Updike's Rabbit Novels Come to TV, Everless by Sara Holland, Wayfarer and Kin by Lili St Crow and The Grave's a Fine and Private Place by Alan Bradley

As I've noted many times on this blog, I am a big fan of John Updike and his work, even more so after I met him and talked with him while in grad school at Lesley College in Cambridge, Mass in 1985. He was everything you'd want a classic literature author to be...witty, urbane, sexy and intelligent, oozing charm and talent. I think everyone in the room fell in love with him by the end of the evening. When I admitted to loving his book, The Centaur, he smiled, commented that that was a book written in his green youth and wanted to know exactly what I liked about it. He really listened to what I had to say, and made me feel like I was the only person in the room while I had his attention. At any rate, I will never forget him, and I think it is splendid that his Rabbit books are coming to TV.

TV: Rabbit, Run

 

John Updike's "Rabbit" novels

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz35933503

(Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit at Rest) will be

adapted for television after the BBC Worldwide-backed production company

Lookout Point (War and Peace) optioned the rights, Deadline reported.

Andrew Davies (Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones's Diary) will adapt

the four novels. This is the fourth collaboration between Davies and

Lookout Point, including the original House of Cards for the BBC and The

Tailor of Panama.

"This is such an important series of books for me," Davies said. "As a

young man, I read Rabbit, Run when it came out and thought: gosh, this

is what life is all about. For me, no other writer examines the mundane,

everyday details of life with such expressionistic, colorful, spiritual

power."

Lookout Point CEO Simon Vaughan added: "We were talking to Andrew about

whether there was any great work of literature he had always wanted to

adapt and Andrew said without breaking breath that it was Updike's

Rabbit books. Following his adaptations of non-British epics including

War and Peace, Les Miserables and A Suitable Boy, it seems

perfectly logical for him to take on one of America's iconic titles."

Everless by Sara Holland is the latest "hot" new YA novel to come out this year, and while I normally don't pay much attention to trends and bestseller lists, this sounded like a book that I might find interesting. It certainly got plenty of good reviews on websites like Barnes and Noble and Goodreads. That said, the idea of yet another dystopian setting where the young heroine gets involved in a love triangle while trying to figure out her powers set my teeth on edge. Still, Holland manages to make her story original enough that it isn't tedious to read, thank heaven. Here's the blurb:

New York Times bestseller!
In the kingdom of Sempera, time is currency—extracted from blood, bound to iron, and consumed to add time to one’s own lifespan. The rich aristocracy, like the Gerlings, tax the poor to the hilt, extending their own lives by centuries.
No one resents the Gerlings more than Jules Ember. A decade ago, she and her father were servants at Everless, the Gerlings’ palatial estate, until a fateful accident forced them to flee in the dead of night. When Jules discovers that her father is dying, she knows that she must return to Everless to earn more time for him before she loses him forever.
But going back to Everless brings more danger—and temptation—than Jules could have ever imagined. Soon she’s caught in a tangle of violent secrets and finds her heart torn between two people she thought she’d never see again. Her decisions have the power to change her fate—and the fate of time itself. Publisher's Weekly: Set in a world in which blood, iron, time, and currency are inextricably entwined, Holland’s complex debut novel blends myth, palace intrigue, and magic into a tale of self-discovery. To avoid eviction, 17-year-old Jules Ember takes a position at Everless, the estate of the powerful Gerlings. Jules still has feelings for her childhood friend Roan Gerling, but she’s terrified of his cruel brother, Liam, who is the reason she and her blacksmith father had to flee Everless in disgrace years ago. Roan is to be married to the sweet-natured Ina Gold, the adopted daughter of the queen of Sempera. Jules’s father has warned her about the queen, but Jules makes a shocking discovery and must get close to her at any cost. Holland’s lush, intricately drawn world hides an undercurrent of darkness underneath a veneer of beauty and finery, and the twists are genuinely surprising. Jules’s first-person narration reveals a smart, resilient young woman determined to reconcile her past with an uncertain future.

I have to disagree with PW, in that I didn't find Jules to be terribly smart, but she was foolhardy and brave enough to keep questioning what was really going on at the palace, and to fight the real person in power, who turns out to be a goddess in disguise. The whole reincarnation spin adds a twist to the plot that, though I saw most of it coming, was still exciting. While the prose is a bit too "easy" for my tastes, it is also clear and clean and sensible enough to keep that twisty plot from going off the rails. I'd give this book a B, and recommend it to those who are into swords and sorcery and medieval story reboots.

Wayfarer and Kin by Lili St Crow are the second and third book in her Tales of Beauty and Madness series following the first book, Nameless, in rebooting fairy tales that star innocent young women, who in this case are teenager besties going to private school together. Nameless was an update of Sleeping Beauty, while Wayfarer is an update of Cinderella and Kin is an update of Little Red Riding Hood. Here's the blurb: 

The Charmer's Ball. Midnight. And one glass slipper...
Newly orphaned, increasingly isolated from her friends, and terrified of her violent stepmother, Ellen Sinder still believes she’ll be okay. She has a plan for surviving and getting through high school, which includes keeping her head down and saving any credits she can earn or steal. But when a train arrives from over the Waste beyond New Haven, carrying a golden boy and a new stepsister, all of Ellie’s plans begin to unravel, one by one.
Just when all hope is lost, Ellie meets an odd old woman with a warm hearth and a heavenly garden. Auntie’s kindness is intoxicating, and Ellie finally has a home again. Yet when the clock strikes twelve on the night of the annual Charmer’s Ball, Ellie realizes that no charm is strong enough to make her past disappear...
In a city where Twisted minotaurs and shifty fey live alongside diplomats and charmers, a teenage girl can disappear through the cracks into safety—or into something much more dangerous. So what happens when the only safety you can find wants to consume you as well?
Kin: Full moon. Glowing eyes. Red lips. And such sharp, sharp teeth…
In the kin world, girls Ruby de Varre’s age are expected to play nice, get betrothed, and start a family—especially if they’re rootkin, and the fate of the clan is riding on them. But after a childhood of running wild in the woods, it’s hard to turn completely around and be demure. Even if your Gran is expecting it.
Then Conrad, handsome and charming, from a clan across the Waste, comes to New Haven to seal alliance between their two families. The sparks fly immediately. Conrad is smart, dominant, and downright gorgeous. Yet as Ruby gets to know him more, she starts to realize something's...off.
Then, the murders start. A killer stalks the city streets, and just when Ruby starts to suspect the unimaginable, she becomes the next target. Now Ruby’s about to find out that Conrad’s secrets go deeper than she ever could have guessed—and it’s up to Ruby to save her Gran, her clan, and maybe even herself....

I've read most of Lilith Saintcrow's work, so I know that she will always provide sterling prose and solid, inventive plots that move along swiftly, without any annoying plotholes. That said, I was discomfited by the fact that all three of her female protagonists hated themselves to the point of allowing themselves to be continually abused or nearly killed. And while each girl claimed to love and respect her best friends, they never want to "bother" their friends with these horrific problems that they are dealing with at home, choosing instead to just hide the bruises and scars and wait until they're near death to finally be rescued by their friends and their "one true love/boyfriend." Each girl finds herself hideous, while finding her friends gorgeous and elegant and poised. They don't seem to be able to articulate this to one another, however, nor do their protestations of "one for all and all for one" seem to hold much weight when the magical nightmare killers hit the fan. They're also supposedly smart young women, yet even the most rebellious of the lot, Ruby, can't see that her boyfriend Conrad is a serial killer and an abusive asshole, when it is clear from the outset that he's evil and controlling (and he hurts her almost immediately, but she lamely accepts his excuses and apology without a qualm...really? It makes no sense). At least in the Sinder Ellie story, we know that the evil abusive stepmother must be stopped. I do not understand how St Crow can allow these girls to be so passive and with such low self esteem that they nearly die at the hands of vicious boyfriends or twisted adults. I know that in the original Grimms and Perraults fairy tales, the stories had plenty more gore and horror in them, and that the women and girls fell either into the evil or saintly categories, with no real inbetween. But if you are going to reboot the tales, please give the protagonists more agency than they had in the originals! Still, I'd give these two books and this series overall a B, and recommend it to those who like dark fairy tales.

The Grave's a Fine and Private Place by Alan Bradley is the 9th book in the Flavia de Luce mystery series. I've read every single one of them, and have yet to find a clinker in the lot. Bradley has a thoroughly winning heroine in prepubescent Flavia, who is so precocious and bright that she makes those around her seem dull by comparison. Flavia makes you laugh and cry and want to be her best friend, all at once. Here's the blurb:

“The world’s greatest adolescent British chemist/busybody/sleuth” (The Seattle Times), Flavia de Luce, returns in a twisty new mystery novel from award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Alan Bradley.
In the wake of an unthinkable family tragedy, twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce is struggling to fill her empty days. For a needed escape, Dogger, the loyal family servant, suggests a boating trip for Flavia and her two older sisters. As their punt drifts past the church where a notorious vicar had recently dispatched three of his female parishioners by spiking their communion wine with cyanide, Flavia, an expert chemist with a passion for poisons, is ecstatic. Suddenly something grazes her fingers as she dangles them in the water. She clamps down on the object, imagining herself Ernest Hemingway battling a marlin, and pulls up what she expects will be a giant fish. But in Flavia’s grip is something far better: a human head, attached to a human body. If anything could take Flavia’s mind off sorrow, it is solving a murder—although one that may lead the young sleuth to an early grave. Publisher's Weekly: Set in England in 1952, Agatha-winner Bradley’s outstanding ninth Flavia de Luce novel (after 2016’s Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d) finds 12-year-old Flavia contemplating suicide in the wake of a family tragedy. To relieve the increased tension between Flavia and her two older sisters, Dogger, the de Luce family’s long-serving and devoted servant, proposes an extended boat trip on the river. All is uneventful until the skiff nears the site where a notorious poisoner, Canon Whitbread, discarded the chalice he used in his crimes. Flavia’s hand, trailing behind the boat, comes into contact with the corpse of the canon’s son, Orlando. Unperturbed, Flavia uses her handkerchief to swab liquid from the dead man’s lips, and she and Dogger jury-rig a forensic lab to examine the sample. Though disappointed when the evidence shows Orlando was drowned instead of poisoned, Flavia persists with her amateur detecting, even as she runs afoul of the local constable. As usual, Bradley makes his improbable series conceit work and relieves the plot’s inherent darkness with clever humor.

I disagree with PW that the series has an "improbable conceit," any more than any other mystery has an improbable sleuth who can follow the clues when everyone else around them seems stumped. I was eager to find out what was going to happen with Buckshaw, the family estate, now that Flavia's father has died, and it appears that, though the estate was left to her in the will, there's a meddlesome aunt who wants to sell it off and send Flavia's sisters into marriage and college, while Flavia would have to go live with her aunt in London until she comes of age. Though this is only touched on briefly in the book, I assume that the next book will sort out what happens to the sisters de Luce, and we will find out if Flavia is able to get her aunt to agree to allow her to stay with the horrible housekeeper and faithful Dogger (and her wonderful inherited chemistry lab) at Buckshaw. I wonder if Flavia will change once she turns 13 and is officially a teenager, with all the hormonal hoopla that it entails? At any rate, Bradley's prose is of the highest quality, and his plots swift and sure. I would give this book an A, and recommend it to anyone who enjoys cozy British mysteries with a winning heroine/sleuth and several dollops of dry humor to keep the whole thing together.