Stuff As Dreams Are Made On…

Voodoo Season by Jewell Parker Rhodes
2005
275 Pages
4/5

I found a book tent this year at Jazz Fest and knew that I had to go visit it. It was filled with nothing but New Orleans authors or authors who wrote about New Orleans. Yeah, I was like a kid in a candy shop. My eye was immediately drawn to the voodoo section as I’ve always found voodoo to just be fascinating…maybe it’s because I live in the voodoo capital of the world, who knows. On the shelf was a book by an author I had never heard of, Jewell Parker Rhodes. She’s an african american woman who seems to wrtie a lot about voodoo! Couldn’t pass that up. Especially when I found a fictional account of the great granddaughter of Marie Laveau, Voodoo Season.

Voodoo Season is a fascinating book. It’s the story of a young doctor named Marie Levant who is doing her residency at Charity Hospital. Marie has always noticed that something was a little different with her….a little strange. She has a seemingly sixth sense. She knows things about people without knowing how she knows them, she takes in lovers that show such passion. But when one of those lovers turns up dead at her hospital, things take a turn. Not only has her lover turned up dead, but so are numerous young women. And they all have crosses on their heads. When Marie has an intuition that one of the girls is pregnant, she performs a C-Section and forms an instant attachment to the child. She wants it to be hers. She searches for the babies grandparents and in doing so falls into the world of voodoo.

There’s a myth that voodoo is an evil religion. It wasn’t started that way and it’s not an evil religion. But like all religion, there are those that use it for evil purposes. These are some of the people that Marie runs into as she begins to come into her own and begins to realize that Marie Levant, her own name, is a transformed version of Marie Laveau. She is a direct ancestor of Laveau and it is she that holds the ability to be the next voodoo queen.

I feel like I’m doing a horrible job of describing this book, but take my word for it…it’s damn good. Jewell Parker Rhodes is another author that captures the essence of southern Louisiana perfectly. The city of New Orleans, the swamps further down south, the madness of Charity hospital, it’s all there. She awakened a fascination with this part of the city that has lay dormant in me for a long while and I’m anxious to scoop up all of the information I can now on Marie Laveau. I’m also dying to read the rest of her books. The prequel to this one is Voodoo Dreams and is a telling of the tale of the actual Marie Laveau, a woman who is to this day still shrouded in mystery. There are also two sequels to this book that further the storie of Marie Levant.

The only slight problem I had with this book was the ending. I was happy with the way it ended but it felt so rushed. I don’t know if she was given a page limit by the publisher or what, but it would’ve been much better I think if it had been a longer novel. Everything seemed to happy to quickly and a little too conveniently at the end, but that’s ok I guess :p The scenes of Marie performing her voodoo rituals for the first time more than make up for that. Read it!

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
2009
320 Pages
3.5/5

Kailana and I are pairing up for a review of this one. I really love this format!! If anyone else wants to do this with me, just head on over to my LibraryThing page, click on the TBR tag and pick anything you want that you plan on reading and we can review it together!!

The Forest of Hands and Teeth is a fantastic read. If you’re a fan of YA books, zombie novels, philosophical novels or all of the above, this is definitely one to pick up. It’s not often that you can put those three categories together :p The Forest of Hands and Teeth is a dystopian novel. The world as we know it has been destroyed by a virus. A virus that has turned the inhabitants of our world into zombies, or the Unconsecrated as they are called in this novel. But there is a small camp of people who live in a commune type setting surrounded by a fence in the middle of the forest of hands and teeth, a forest where the Unconsecrated live. Mary is one of the inhabitants of this village. After not being spoken for by a boy who she thought would speak for her at the marriage ceremony, Mary is forced to join The Sisterhood, a group of religious women meant to protect the secrets of the Unconsecrated and care for the small town. But Mary’s mind does not allow her to turn a blind eye to the goings on of the sisters, and she’s fallen in love with her betrothed’s  brother.

Everything changes when there is a breach in the fence and the Unconsecrated reak havoc on the town, killing most of it’s residents, turning them all into Unconsecrated as well. But Mary is lucky enough to escape with her life along with her new fiancee, Harry, and the boy she truly loves, his brother who is engaged to Mary’s best friend (also with them). Yeah, there’s a complication there. The book is a truly terrifying novel that leaves you totally creeped out and weeping at the sadness of it all at the same time.

1. What was your immediate reaction after you turned the last page of the book? (without giving anything away of course

I was so so sad Not that the ending is one of total desperation, but the book is an emotional rollercoaster…going downhill. I’m always amazed when an author can evoke such strong emotions in me, and Carrie Ryan did just that. I really can’t wait to see what she comes out with next! If it’s half as good as this one, we’re in for a treat. Truthfully, when I put the book down after reading it, I didn’t want it to end. I was left with one of those “wow” moments where I really just had to sit back and let it all sink in.

2. How did you feel about the main character, Mary? Did she surprise you, were you annoyed by her, did you think she was a strong character, weak, etc?

I was up and down about Mary. I think she’s an extremely strong character, but at the same time, I think that the same attributes that make her strong may make her weak. She’s extremely headstrong, which comes in handy at times, but at other times it seems to be her detriment. I think Mary is someone who is still trying to find herself throughout this novel…still trying to learn who she is. She’s sort of all over the place. All that being said, she was probably my favorite character and I felt for her.

3. The film rights to the book have just been sold. Would you be interested in seeing a movie made out of this novel? Do you think there are things they’d have to change?

I would definitely be interested in seeing this made into a movie! It was one of the most vivid novels I’ve read in a long time. It reminded me quite a bit of The Village by M. Knight Shyamalan actually. That’s the reason it lost half a star to be honest. I thought that it was somewhat of a rip off of The Village at the beginning. Same basic concept….a town where you’re taught to be afraid of what’s outside the walls, you don’t ask questions, a few chosen people know the truth, traditions that have been developed…all of that’s there. But it evolves into much more eventually and I think it would make a great movie. That being said, I think they would have to change a few things to not make the movie look like a rip off of The Village.

4.  What did you think of the secondary characters in this book?  Who was your favourite?  Anyone that you didn’t like?

I liked the secondary characters for the most part. I thought everyone was developed really well. Some of them annoyed me at times, but they were supposed to annoy me, so that was ok. I think my favorite secondary character in the novel was Harry. He never really gave up on Mary, despite the fact that she gave up on him. He was always there to protect her and you could tell he really cared. I also really liked the character of her fiancee, Harry’s brother Travis. There’s one scene with Travis that just tore my heart apart. If you’ve read the book, you know what I mean. I didn’t like Cass at all. That’s Mary’s best friend…I kind of thought she was a bitch for a best friend.

5.  What did you think of the title?  As you got to know the setting that the book was named after, did you think it was a fitting title?

This is one of those titles that I wish I would’ve thought of :p It perfectly captures the feel of the book….creepy as hell! I LOVE LOVE LOVE the title of this one and I love the cover as well. I thought it was an extremely fitting title. It defines the book, it defines the feel of the book, and most of the action takes place surrounded by the forest itself.

6.  What did you think about the zombies?  Was this your first zombie novel?  Did you find them realistic?

The zombies rocked! In a very creepy sort of way. I thought they were extremely realistic. Real enough to creep me out. She wrote them perfectly. Imagine sitting in a path with two feet on either side of you with zombies clawing at you, trying to get to you. Scary stuff. These weren’t funny zombies…they were just downright creepy…like 28 Days Later zombies :p I think the creepiest of all of them was Gabrielle, the zombie in red…the “fast one”. This wasn’t my first zombie novel. I’ve read quite a few others, but not in a while! The most recent one I read was Cell by Stephen King. A lot of people were disappointed with that one, but I really liked it!

Other views and opinions:

Book Zombie (of course :p)
YA Fabulous
{Insert Book Title Here}
Becky’s Book Reviews

Wetlands by Charlotte Roche
2008 (2009 for English translation)
229 pgs.
4.75/5

Wetlands is a book that not all will love. In fact, I would bet money on it that many people will be just plain disgusted by it. And I can’t say that I necessarily blame them. Parts of it disgusted me too…But I still really liked this novel. Wetlands is a shocker. Not in a “big reveal” sort of way or in a thriller sort of way, but in it’s subject matter and in it’s language. There were parts of this novel that literally evoked nausea in me. It’s that disturbing at times. But it’s so worth the read. I know that because I was so upset when the book ended.

Wetlands focuses on our young narrator, Helen, an 18 year old girl that’s seen and been through a lot more than she should have been at her age. The book opens with her describing her hemorhoids and she’s quickly sent to the hospital where she needs to have surgery on them. It’s here, in her hospital room where her story takes place with flashbacks to her past. Helen is less than sanitary…let’s put it that way. Though she is obsessed with the idea of personal heigene and the standards that our society puts on it. Helen is obsessed with bodily fluids of all types as well in addition to anything that the body produces…be it hers or someone else’s. Her language is not blunted, she describes things in a very raw matter, favoring the “p” word when referring to her genitals.

Helen has had many of her own sexual encounters, some of them paid for, starting at a very young age. Her suitors have ranged from people her own age to people many years older than her when she was many years younger. She’s experienced the life of her derranged mother which has certainly left some trauma issues to be dealt with, and her parents are divorced which greatly upsets her. But none of this is looked into in depth in the novel, we only see glimpses of it in Helen’s flashbacks. The main focus is on her obsession with her own body, with bacteria, with uncleanliness.

It’s been said that this novel is a major feminist work, and I can certainly see that. Nothing of the feminine is left untouched here from the subject of periods, discharges, sex and shaving. It’s all their in graphic detail and nothing is blanketed over. Roche addresses feminine heigene in this novel straight on and challenges the standards with the character of Helen. It’s almost liberating in a way to read this book and I’m not even a woman. But the extremes of which she describes allow the lesser extremes to be challenged…does that make sense?

What’s never addressed in this novel, and I believe it’s intentionally not addressed are Helen’s trauma issues. The story is told through Helen’s point of view and I don’t think she would realize them all. But many of her behaviors are quite common among survivors of severe trauma. Many people who are abused as children whether it be physical, sexual, or emotional abuse or who experience some type of traumatic even become obsessed with their bodies. I see it all the time. Children who are sexually abused often become constipated, incontinent of their bowels or urine, or become obsessed with the fluids and excrement itself. I know it’s disturbing, but it’s also fascinating in a way how the mind works. So is this novel. It’s an examination of these trauma issues and it’s a story that’s shocking, but has a deep message underneath it’s shock. Not recommended for those easily offended and definitely not recommended for children.