will Storr vs the Supernatural', I hoped that this too would be an interesting and thought provoking read.  It's also described as funny in a number of reviews, so I thought it would be entertaining too.  Unfortunately, although it does start off in a similar way as Storr's book, it meanders quite a lot and doesn't always seem to stick to it's destination of the truth about predicting the future, often straying into a more general look at psychics instead.  It's almost as if the author wanted to write a different book but couldn't control his own destiny.

By the end, the more lighthearted tone is all but out of sight.  While it's interesting that Little takes his investigation to a new level, interviewing a combination of Physicists, Nobel-prize winners and experts in Quantum Theory, it means he has to resort to including long quotes from books and people.  I can understand why.  Many of these ideas are hard to understand for non-academics and it's safer to quote directly rather than try to explain it in lay language and lose meaning.  Unfortunately, this style also gives the book an essay feel, and essays are not usually fun or amusing.  Although if anyone knows of a funny, understandable and accurate essay on Quantum Physics, I'd love to hear about it!

Overall, 'The Psychic Tourist' was a bit of a disappointment.  With a rewrite that tightens up the structure and maps out the science so it's easier to understand, it would be a better book.  It's a shame as there are a lot of great and interesting ideas in here, many of which need to be shared with people like Little's sister to free them from excessive worry.  Maybe in the future Little will have the opportunity to revisit this book and give it a polish.  Who knows..!

Now, back to Groucho Marx!

Good Gothic!

What a month!  You'd think I'd been trying to read 'Ulysses' backwards, upside down and in Ancient Egyptian it's taken me so long to get through this latest book!  Hopefully there aren't many more like that on the shelves!

I've just finished 'A Night on the Moor and Other Tales of Dread' by R. Murray Gilchrist, a collection of short stories very much in the Gothic genre.  In the 24 tales, we find love innocent, lust sinful and an awful lot of broken hearts.  Everything happens against a background of beautifully described landscapes and gardens and, of course, usually involves supernatural interference with the lives of (usually arrogant) men.

'A Night on the Moor and Other
Tales of Dread' by R. Murray Gilchrist
(Wordsworth Editions,  2006)

This was very much a mixed bag, but I probably enjoyed 'The Crimson Weaver', 'The Lover's Ordeal', 'The Lost Mistress', 'The Madness of Betty Hooton', 'Bubble Magic', 'The Panicle' and 'A Witch in the Peak' the most.  'Bubble Magic' had a lovely wry little twist which made it quite fun. 'The Panicle' and 'A Witch in the Peak' focussed on lower class characters, which made a nice change from hearing about doting young couples mooning about manor houses and formal gardens.  The trouble was that, on the whole, the stories either felt clichéd or just a bit silly.  Because of the genre and when they were written, they do seem to feature an awful lot of silly men (why on Earth abandon your fiancée for 40 years?  Of course she's going to be different when you get back!) and often typecast women as such feeble minded wretches that they're almost unbearable.

Gilchrist does have two redeeming features however.  1) He writes some extremely funny and pompous names (What's not to love about Vernon Garth, Tryphena Wilbraham, Althea Swarthmoor, Lord Frambant, Pliny Witherton and Peregrine Fury?) and 2) His descriptions of the landscape, gardens and even the ladies' dresses can be captivating.

If I'd picked up this book as a young teenager, I would have loved it.  Unfortunately, at my age, I think I've kind of grown out of these moody fairy tales.  They have a certain amount of charm as literature of their time (Gilchrist lived from 1868 to 1917), but on the whole the stories felt too bogged down in cliché most of the time to have any real impact.  There are times that you feel he sleep-wrote though them the ingredients are so similar (take one young maiden with dark ringlets and one haunting garden feature, add one cocky young man...).  But if you've got the stamina and are into dark romance, you may find something to enjoy here.  But I can't make any promises!