Book Review: "The Red House" by Mark Haddon

After his mother's death, Richard, a newly remarried hospital consultant, decides to build bridges with his estranged sister, inviting Angela and her family for a week in a rented house on the Welsh border. Four adults and four children, a single family and all of them strangers. Seven days of shared meals, log fires, card games and wet walks.

But in the quiet and stillness of the valley, ghosts begin to rise up. The parents Richard thought he had. The parents Angela thought she had. Past and present lovers. Friends, enemies, victims, saviours. And watching over all of them from high on the dark hill, Karen, Angela's stillborn daughter.

Mark Haddon was one of those authors who wrote one book everyone knows and then faded into obscurity. Maybe it was the 3 years between The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and A Spot of Bother that did him in. That 3 year gap may have been long enough for people to forget who he was. Or maybe people never remembered the name of the author, only remembering the title of the book. I have found that most people I've talked to about Curious Incident don't actually know the author's name. Which is a shame as he is a great author.

After the success of Curious Incident I can only presume that people wanted more of the same, and A Spot of Bother was not that. In fact, according to Wikipedia, A Spot of Bother received mostly mixed reviews. I feel this is undeserved, as it was a great book that I feel more people need to pick up and give a chance. Yes, it is not Curious Incident, but it's good for an author to try and change and adapt, to never be stale.

Why do I bring all of this up? Because The Red House is another Mark Haddon book that seems to have flown relatively under the radar. In addition to that it runs more so in the style of A Spot of Bother than Curious Incident. This is not, of course, a bad thing. It should also be noted that though it is more in common with A Spot of Bother the book is not just a carbon copy of it.

Blimey, it's taking me far too long to get here, but let's actually talk about the book itself. As the synopsis shows, the book is about two families coming together for a holiday after the death of a relative. This initially reminded me of The Darjeeling Limited, a simply fantastic film about three brothers attempting to bond on a holiday after the death of their father. Over the seven days the families stay in this house not a massive amount particularly happens, but rather lots of little things.

You see, the beauty of The Red House lies in the fact that Mark Haddon makes the mundane and the fairly ordinary interesting to read about. Of course, some things aren't quite that ordinary, but still believable, yet never before have I found someone going on an early morning run so interesting, nor has saying grace at the dinner table been such an important issue. These little events have massive repercussions throughout the book.

The way in which Haddon makes these issues interesting is through his writing style. This style is nothing like his previous two adult books, nor is it like any book I've read with a similar focus. The Red House has a narrative that focuses upon a stream of consciousness. Though all written in third person it has the feel of a book written in first person. Usually a section will focus upon a single character, going through their thoughts, feelings and actions as if they are personally contemplating the situation. Sometimes the narrative focus will switch during a paragraph or section, which doesn’t confuse but rather intensifies any drama happening at the current moment in time.

This focus is also enhanced by Haddon’s choice of language when focussing on each character. When focussing on Benjy, the 8 year old boy, the words used will be more simplistic and sentence structure less complex, yet when focussing on Alex, the 17 year old boy, the writing will be more centralised around Alex, swear words will be used more often and more sexual language will be used. This helps the reader understand each character more.

However, it has to be said that understanding who each member of the family is and where they fit in can be quite difficult at first. It took me a while to figure out a family tree, which I then needed to write up as a quick reference. The narrative structure, though good for the story, did not help me get to grips with the family structure, though when this issue was overcome there are no longer any issues with the narrative.

Throughout the book there are a massive amount of twists and turns. Plot gets slowly dispensed, keeping the reader in suspense. Most of the plot gets resolved in the last quarter of the book, though there are points where mini-plots end earlier. Haddon does seem to run out of steam near the end, however, with three characters having to be rescued and brought back home within the week, but he recuperates within the ending of the book.

Finishing the book I was left somewhat upset. I had enjoyed reading about these people, as dysfunctional as they were. Yes, some of them (read: most of them) were horrible people, but they weren’t necessarily horrible people. They were just normal people. And leaving them made me feel sad. Some people had come out better, some came out worse, some the same, but this didn’t matter. This was a week of escape from a life which they would go back to and experience their lives in almost the same way. This is, at least, how I interpreted things. Things just keep on going the same.

The Red House is definitely a book you should read, especially if you’ve liked Haddon’s previous work. It brings intrigue to the normalcy of life and does so through people you will probably feel you already know. It’s not too easy to read at first, but the style of writing will draw you in and keep you going throughout.

Snow White and the Huntsman (and a little bit of Mirror Mirror)

Okay, I didn’t review Mirror Mirror. I’m not sure why. I really liked that movie, but I couldn’t quite put in to words what I liked about it. It was just campy fun that felt like it was honouring, and satirising, the Disney-style fairy tale films. I guess that’s my review of it. See that film. You might not agree with me, but it’s well worth watching, especially in this age of fairy tale films that are being DARK and EDGY and GRITTY. You know, like what Snow White and the Huntsman was trying to be.

Now, this film I can honestly put into words how I felt about it. A lot of words. But I think one word that mostly sums it up is ‘vacuous’. The film is just so empty and devoid of substance that it doesn’t leave a lasting impression. As I left the cinema I was complaining about certain aspects of the film, but often found myself trying to remember what else I didn’t like because though I didn’t like it I still couldn’t remember what it was.

Snow White and the Huntsman is your basic Snow White story but made all dark because fun isn’t allowed any more. Now we have a ridiculously evil queen (Charlize Theron) and her ridiculously evil brother (Sam Spruell) taking over a kingdom and then locking the vacant princess, Snow White (Kristen Stewart) in the dungeon. Of course, Snow White escapes and is then hunted by Eric, the title’s ‘Huntsman’ (Chris Hemsworth). Of course, Snow White befriends the guy in about a minute because the evil brother just blurts out that he’s going to betray Eric.

This is our main cast for most of the film. What’s that? You want dwarfs in this Snow White film? Ah, no you don’t. They’ll just be some side characters who offer little to the plot or story. In fact, you can pretty much say that about any character, to be honest. There’s some talent in here (Theron and Hemsworth) but they are wasted on an awful script that gives them so few lines and such little time for character development that they don’t really have screen presence. But in a film where no one has much screen presence I suppose they fit in extremely well.

The acting was, at times, pretty good. Hemsworth and Theron do what they can with the script and some of the dwarfs seem to be trying their best to be memorable (spoilers: they aren’t). However, the evil brother is just irritating with his over-acting, whilst Stewart is bland. She’s always bland. I’ve seen her in the Twilight films, Adventureland and this and in all of these she has the same blank expression on her face. Sometimes she’ll try to emote but this is worse than the blandness as moving her facial muscles obviously causes her a lot of visible pain.

The plot was pretty dire, too, and seemed to have little focus. The scenes didn’t have much flow, leaving you wondering how or why the story was at that point. At a few points things made no sense, such as characters coming back from the dead from plot convenience or a quick scene with Theron showing her do nothing whatsoever. Then it just all kind of ended with little resolution to anything (SPOILERS: Snow White stabs her. She dies. Then Snow White becomes the queen. Then she looks around at everyone. THE END!). Personally, I expected some kind of epilogue or speech or something, but there was nothing whatsoever. It just ended like a cheesy 80s action movie.

Don't know what happened here. Strange stuff happens a lot for no reason.

Then we have the thing that could have helped this movie hold itself together: the action. People love action scenes. They are fun. They are even better if we can see what’s going on. Thanks to some pretty bad cinematography I couldn’t keep track of any of the fight sequences, sometimes wondering what part of the setting the camera was focussing on or who was fighting who. One scene had a fight at night with fire lighting the area, but bugger me if I could tell you who was fighting in it or who was on which side. Pull out the camera bit then I may have seen more of it and enjoyed it.

This was upsetting as I could see some pretty good combat going on in there. It looked realistic and it seemed that every hit had an effect on the fight. I just wanted to see these fights. It’s a shame because most of the cinematography and directing was pretty good, showing off some good looking scenery (though it was too focussed on the scenery at some points, rather than focussing on plot and such). It was just when things were happening that it all fell apart visually. 

Keeping with the visuals, actually, I did see a lot of points I thought “That looks like Lord of the Rings”. The mountains, the panning shots of people walking over greenery, stuff like that. It all stank of Lord of the Rings. Then there were the crows, or ravens (the Queen is called Ravenna), that looked strangely like Saruman’s spies. Oh, and then they ripped off that bit in The NeverEnding Story where Artax, the horse, drowns in the Swamps of Sadness. That was just shameful. This film borrowed from a lot more films, resulting in something that was more Avatar than Pulp Fiction. 

This film, however, did have potential to be good. It lost its focus early on and spent too much time on scenes it didn’t need to. Some more characterisation would have been good, especially for the two characters who are IN THE TITLE, and maybe someone could try and get Kristen Stewart to have as many, maybe more, emotions than Nic Cage. At least then she would show some emotion. A tighter, better script would have been nice as well. Weird how a 2 hour long film could do so little...

Battle Royale - A Response

This post is in response to the review of the manga, film and novel versions of Battle Royale, a book I love, a film I think is very good, and a manga I hate. This post is just about my thoughts on the manga, expanding upon the thoughts of the review. You can find the review at Fucking Zombies! Check it out, it's a good blog.

You feel almost exactly the way I did about all three of these. Thought, I have to say I have an uncontrollable hatred of the manga.

See, the manga changed characters too much. As you said, things are over sexualised, but I don't think you've even covered the extent of it. These two sentences come hand in hand as Mitsuko Souka such a massive amount that her entire motivation in the manga is sexual thrills. Which pisses me off. Oh, and having her backstory seemed like a cop out to make her sympathetic, when really she's just a terrible person.

On top of this, the big change with Shuya Nanahara with his "I refuse to kill" atttitude just irritated me as it completely missed the point of the novel (having to kill to survive, even though you don't like it) and would have just caused too many issues throughout the book.

But the biggest betrayal in the manga is probably my favourite storyline in the novel: that of the journey of Hiroki Sugimura. They made him out to be an ultimate badass, when really he was just a normal guy driven by love. On top of that, the fact he doesn't die at the correct time just ruins the importance of his story. His love powers him on, in the novel, but he dies because of the island, but also is able to express his love because of it. Kind of a double edged sword kinda place.

And then he does a Kamehameha. I mean REALLY?! This is meant to be set in REALITY, and not some fucking fantasy world.

There are lots of other issues with the manga besides character change, though. One of the biggest issues I have, as you said, is the art. Yes, everyone is quite 'bishi', but that wasn't really my issue. My issue was that everyone was drawn as a certain category, which, to me, felt like the artist was a lazy bastard. Now to give each one names.

First we have the 'Frog'. This is reserved for your "ugly on the outside, ugly on the inside" types. So many lines on the face, drool and maybe even attempts at being creepily sexual. Kinda reminds me of the snails from Uzumaki.

 After that we have the 'Nutter', which is what I like to call the same face and stance everyone pulls when they go insane. It usually consists of crying, weird eyes and maybe movie in a funny way.

We also have the 'Brute’. He’s basically your large-nosed big guy. The diametric opposite of this is the ‘Kid’, your type who, whilst in the same class as everyone else, seems to be about 10 years younger.

 

We finally have the ‘Hero’, your average main character type, as well as the ‘Woman’, because at least the art can be consistent there.

If you want to see a woman type, look at the original blog.

So yeah, I think that’s all of the characters. It’s only, y’know, been about 3 or 4 years since I read it. This rage sticks.

I do find you are pretty correct on everything, though. I just felt that the horrifying quality of the manga needed to be expanded upon. The novel is one of my favourite books. With this you may think “Well, any changes would piss you off!” No, actually. The film is so different to the book but the film does something good: it tells a competent story and knows where to focus to tell its own story. It captured the essence of the original novel, but does its own thing with it, and that’s only good.

This is a long post for a response (so much so I decided it would serve better as a blog post), but as I said, I felt the manga needed to be vastly expanded upon.

I just hope the video game is better than the manga.

What? This isn't to do with Battle Royale? Dammit!